If you skip the commercials, does the show get damaged?

It is a fair question to ask in this era of watch-when-you-want fast-forwarding.

Damages, a TV series I have never seen and probably won't, was renewed today on FX, something for which I'm sure Glenn Close is very thankful, assuming there are writers around eventually to give her scripts.

There was an aside in the announcement about the deliberations on whether to keep this on-the-bubble show going. In the end they made a leap of faith hoping the show's apparent good buzz will translate into dvd sales and more eyeballs when it returns.

As with any program the bottom line comes down to how many viewers FX can get to watch commercials. In the case of Damages, a full 22% of viewers are now skipping the commercials. That means that out of 2.5 million people watching each episode, a full fifth of that decent but not blockbuster audience is knocking out sponsored messages, and devaluing the price advertisers will pay FX.

"The DVR is putting enormous financial pressure on all original scripted series right now," said FX president John Landgraf, "because you lose a significant chunk of the people who are actually watching your show, from what you can sell."

That means that as more and more of us get used to not having to watch commercials, there may soon come a day where smaller shows can't survive on advertising alone.

Now in my defense, while I do skip commercials more often than not, I , like most Tivo addicts, stop when I see an interesting one (say a new mac ad). I also have been building DVD collections of shows that frankly work better when watched in marathons (Lost and 24 come to mind). So my wallet is far from closed when it comes to spending money on shows if they make it valuable enough for them.

I think the real lesson of the Tivo era is that viewers want choice in programming and scheduling. The days of appointment television are waning, and clearly the industry has a challenge on their hands trying to figure out how to keep advertisers happy, while replacing outdated revenue models.

It's hard to fast forward something when it has already been fast forwarded into oblivion.