TiVo: The New Generation Gap

Interesting article in WSJ Online today: The basic gist is that our kids experience TV completely differently than we did because of TiVo (assuming we have it). I'd never thought about it before, but it really will change things in any TV-watching home. Kids growing up in TiVo households will never experience the frantic call of the sibling, "Hurry up, it's on!" when they go to the bathroom. They'll never experience sprinting to get something from the kitchen or clean up part of the room during a commercial. They'll never tell their parents that they'll do something at the next commercial, nor will parents tell them that they have to go to bed at the next commercial. Kids won't have any need to complain that they need to stay up late because all their friends watch St. Elsewhere and they'll be left out in the discussions at school the next day. And it's possible to let kids watch commercial TV without watching commercials.

It's fundamentally different than when we got a VCR, or when we got cable. It's a change in the way kids experience televised media. Is it for the better?