According to an article in Ad Age, the TIVO and its ability to skip commercials may be not be so bad after all:

Recent internal research by Procter & Gamble Co. indicates that consumers who fast-forward through ads with digital personal video recorders such as TiVo still recall those ads at roughly the same rates as people who see them at normal speed in real time.

Of course, the article goes on to say:

"That's probably not an unusual finding based on the way people recall things," Mr. Schar [who formerly oversaw P&G's market research department] said. "People hardly recall anything. So you're dealing with low numbers anyway, and differences with low numbers take a lot to be significant. So I could see how statistically you could make that case."