This CNN-Money article discusses the notion that sports may be the most TiVo-resistant form of programming, because people want to see sports "live". I think there are two flaws in that thinking.
First, if you just start the game 30-40 minutes late, you can see it "nearly live", but still skip the commercials. That seeme pretty appealing. You will still know the result soon enough to be current "at the water cooler".
Second, I have an interesting notion, which looks like a business opportunity, let's call it XYZ Sports Editing...this assumes there is a market for non-live sports...Wouldn't it be nice to watch a "Reader's Digest" version of sports events? Sort of like they do with the Olympics tape-delay (only better), where you: 1) Only watch something if it turned out to be watchable; 2) Have the chaff--not just the commercials--cut out?; 3) Have control so that you can drop into the full-length version if you want.
If you had someone "edit it down", I would think you could watch a typical pro game (pick your sport) in 1 hour or so. Football and baseball seem particuarly favorable for such treatment.
The interesting twist is that I think this could be done in a way that wouldn't require approval from the broadcaster/original content provider, because it wouldn't infringe on copyright. It assumes that the customer of XYZ has TiVo'd the game. Then, right after the game is over (or even as it is in progress), the editors at XYZ would begin reviewing and editing down the game. But, when done, they would not be distributing the game itself, only a series of editing instructions that meshes with timecodes for the real game. So, an XYZ customer would download the editing info, and that would be paired up with the full-length game already recorded on their TiVo. This is how video editing software works. Seems like it should be legal??
11:00:44 PM 
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