# Are Commercial Breaks Getting Longer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 25, 2003, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450 "2003-10-25T05:34:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2003, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/21 "2003-10-26T08:22:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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. ---
**Author:** ![Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Myron\_Van\_Horowitzski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myron_Van_Horowitzski)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/22 "2003-10-27T14:58:14Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/23 "2003-10-27T15:50:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/24 "2003-10-27T16:01:48Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/25 "2003-10-27T16:18:16Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![NoGoodNamesLeft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8797f3/32.png) [@NoGoodNamesLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoGoodNamesLeft)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/26 "2003-10-27T18:19:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_Arnold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c2a13f/32.png) [@Tim\_Arnold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_Arnold)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/27 "2012-08-11T16:01:24Z")
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! ---
**Author:** ![Vicullum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Vicullum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicullum)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/28 "2012-08-11T17:28:41Z")
> [@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. 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). ---
**Author:** ![IAmNotSpartacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IAmNotSpartacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IAmNotSpartacus)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/29 "2012-08-11T17:31:09Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![qualityleashdog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/9f8e36/32.png) [@qualityleashdog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qualityleashdog)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/30 "2012-08-11T17:47:37Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/31 "2012-08-11T18:16:07Z")
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.☹ ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/32 "2012-08-11T18:32:00Z")
> [@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) 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. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/33 "2012-08-11T18:54:20Z")
Moved from GQ to Cafe Society. Please note that this thread was started in 2003. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Reelie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Reelie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reelie)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/34 "2012-08-11T19:32:54Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Emtar\_KronJonDerSohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/58956e/32.png) [@Emtar\_KronJonDerSohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emtar_KronJonDerSohn)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/35 "2012-08-11T20:30:33Z")
> [@Vicullum](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2012, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450/36 "2012-08-12T04:25:57Z")
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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-commercial-breaks-getting-longer/209450.md?page=1)