The findings of the BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey are not surprising, but the preponderance of it is shocking: 75% of viewers channel surf or chat when the commercials come on. The remaining people either tune out (33%) or watch (5.5%). Regardless of the purpose ascribed to TV advertising (for instance the "brand building" suggested in the article), that last number seems like bad news for TV ad dollars. That means only 5.5% of people are getting your message, right?

Wrong. I think the only real number to be concerned with is the 41% who channel surf. The remaining 59% are, perhaps subliminally, being influenced by the ad. For all you know, the chatting taking place could be about the ad itself (I know I do this). At the very least the chatting is happening around the ad (like a conversation at another table at a restaurant). The tune out folks could be the most ripe because their mind has entered a passive state and will take in messages with minimal discretion. This is all to say that TV ads work (at least as they are expected to) as long as they are not actively skipped (DVR or channel surfing). There is not much opportunity there for new media to break in.

The 41%who are taking active steps to find something other than the ad are the bunch the online video world have something to offer. The key is figuring out why they channel surf. Is it, for instance:

A. Avoidance of the ad.

B. The commercials breaks are their only chance to see what else is on without missing anything

C. Enjoyment of channel surfing in it's own right.

Constantly exploring these questions has informed our design for a living room viewer experience that breaks three restraints of the broadcast model

1. Linear programming

2. Lack of personalized relevance

3. Not interactive

Janko's new post at NewTeeVee was a thought provoking look in the mirror. His suggestions for Joost amount to five decisions where Joost went one way and ffwd went the other, like branch points on an evolutionary tree. It's yet another way to define what we are doing in contrast to our compatriots in the space. In chronological order:

Build a web version - ffwd is built around standards compliant browsers and the Internet protocol as platform/application environment.

Integrate Hulu - it's all queued up in our labs, just waiting for the paperwork from the Hulu team.

On the Wii - Since we designed the product from the ground up for a living room experience (we actually have a "living room of the future" to test stuff on) the service has always worked on the Wii browser. January, though has been Wii optimization month (how could we resist 16 million boxes) so get those Wiimotes ready for a brand new bag

Podcasting client & Firefox plug-in - Both of these functions are wrapped into products we have planned for later in the year. What we are internally calling the "tracker" would allow for subscriptions and saved searches across a bunch of different categorizers (not just "Podcast name"). We actually experimented with a plug-in during the Project Vadver days and found it was either too little or too much: our solution, either a bookmarklet or...well, maybe we'll keep that one as a surprise for later.

These are pretty defining decisions for ffwd and so I imagine for Joost, too. It's going to be hard for them to reverse any one of them let alone all of them. And besides, it's so early on in the space that we need a diversity of related species out there to determine which characteristics are the best to carry forward to the next generation of creations.

Wayne Friedman comments briefly on the potential conflict between the display and the box. As you know we've been prototyping a living room optimized version of the site using the Wii browser, but we've been surprised to find our selves already approached with the possibility of skipping the box entirely and going straight to the display.  This, in my mind, is real convergence, meaning a collapse to one physical point. And when the physical space gets collapsed, the information space expands. To wit, if the camera is Internet enabled (convergence on the creative side) and the display is Internet enabled (convergence on the audience side), there's going to be an awful lot of cameras reaching out directly to displays. That's where ffwd's mission comes from: information management for the video web.

But wait a second, you may say, isn't that just replacing the current intermediaries with ffwd? Perhaps, but the nature of ffwd as an intermediary is fundamentally different. Rather than seeking to control the flow: a certain channel lineup going across a privately controlled pipe, ffwd's role is just to make sense of the uncontrolled flow of options over the Internet. We'll only succeed because of what we do, not because of what we own.

Today, we are announcing the release of an early beta version of our API tools. These tools will provide you ways of connecting to and accessing data from your ffwd profile when building your own API widgets and applications.

To request a Developer API key or view the documentation, visit our Developer Site.

Please note that you will need a valid beta account to request an API key.