Jessica Rinaldi/ReutersGlenn Britt, left, the head of Time Warner Cable, and David Zaslav, the head of Discovery Communications, were part of a panel discussion on Monday in Boston where the topic of ad-skipping technology came up.BOSTON — The head of one of the country’s biggest cable companies voiced his disapproval of the Dish Network’s ad-erasing technology on Monday, aligning himself with television networks that are trying to squash the technology, called Auto Hop.
Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said Monday that something like Auto Hop could damage the existing ecosystem of television programming and distribution, which depends in part on advertising revenues and in part on subscriber revenues.
“I don’t think we want to destroy one of those revenue streams,” Mr. Britt said at a cable industry conference here.
Translation: don’t expect Time Warner Cable to make something like Auto Hop available to its customers anytime soon.
The Dish Network announced Auto Hop earlier this month as a free add-on for customers who have Dish’s most up-to-date digital video recorder. The service automatically skips the ads on most of the prime time shows on network television. Customers can already skip such ads on their own, but Auto Hop makes it much easier to do so.
The networks quickly criticized the feature and started contemplating ways to stop it. But Dish’s rivals in TV distribution like Time Warner Cable haven’t been as quick to comment. Theoretically, other distributors could make similar technology available to customers.
Mr. Britt said that if such ad-skipping became more prevalent, the reduction in ad revenue would be made up through higher subscriber fees or a lower total amount of production of television.
Speaking on the same panel as Mr. Britt, David Zaslav, the chief executive of one such producer, Discovery Communications, also warned of higher subscriber fees if services like Auto Hop were to spread. He suggested that the chief executive of Dish, Charles W. Ergen, was trying to get the industry’s attention by coming out with the feature.
But Mr. Ergen “needs us,” Mr. Zaslav said, meaning programming, adding, “If there isn’t going to be advertising, then there needs to be a lot higher subscriber fees.”
The third person on the panel, the AOL chief Tim Armstrong, seemed to suggest a third way: “more engaging advertising.” Internet companies are trying new forms of advertising, he said, and maybe TV companies need to try more of that, too.