I was reading an article on AdAge today which indicates broadcast TV could lose $600mm next year due to the habits of DVR users. The numbers were put together by the giant, Nielsen Media Research company. The exact formula for how they came to this conclusion was not published but it got me thinking... how much is really lost?

I have two DVRs (I must be rich!) and those two serve three different purposes. The inside one, hooked to the TV used by the kids and Kerri (for the most part) has two profiles: Recorded kid shows and recorded "Kerri" shows. The main use inside is the kid shows, consisting of Disney and Nick flicks that are suitable for my kids. When nothing is on for them I'll replay Handy Manny or Little Einsteins or some such thing. We never skip through the commercials. Kerri has two shows that she records because they tend to run at a time when the kids are in the process of being put to bed. Kerri will definitely skip through her commercials. But then again, Kerri almost never gets to watch TV so her impact is tiny. The kids add much more value to the advertisers than Kerri removes.

The outside TV, the one in The Garage, never experiences deliberate commercial skipping. I really have it so I can rewind a football play or that sort of thing. It is possible that a commercial could be played during that time but usually not. I may have recorded a show or two outside but I've never actually watched one (who has the time?!?) so I've never purposely skipped a commercial.

If I add all of this up, the advertisers for the shows we watch are way ahead of the game. They pay for a time slot but we see them time and time again. I wonder if that is factored in to the notion of a $600mm loss for advertisers? I couldn't say without seeing their algorithm but if others have a similar usage pattern to me, it would seem difficult to believe.

At least, that's what Benjamin is telling me. Let me explain: Ben has his mild pneumonia going on but he feels pretty good so he's trying to do what little boys do, like run and jump and tumble (and complain). When he does these things he ultimately starts coughing like crazy and when he coughs too violently he ends up tossing cookies, or in this case, antibiotics. It's been terrible trying to get him to stay settled down -- I've ultimately decided to rely on the brain drain. You know, the TV.

He's watching "Little People", one of the two stories we own from that collection. Apparently my mind reading skills aren't up to snuff and I chose the wrong story. After a few minutes Ben demanded to have the story changed to our other tape but unfortunately I'm not one to give in to demands from a 2.5 year old. So I told him he'd have to wait until the first one finished. At that point he turned ugly, pointed right at me and said, "you're not being nice! You're going to jail!". I didn't know that he had discovered the concept of jail yet. Perhaps he remembers the days when I used to put him in his crib when he was being bad and thus sprang knowledge of jail, as naturally as discovering that water is wet.

You may remember that Ben had pneumonia when he was 10 months old, at Christmas in 2004. Well, he's at it again, this time having a milder case of pneumonia but coupled with a nasty ear infection.

I always tell the kids that they can accomplish anything they dream of as long as they put their minds to work. I hadn't considered that Ben would be trying to break the world record for most instances of sickness in the first three years of life. I'll need to be more specific going forward.

Quick note: Played a little "hide and go seek" with Ben tonight and we both sorta went and hid. Eventually one of us gets up and goes looking for the other, most of the time. But this time I had a perfect hiding spot and Ben (apparently) lost interest and went on to something else.

My hiding spot: I curled up in his little racecar bed and covered myself with his blankets so he wouldn't see me right away. And there I stayed until... until Kerri woke me up. She only found me because Ben got busted and was being "escorted" to his bed for a timeout when one of them yanked the blankets away. Whoops! It was only 20 minutes but it could have been the entire night if things had gone down differently.