Are Commercial Breaks Getting Longer?

[Meeko]

I don't have any numbers to back this up. By the questions definiton, it is all personal perspective.

This question is in the context of US tv.

Is Chuck Woolery's old Standby "2 and 2" (2 minutes and 2 seconds) no longer the rule of thumb for TV? What replaced this 'rule' and are there any other rules or time schedule routines for commercials?

[Computer Guru]

it depends on the show. It also seems like radio commercials take forever also. The sad thing is, I don't buy anything they advertise (I can't spell.).

[effac3d]

I do know that alot of old shows have parts cut out in syndication to make room for more commercial time(Simpsons comes to mind).

So yes it seems like years later commercials are longer.

[pilot141]

Well, I found this link (http://www.ana.net/news/2001/03_01_01.cfm) that describes details about commercial time in various times and shows. Some programs can have over 18 minutes of commercials per hour, but they vary wildly: network news during the 2000 election had 11 minutes/hour.

I seem to recall some law that regulated the amount of advertising that was allowed per hour/show. A couple of Googlings turned up some Canadian and EU regs, but nothing for the US. I'm wondering if the 1996 Telecommunications Act removed these restrictions (thus allowing the hated infomercials - I can't remember when these things started, but I DO remember when local stations used to sign off with the national anthem and then go to snow, a la Poltergeist).

IIRC, Chuck Woolery's "2 and 2" line was given three times during the show, thus producing 6 minutes of ads in a half hour (and 12 minutes/hour). I think the "two seconds" part was just a way for Chuck to show off his gaudy watch. :D

[umop ap!sdn]

Most commercials are 30 seconds long, although some (especially movie ads) are 60. You can always tell the 60 second ones; they're pretty obvious. So if you count commercials you'll be able to tell if the 2-and-2 is still in effect (I doubt it).

I've seen stations not only cut parts out of shows, but even speed them up :eek: by playing the audio track a bit fast and presumably dropping video frames regularly. Usually they do this when for some reason a show has to run in a shorter time slot, but I wouldn't put it past them to pull the same stunt to make room for more commercials. Lemme tell ya, when you've watched a show long enough and they do this, it's obvious that the voices are chipmunked.

I'll see about doing some commercial counting & get back to this thread with my results.

[rjung]

Just remember, the ideal television program a network wants to have is one that's all commercials...

(What, you thought the networks were airing shows to entertain you? No, they just need something to entice you to stay seated between commercial breaks)

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Here an example:

"All in the Family" episodes ran about 26-27 minutes.

"Frasier" episodes run about 21½ minutes.

[robo99]

Here's an interesting aside. When I was in Berlin back in the 70s, TV stations there only played commercials between 17:00 and 18:00 (somewhere about that time). The rest of the day there were no commercials. People would actually watch them because they were really well done and entertaining in their own right.

[robo99]

West Berlin.

[Hari Seldon]

Someone ought to check this out, but I seem to recall there used to be a limit on commercials in each hour, but this went the way of most regulations during the Reagan era. Actually, so few people watch the commercials these days of VCRs and TiVo with their commercial killers that I predict that free TV (really sponsored TV) is in serious danger of disappearing. Then we will have to pay for all the programs we watch. Maybe we will watch less.

[allthumbs]

from time to time andy rooney on 60 MINUTES makes a comment about the amount of commercials on the program.

he said when he started. it was 9 minutes in an hour. later, it became 11 minutes in an hour, and his last comment was 13 minutes in a program hour.

this is prime time commercial allowances. local tv allowances, are under a different fcc rule.

the supreme court ruling that "the airways belong to the public", now appears to have changed to the airways belong more and more to advertising.

i heard one guy say that tv isn't an entertainment medium, it's a selling medium.

thanks,

thumbs

[mmmiiikkkeee]

When I tape 1/2 hour shows and skip the commercials, they always come out to around 21 minutes. 1 hour shows about 40-45 minutes. There are some channels that have much less advertising... the space channel (that I watch for the original Star Treks) has very short commercial breaks, at least during that show. I actually don't flip away because the show comes back on so fast. All other channels here take much longer breaks, 3-5 minutes each, every 15 to (ugh)10 minutes.

[Master Wang-Ka]

They're longer.

This has led to some "classic" TV shows in reruns -- I Love Lucy and Star Trek, among others -- being cut to fit the newer, shorter time slots.

[audreyayn]

If you're looking for rules, you'll be unable to find any if only because different networks display their commercials in different ways.

For example, the WB has many short commercials that break up a program, whereas Cartoon Network shows only one long commercial after the first act of a program and another between programs.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Originally posted by mmmiiikkkeee
When I tape 1/2 hour shows and skip the commercials, they always come out to around 21 minutes. 1 hour shows about 40-45 minutes. There are some channels that have much less advertising... the space channel (that I watch for the original Star Treks) has very short commercial breaks, at least during that show. I actually don't flip away because the show comes back on so fast. All other channels here take much longer breaks, 3-5 minutes each, every 15 to (ugh)10 minutes.

Back in 1987 when Star Trek: The Next Generation first premiered, they made a big point about it only being 45-46 minutes long in order to allow for more commercials. It was an expensive program (for its time - $1 million per ep) for syndication and the extra ad time helped to pay for it.

[Diceman]

HGTV shows older episodes of This Old House and New Yankee Workshop. These shows were made for PBS and as such are true 30-minute programs. Watching them on a network with commercials can be painful. The shows are severely chopped up, and typically both the beginning and the end have been cut back as far as humanly possible.

[umop ap!sdn]

Originally posted by Diceman
...typically both the beginning and the end have been cut back as far as humanly possible.

Certainly more than is humanely possible. :)

While it may be true, audreyayn, that there is so much variation, in my experience with the local broadcast stations they have been so regular that I have learned to anticipate when the commercial break is about to end. But, there is no WB station here except on cable and of course Cartoon Network is a cable station.

So to go back and respond to the OP, should we discuss broadcast stations or cable stations?

[Meeko]

It makes sense that TV runs shows just for commercial exposure. However, I would think and hope that this pendulum will swing back the other way. We would stop watching programming if more commercials are inserted. As it is now, most people change the channel on commercials anyway. (Those with out the capability to skip) The dollar sign might be a high priority for TV, but in a crunch I hope the human eye becomes more of a prioroity. Sadly, in a related note, notice how PBS has more and more Commercials now days?

[Bob55]

Shows on UPN like Enterprise usually have 3.5 minutes of commercials between segments. Well sometimes they're nice and only give us 3 minutes.

I too have seen what effac3d said about shows cutting out parts to make more room - some of the funniest parts of the Simpsons have since been deleted (like when Homer's dog ran after George Bush Homer says "stupid dog...hmm you could say he's barking up the wrong Bush"...then you hear his brain say "there it is Homer the smartest thing you'll ever say and no one was around to hear it"...DOH!!!).

and I agree with Computer Guru, radio commercials are LONG. I listen to talk shows and they stop at 00-05, 15-18, 22-24, 28-29, 30-35, 42-44, and 56-59 past the hour every hour for ads (ok a few minutes of it is news, but not much). Sometimes more. That's over 20 minutes of ads an hour.

[Dignan]

Originally posted by aryk29
I've seen stations not only cut parts out of shows, but even speed them up :eek: by playing the audio track a bit fast and presumably dropping video frames regularly. Usually they do this when for some reason a show has to run in a shorter time slot, but I wouldn't put it past them to pull the same stunt to make room for more commercials. Lemme tell ya, when you've watched a show long enough and they do this, it's obvious that the voices are chipmunked.



Which shows have you seen that have had this done? I've seen episodes of Friends where I thought something was off, and this was probably it. It's somewhat disorienting.


by Meeko
As it is now, most people change the channel on commercials anyway. (Those with out the capability to skip)

Because of this I think we will start seeing a lot more product placement in the shows.

[umop ap!sdn]

Originally posted by Dignan
Which shows have you seen that have had this done? I've seen episodes of Friends where I thought something was off, and this was probably it. It's somewhat disorienting.

Star Trek: Voyager and Married With Children. FWIW, both of these were on a UPN station that also airs Friends so I'm not surprised.

[Myron Van Horowitzski]

It's scurrilous how cable channels arrange the commercials when they show movies. Try to observe it the next time you watch one.

If they were to break to commercial five minutes into the movie you might change the channel. So instead they will show up to a solid 30-45 minutes of the movie before the first commercial break. Then you're hooked. Then the breaks come faster and more furious as the movie progresses, until you have to watch a good 15 minutes of 'em in the last half hour while they build you up to the conclusion. They know that if you watched the damn thing this far, you're a captive audience.

[SmackFu]

Originally posted by Diceman
HGTV shows older episodes of This Old House and New Yankee Workshop. These shows were made for PBS and as such are true 30-minute programs. I watch these, and it is true, they also cut out the teasers entirely. But I think they changed something at some point, because new episodes of This Old House are very short. They end at 25 past or earlier, plus they have a 30 or 60 second commercial at the beginning, after the credits. So that isn't thirty minutes at all. I don't know if this is to ease resell or what.

[Hampshire]

The most obvious "clipping" i've seen on sydicated shows is cutting the opening montage or song of a show down to nothing (remember how long the Simpsons openings were or how much of the Friends song they used to play).
The other cuts i've seen are cutting out the laugh track or studio audience laughing after jokes. Cut enough 4-second laughs and you can fit in another 30-second ad.

[kunilou]

Back when I was in radio, commercials were allowed to be more than 30% of an hour (18 minutes) and 33% of an hour (20 minutes) under limited circumstances. Infomercials were allowed, but since they couldn't exceed those limits, few advertisers bothered with them.

I don't know what the restrictions on TV were, but both networks and local stations generally ran less than that amount, partly from rules and partly from competition.

After broadcast deregulation, the TV networks kept their old limits for a few years, until finally Fox started lengthening their commercial breaks in the early 1990s. Since then all the broadcast networks have been gradually increasing the length and/or frequency of their breaks.

Local stations and networks are also reformulating what they put in their breaks. If you think back, the end credits for a program used to run on the full-screen, then they were followed by a program promotion, a network commercial, a local commercial and a station identification before the start of the next program. Now the program credits are suqeezed into a corner of the screen while the program promotion runs, followed by three commercials and a sponsored headline where the station ID used to be. Voila -- four advertising messages where there used to be two.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

Originally posted by Dignan
Because of this I think we will start seeing a lot more product placement in the shows.

We already are...and Friends is *huge* on it. Remember the episode about Phoebe & Pottery Barn? Countless references to Crab Tree & Evelyn, Bloomingdale's, and so on....that's all paid-for.

Compare to the pilot where Joey & Chandler helped Ross assemble his "assemble-at-home Sweedish furniture".

Other shows too. Seinfeld had entire episode that revolved around "Kenny Roger's Roasters", Survivor hawks Doritos and Mountain Dew whenever they get the chance, "The Restaurant" has paid tie-ins to Coors, American Express, and Mitsubishi.

American Idol had plenty of angles of the judges enjoying their ice-cold Coke, Sex & The City had a recent deal with Kripsy Kreme, All My Chgildren ran a big placement with Revlon in 2002.

One company (PVI Virtual Media Services) even claims they can digitally insert products in re-runs that weren't present in the original taping.


Source:CommercialAlert.org (http://www.commercialalert.org/index.php/category_id/1/subcategory_id/79/article_id/191)

[Tim Arnold]

If you ever watch an hour-long show on Netflix, you will see that you actually get 42 minutes of show. That means you get 18 minutes of commercials every hour on the average. But what i have found to be true of some network strategy, is that the first hour of a popular blockbuster movie will have less than 10 minutes of commercial inturruption as to allow the viewer to become entrenched and sucked into the plot so they will More likely endure the many and tedious commercial inturruptions during the remaining 30 to 40 minutes of the movie. One time I clocked it, and they had five minutes of movie, then five minutes of commercial...five minutes of movie...five minutes of commercial. It's maddening. Even when you use the DVR to skip recorded content, they shove banner ads into the frame of the program. Sponsors suck!

[Vicullum]

When I tape 1/2 hour shows and skip the commercials, they always come out to around 21 minutes. 1 hour shows about 40-45 minutes. There are some channels that have much less advertising... the space channel (that I watch for the original Star Treks) has very short commercial breaks, at least during that show. I actually don't flip away because the show comes back on so fast. All other channels here take much longer breaks, 3-5 minutes each, every 15 to (ugh)10 minutes.

I just checked some shows I had on my hard drive that have been stripped of all the commercials, and the numbers are pretty close to yours.

Breaking Bad: 47 minutes
Modern Marvels: 45 minutes
House: 43 minutes (pretty consistent across all seasons)
The Walking Dead: 42 minutes
Dirty Jobs: 42 minutes
Mythbusters: 45 minutes during season 1, by season 10 shrunk to 42 minutes
Futurama: 21 minutes
American Dad!: 21 minutes

Really, the only that came close to a full hour were the BBC shows, and cable exclusives like Game of Thrones (55 minutes) and Spartacus (55 minutes).

[IAmNotSpartacus]

The actual content of the shows will of course be a couple minutes less, the opening and closing credits tend to eat up a couple minutes of air time as well.

[qualityleashdog]

Along the same lines, when they break in to your televison show with 'breaking news,' an emergency alert test or important weather news, do they purposely break in during the airing of the show and never during the commercials? It's been awhile since I've watched broadcast, but it always seemed to me that the sponsors got their ads played while the programming always suffered. Is there a rule about this, or just coincidence?

[ratatoskK]

When cable TV first came out, it was said that a big benefit would bee that there would be no commercials, since you'd be paying for the TV service. Of course, as it turned out, you pay for the service AND get commercials.:(

[Justin_Bailey]

Just remember, the ideal television program a network wants to have is one that's all commercials...

(What, you thought the networks were airing shows to entertain you? No, they just need something to entice you to stay seated between commercial breaks)

This wasn't true nine years ago when you posted this. This wasn't true before that. It's not true now. It will never be true. And as soon as people stop repeating it, the world will be a better place.

[Colibri]

Moved from GQ to Cafe Society.

Please note that this thread was started in 2003.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Reelie]

I was watching Bryan Cranston on the Kimmel show a couple nights ago and thought it was a long break for commercials, maybe four or five minutes. Reversed the DVR and it was almost ten minutes. They came back, talked for four minutes, and went to commercials again. That's insane. I gave up. Kimmel ain't that good.

[Emtar KronJonDerSohn]

I just checked some shows I had on my hard drive that have been stripped of all the commercials, and the numbers are pretty close to yours.

Breaking Bad: 47 minutes

Breaking Bad also runs in a 1:04 slot, so that's not 13 minutes it's 17 minutes. When I'm skipping commercials on my dvr I have a +30 second button and it takes 8 or 9 of them to get through each break, meaning 4 to 4-1/2 minutes per break.

[GreenElf]

It's not just the length of the commercials, but the number of commercial breaks per show. I remember in the 70s viewing the single commercial break that would occur roughly halfway through the show as an intermission to get food from the kitchen. Now commercial breaks occur about once every 3-5 minutes and seriously disrupt the flow the show, especially if it's a movie.