Your TV is watching you

He's watching you.

I had no idea this was going on.

Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people's TV-viewing behavior with other personal data—in some cases, prescription-drug records obtained from insurers—and using it to help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain kinds of people. 

At the same time, cable and satellite companies are testing and deploying new systems designed to show households highly targeted ads. 

One of the most advanced companies, Cablevision Systems Corp., has rolled out a system that can show entirely different commercials, in real time, to different households tuned to the same program. It can deliver targeted ads to all the company's three million subscribers concentrated in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Darn. The Wall Street Journal article says my cable company, Comcast, isn't doing this yet. I was hoping it explained why, when I'm simply trying to watch a Law & Order rerun from 1996 to lull me to sleep, I'm bombarded with GEICO ads. I prefer ads for the slap chopper and sham-wow, stuff relevant to my lifestyle.

Here come the rabbit ears ... and the FCC

Some viewers who have decided that they are no longer willing or able to pay for cable or satellite service, including younger ones, are buying antennas and tuning in to a surprising number of free broadcast channels, The New York Times reports.

These often become part of a video diet that includes the fast-growing menu of options available online.
The antenna reception has also led many of these converts to discover — or rediscover — the frustration of weak and spotty signals. But its fans argue that it is tough to beat the price.

From April to September, cable and satellite companies had a net loss of about 330,000 customers. Craig Moffett, a longtime cable analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said the consensus of the industry executives he had talked to was that most of these so-called cord-cutters were turning to over-the-air TV. “It looks like they’re leaving for the antenna,” he said.  

Another big change is the rise of Internet video, which can ease the pain of losing favorite cable channels. Not so fast, Sparky.

As details emerge about the Federal Communications Commission's controversial proposal for regulating Internet providers, a provision that would allow companies to bill customers for how much they surf the Web is drawing special scrutiny. 

Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry, handing a victory to cable and satellite TV providers. 

What's up with that. Glenn Reynolds muses, "A cynic would see this as a payback to the Big Media folks who backed Obama so . . . intensively in 2008."

Kiss the remote goodbye

If you lose the thing it may be just as well. You can now control your television set with a smart phone. There is, as they say, an app for that.

TV viewing habits are changing as more Internet and on-demand content — YouTube videos, streaming movies, shopping sites, Facebook photos — flows directly onto big screens. Navigating all of that demands more action from the viewer, including a fair amount of typing, which current remotes cannot handle.

“Everybody realizes that the remote control is the dinosaur of the consumer electronics industry,” said David Mercer, a television analyst at Strategy Analytics, a research and consulting firm. “The cable companies and the TV manufacturers are beginning to realize that they have to start moving away from the traditional, basic remote control.”

There have already been successful attempts to use smartphones as remotes. Sonos, which makes Internet-connected stereos, offers a free iPhone application that replicates every feature of its own $349 touch-screen remote control. Over half of Sonos customers now use the app, which links to the stereo over a Wi-Fi network.

Several television manufacturers, like Mitsubishi and Samsung, are following suit with smartphone remotes, and phone apps are part of both Apple and Google’s TV offerings.

If you lose this remote, you can always call it and make it ring.