Ongoing changes in the media landscape have led to ever-increasing levels of competition for viewers' attention and awareness. The profit to be gained by capturing the viewer's attention is automatically balanced by other players' failure to do so. Thus, nowadays consumer culture is engaged in consumption of a time interval rather than in consumption of a product per se. The following article portrays three features of on-air promotion time: zerosum time, timeless time and the pro-future track.

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... Zero-sum time refers to the sense of dichotomous time perception distinguishing 'In' (i.e., a viewer watching the program) vs. 'Out' (i.e., a viewer who prefers to watch something else); Timeless time relates to time as a flow being temporarily interrupted by on-air promos designed to generate anticipation; The profuture track is a deterministic path (even though sometimes masquerading as free choice) by which on-air promo culture tends to denote the future as the preferred time choice. These time motives symbolize the intensifying struggle for power taking place within and between "old" vs. "new" media industries especially in the current era which the "here and now" declines "the future".