4 ms·

When I moved from Europe to the US I just couldn't believe it. In my home country there is one commercial break during a 2 hour movie. It's a little longer th

by dudul 7y ago

When I moved from Europe to the US I just couldn't believe it. In my home country there is one commercial break during a 2 hour movie. It's a little longer than the breaks in the US, but there is only one. There is also one during a 45minute TV show, and none during a 20minute show. I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this.

jerf 7y ago
"I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this." A lot of us aren't. I suspect that causes the TV companies to try to squeeze more out of who is left, which is a slow-motion death spiral. Even if you were raised with it, as I basically was, it's gotten a lot worse. I sometimes buy shows that air on prime time on the legacy networks (ABC, CBS, etc.), and over the last few years I've been watching their run times creep steadily downwards. My current record so far is 19min of runtime for a 30min show with a popular 2019 release that I don't want to name to derail the conversation, plus of course the networks tend to shave off the front & back 30 seconds nowadays. If somebody told me they found a 16 I wouldn't be that shocked. By contrast, looking at MASH season 1 (1972) on Amazon, the runtimes are all 26 minutes. Syndication usually ran some cut versions for a bit more time, but, still. That's over 25% less time for a "half hour" timeslot.
mental1896 7y ago
A lot of people don't anymore.
archy_ 7y ago
I wish America would group TV ads together, it would make them much easier to skip and would remove the need for forced cutoffs (you really notice them when watching on non-cable sources)
- magduf 7y ago
  Why would American advertisers want to do such a thing?
- widget1321 7y ago
  The "easier to skip" is why it likely won't happen. Easier to skip ads mean you get less money for the same ads.
- pwg 7y ago
  > it would make them much easier to skip Which is why the networks will never group them, given that their revenue is arising from those advertisements. Making them "easier to skip" also reduces the prices the network can extract from the advertisers (because the advertisers would see "easier to skip" as "less effective").
- yellowapple 7y ago
  I'd go the other direction: don't group them (a lot of shows already account for / include commercial breaks, so it ain't like they're that disruptive) but make them shorter. The shorter the commercial, the less likely a viewer is to skip them or change the channel, which means more engagement. The ad's subject wins (more engagement), the viewer wins (less ads), the channel wins (more engagement + less supply = more leverage to charge higher prices for ad slots). Win-win-win. ---- If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music, with the sole exception of one station in Reno (96.1 Bob FM) that does hour-long non-stop music split up by very short (1-2 minutes at most) commercial breaks. I've also noticed that I never feel the need to switch from Bob FM to some other station because I know that the music will come back soon. Unsurprisingly, those commercials are way more impactful than the ones on other stations specifically because I'm actually listening to them instead of skipping them. I'd like to take that to a greater extreme with 29-minute music blocks separated by single 30-second commercials (with 15-second station identification blurbs on either side of it, or perhaps combining them into a 30-second news update for e.g. traffic and weather). Companies probably wouldn't pay a premium for these ads at first, but I suspect once they see the upticks in customer engagement they'll be more willing to bid higher for those slots.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music Of course. They're all owned by ClearChannel these days, so why should they play more music than ads? What are people going to do, switch to another (ClearChannel) radio station? You might also notice the ads are usually playing at the same time if you switch between stations. Non-NPR radio is basically just like landlines and cable TV these days. The only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music), cellphones, and streaming movies, so these companies are milking these people for all they're worth.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
Freak_NL 7y ago
Back when television shows made in the US were still made for cable and had to facilitate a bunch of advertisement blocks it used to be really obvious when you watched one of those shows in a country that didn't advertise quite as much. The show would wrap up a scene to prepare for a pause, and then instantly resume with a small recap of the action it ended with. That was the queue for us non-US viewers to know when viewers in the US must have had an ad break. Of course with streaming services this phenomenon is mostly gone.
- dudul 7y ago
  I actually realized that as well after my relocation. I finally understood why every 4 minutes there was a 1 second black screen during the show :)

by dudul 7y ago

jerf 7y ago

"I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this." A lot of us aren't. I suspect that causes the TV companies to try to squeeze more out of who is left, which is a slow-motion death spiral. Even if you were raised with it, as I basically was, it's gotten a lot worse. I sometimes buy shows that air on prime time on the legacy networks (ABC, CBS, etc.), and over the last few years I've been watching their run times creep steadily downwards. My current record so far is 19min of runtime for a 30min show with a popular 2019 release that I don't want to name to derail the conversation, plus of course the networks tend to shave off the front & back 30 seconds nowadays. If somebody told me they found a 16 I wouldn't be that shocked. By contrast, looking at MASH season 1 (1972) on Amazon, the runtimes are all 26 minutes. Syndication usually ran some cut versions for a bit more time, but, still. That's over 25% less time for a "half hour" timeslot.

mental1896 7y ago

A lot of people don't anymore.

archy_ 7y ago

I wish America would group TV ads together, it would make them much easier to skip and would remove the need for forced cutoffs (you really notice them when watching on non-cable sources)

magduf 7y ago
Why would American advertisers want to do such a thing?
widget1321 7y ago
The "easier to skip" is why it likely won't happen. Easier to skip ads mean you get less money for the same ads.
pwg 7y ago
> it would make them much easier to skip Which is why the networks will never group them, given that their revenue is arising from those advertisements. Making them "easier to skip" also reduces the prices the network can extract from the advertisers (because the advertisers would see "easier to skip" as "less effective").
yellowapple 7y ago
I'd go the other direction: don't group them (a lot of shows already account for / include commercial breaks, so it ain't like they're that disruptive) but make them shorter. The shorter the commercial, the less likely a viewer is to skip them or change the channel, which means more engagement. The ad's subject wins (more engagement), the viewer wins (less ads), the channel wins (more engagement + less supply = more leverage to charge higher prices for ad slots). Win-win-win. ---- If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music, with the sole exception of one station in Reno (96.1 Bob FM) that does hour-long non-stop music split up by very short (1-2 minutes at most) commercial breaks. I've also noticed that I never feel the need to switch from Bob FM to some other station because I know that the music will come back soon. Unsurprisingly, those commercials are way more impactful than the ones on other stations specifically because I'm actually listening to them instead of skipping them. I'd like to take that to a greater extreme with 29-minute music blocks separated by single 30-second commercials (with 15-second station identification blurbs on either side of it, or perhaps combining them into a 30-second news update for e.g. traffic and weather). Companies probably wouldn't pay a premium for these ads at first, but I suspect once they see the upticks in customer engagement they'll be more willing to bid higher for those slots.
- magduf 7y ago
  >If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music Of course. They're all owned by ClearChannel these days, so why should they play more music than ads? What are people going to do, switch to another (ClearChannel) radio station? You might also notice the ads are usually playing at the same time if you switch between stations. Non-NPR radio is basically just like landlines and cable TV these days. The only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music), cellphones, and streaming movies, so these companies are milking these people for all they're worth.
  - yellowapple 7y ago

Freak_NL 7y ago

Back when television shows made in the US were still made for cable and had to facilitate a bunch of advertisement blocks it used to be really obvious when you watched one of those shows in a country that didn't advertise quite as much. The show would wrap up a scene to prepare for a pause, and then instantly resume with a small recap of the action it ended with. That was the queue for us non-US viewers to know when viewers in the US must have had an ad break. Of course with streaming services this phenomenon is mostly gone.

dudul 7y ago
I actually realized that as well after my relocation. I finally understood why every 4 minutes there was a 1 second black screen during the show :)