A DVR Ad-Eraser Causes Tremors at TV Upfronts

Broadcast television executives came to New York this week, as they do every year, to talk up their new TV shows in front of advertisers. This year, they are having to talk about yet another technology trying to tear them down.

The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary. Some reviewers have already called the feature, named Auto Hop, a dream come true for consumers. But for broadcasters and advertisers, it is an attack on an entrenched television business model, and it must be strangled, lest it spread.