I think their attitude is that people recording the shows for later viewing will likely skip the commercials. And the networks don't give a hoot about viewers who don't watch their commercials. So, they are fine with damaging their popularity with "us" -- the people who watch their content but not their ads.

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The sad thing about this, for broadcasters, is that the percentage of the population that watches "pure" tv (live tv with all commercials) is decreasing.

Between the tivo and replay users, the mythtv folks, and the cable and satellite companies pushing their own boxes, the available of pure tv watchers is on a downward accelerating slope.

When they add delays to shows, it adversely impacts pure tv watchers even more so than the rest of us. Sure, if we don't know about an upcoming delay, we could lose part of a show, but how irritating is it to be watching to the end of a live tv show, switch channels, and discover that ALL the other programs have been in progress for 10 minutes?

Personally, one of the things that pushed me to using a vcr is the highly irritating habit of broadcasters to mangle the schedule willy nilly. If I couldn't rely on a prime time show scheduled at 7pm to start at 7pm, I'd just have to record it and watch it the next day, fast forwarding it to where it did start.

There's very few things that broadcasters can do to discourage pvr owners that doesn't also discourage pure tv watchers. The might not care right now, but pvrs themselves partly own their reason for existing to frustrating with broadcasters. They'd better care, especially now that product placement has become so prevalent.