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<i>Time is money. Time is always money. The consequence changes markets and our behavior. I had this sublime but massively unoriginal thought after spending four hours watching television. To celebrate our first day as a post-rabbit ears family -- now brutally empowered with 75 channels of Comcast cable TV -- my wife and I watched "The Godfather" on the Spike TV channel...
But as several of the ads were run for what seemed the hundredth time, I began to wonder if it was worth it. The original film clocks in at 175 minutes. Sliced up with advertisements, the run time was four hours. That means we voluntarily sat through 65 minutes of advertising -- which is typical for four hours of prime-time programming -- when we could have rented the DVD for a few dollars and found a better use for the 65 minutes each of us lost.
Small wonder the video rental business has done so well: If you put any value on your time, rentals are cheap and programmed television is expensive. Too expensive. The value of time also explains the wild success of TiVo, which allows you to record programs, watch them at will, and fast-forward through the advertisements.
Time economics is simple. If you put a value on your time, your "return on investment" quickly rises to astronomical levels. Suppose you <IMG SRC="http://service.bfast.com/bfast/serve?bfmid=27276611&siteid=41120856&bfpage=specia l" BORDER="0" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" NOSAVE ><A HREF="http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=27276611&siteid=41120856&bfpage=specia l" TARGET="_top">rent three films at a time from Netflix</A>, the online service that sends an unlimited number of movies for a $20 monthly subscription fee. Rent a handful a month, and you've spent less money than you'd spend at Blockbuster, avoided late fees, and saved the time and expense of driving to get the DVDs...</i> [read more at <A HREF="http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P97323.asp">msn.com</A>]
But as several of the ads were run for what seemed the hundredth time, I began to wonder if it was worth it. The original film clocks in at 175 minutes. Sliced up with advertisements, the run time was four hours. That means we voluntarily sat through 65 minutes of advertising -- which is typical for four hours of prime-time programming -- when we could have rented the DVD for a few dollars and found a better use for the 65 minutes each of us lost.
Small wonder the video rental business has done so well: If you put any value on your time, rentals are cheap and programmed television is expensive. Too expensive. The value of time also explains the wild success of TiVo, which allows you to record programs, watch them at will, and fast-forward through the advertisements.
Time economics is simple. If you put a value on your time, your "return on investment" quickly rises to astronomical levels. Suppose you <IMG SRC="http://service.bfast.com/bfast/serve?bfmid=27276611&siteid=41120856&bfpage=specia l" BORDER="0" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" NOSAVE ><A HREF="http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=27276611&siteid=41120856&bfpage=specia l" TARGET="_top">rent three films at a time from Netflix</A>, the online service that sends an unlimited number of movies for a $20 monthly subscription fee. Rent a handful a month, and you've spent less money than you'd spend at Blockbuster, avoided late fees, and saved the time and expense of driving to get the DVDs...</i> [read more at <A HREF="http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P97323.asp">msn.com</A>]
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