when did commercial breaks get so long?!

Submitted by bruceleroy99 t3_yhdyzo in television

I haven't really watched TV in a couple decades, but was just watching the final season of BCS on DVR through my family account and the commercial breaks there are insane. I think on average each break is 5 minutes, but just had one that was over 7 minutes! I would not be surprised if the "hour long" episode was a lot closer to 40-45m, which when you think about it having 20+% of airtime be commercials is absolutely bonkers if you spend a lot of time watching TV these days. Unreal.

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General-Law-7338 t1_iue8ccb wrote

It worst with shows acquired from other countries. They cut scenes for commercials. I notice it with Family Law on CW. They cut a scene at the beginning of the show for the 1st episode.

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ElectricPeterTork t1_iue9p7q wrote

PBS, a non-commercial network, uses edited versions of British shows that cut around 8-10 minutes of content instead of just airing the 58 minute shows.

Explain that.

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General-Law-7338 t1_iueankm wrote

Don’t know about PBS - I don’t watch the channel.

All I know is that CW cut scenes from it acquired programming for commercial breaks.

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Jkid t1_iujyx1y wrote

And they have the gall to do pledge specials every 3 months lasting for a month consisting of health infomercials disgusted as lectures, so they can keep broadcasting edited versions.

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listyraesder t1_iugc2q8 wrote

Not so. PBS even re-edited Downton Abbey to turn the 50-minute originals into 58 minute episodes.

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EmmBee27 t1_iufd0o5 wrote

I noticed similar stuff watching King of the Hill and Bob's Burgers in syndication. There's a lot of small interactions that are cut out all over, it kinda throws me off with shows like that that I know really well.

In one instance an entire opening scene was cut out in a Bob's Burgers episode.

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bros402 t1_iufic6l wrote

iirc AMC does less frequent but longer breaks

also, yeah, hourlong TV episodes have been 42 minutes for over at least 15 years

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iufvugh wrote

whelp, guess it's basically just going to ensure I never use cable myself for as long as I live... If people wonder WHY everyone is cutting the cord I think that speaks for itself lol.

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bros402 t1_iufzmob wrote

i mean you can literally just set up a PVR and fast forward through ads - and some of the popular programs have things that auto-detect ads and fast forward through them

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iughorr wrote

haha I mean others can but I don't have cable myself, was just watching the recordings online so there are buttons to skip 30s ahead but they seem to break repeatedly.

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FandomMenace t1_iudadby wrote

It's typically 45 minutes in an hour long show. In more recent years, the length of an episode has been more lax than previously, so you might have just caught a shorter episode.

The real takeaway here is that if you watch TV regularly, ads are wasting a few years of your life. Cable should be free when you calculate the opportunity cost of that x 3 (24 hours in a day, not 8) x your salary.

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hollywooddouchenoz t1_iudpix7 wrote

It’s basically 42. Most networks aren’t lax, it’s outlined to the second for most deliverables and you have to get permission to deviate. (source: I make tv)

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iudoquf wrote

> The real takeaway here is that if you watch TV regularly, ads are wasting a few years of your life. Cable should be free when you calculate the opportunity cost of that x 3 (24 hours in a day, not 8) x your salary.

This is the real kicker - I can't imagine how much time people that actually watch TV on the regular spend watching ads. The funny thing is I probably wouldn't have noticed as quickly but I was hitting the +30s button repeatedly and being confused that I hadn't missed the start of the show after hitting it 7-8 times lol.

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FandomMenace t1_iuduq5g wrote

It's around 3.125 years if you watch a four hours of tv a day. That's a ton of wasted productivity x 330 million people. At the average American income, that's around $832,000 for a lifetime of tv watching. No way your bill is coming to that for a lifetime of watching cable. That shit should be free. What you pay for streaming is a damn blessing.

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GPCAPTregthistleton t1_iudyus9 wrote

>The real takeaway here is that if you watch TV regularly, ads are wasting a few years of your life.

My parents used to watch The Big Bang Theory together. My dad unintentionally stopped when mom died. I decided to sit down and watch it with him this year.

279 "half-hour" episodes = 8370 minutes = 139.5 hours = 5 days, 19.5 hours

279 episodes of Big Bang = 3 days, 22 hours

Two whole days of my life this year not spent watching ads.

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listyraesder t1_iugcyt0 wrote

BBT was keeping CBS afloat so they filled it with adverts. A couple of episodes ended up being 15 minutes.

They’re doing it again with their current hit, the US remake of Ghosts. This week’s episode was 20 minutes.

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ankermouse11 t1_iufrt9s wrote

That's assuming you sit there and watch every single commercial. I'm usually either going to the bathroom, doing an exercise/stretch break, or on my phone during the breaks.

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ijakinov t1_iueo1zw wrote

Whenever tv viewership went down. There’s a writer/producer on tik tok who worked on some big shows explains a lot of things and he said at some point when the viewership of tv went down advertisers paid less per ad so you had to show more ads to make up for that lost.

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spinereader81 t1_iufe61x wrote

News programs are the worst. They're ads with brief interludes of news.

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peon47 t1_iuh6fyl wrote

You can really see it when watching Network shows on streaming. Watch an episode of Arrow or Flash, and it's 42 minutes long. Stick on an episode of The Next Generation from 1992 and it's 46 minutes long. Episodes of the original Star Trek from 1966 are 50 minutes.

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Wh00ster t1_iud7dxq wrote

The hour long episode has always been like 40 minutes

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ElectricPeterTork t1_iudbpnf wrote

Hourlong shows in the 50s and 60s were roughly 50 minutes with 10 minutes of commercials. They were cut down to 48 in the 70s. Then 46, then 44, then they landed at the current 40-42 somewhere in the last decade.

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ghotier t1_iueh04b wrote

"Always."

It's been like 20 years, but definitely not always.

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iud8663 wrote

haha I mean yeah back when an "hour" was really 50-55 minutes - the DVR for the current ep I have here is 1h9m, meaning they've added ~15m+ of commercials.

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Medoxor t1_iudkbsl wrote

I first noticed back when ABC had Less Than Perfect on that sitcoms were getting shorter. Less Than Perfect had episodes around 19 minutes. Mom, on CBS, had episodes shorter. Some of Mom's episodes run at barely 18 minutes. I wonder how this works for syndication. When old sitcoms from the 50's to the 80's (which usually had lengths of 24 to 25 minutes) reran on N@N, they had about 3 to 4 minutes cut out for commercials. I can't imagine shows today getting that much cut out for commercials in syndication. Episodes wouldn't make any sense.

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ConstableGrey t1_iufq8ag wrote

I've been watching rereuns of X-Files and other shows on Comet TV and noticed they're edited in a way that the commercial break isn't where it was in the original broadcast. It will be the middle of the scene and they'll just cut to commercial at the end of someone's sentence.

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listyraesder t1_iugbx1v wrote

40% of the 2021 Indy 500 was spent in commercial breaks.

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theangryfurlong t1_iuh2qsq wrote

People watching less TV, and there's more channels which means less people watching each channel. Gotta find someway to maintain revenue, and having more/longer commercials is the easiest way.

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launchcode_1234 t1_iufui35 wrote

After watching nothing but streaming for several years, I tried to watch a show on live basic cable and it was jarring. I couldn’t get through it. The show would set a deep, serious tone, and just as you got into the vibe, the Charmin bears would dance onto the screen. I ended up paying for AMC+ to watch Season 6 of BCS comercial-free, and then canceled it when it was over.

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iufvpn7 wrote

LOL oh man haven't seen that one happen yet but that's even worse - basically making ANY TV watching into an ad. Good god advertising people are the worst.

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wizzerking t1_iufv7ri wrote

The only time I am forced to watch commercials are the streaming Colbert Site Stream and/or download the shows, there are no commecials they have been cut to save file size

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hornygaycanuck t1_iug7dxo wrote

CONSUME. CONSUME THE PRODUCTS. CONSUME THE ENVIRONMENT. CONSUME UNTIL THE RIVERS ARE DRY AND THE OCEANS ARE BARREN AND MICROPLASTICS OUTWEIGH BIOMASS AND CLEAN WATER AND FRESH AIR CAN FINALLY BE COMMODITIZED.

consume fancy feast today!

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WeDriftEternal t1_iudup9o wrote

Probably you’re just angry. Those timings are off

Cable nets generally get 12-17 minutes per hour of commercials. Usually it’s around 15 then you have some bumpers and such. And rarely do commercial blocks go over 3-4 minutes.

22-23 minutes of content for a 30 minute show and 44-46 for an hour long.

Sports is the one that gets wacky, just due to its live nature.

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bruceleroy99 OP t1_iudvu2i wrote

lol my math is off because I'm angry? that's.... not how it works.

> 44-46 for an hour long

well the recording is 1h9m, so that would be about 25m of commercials assuming it's an average of 45m. I was watching eps 3-6 at the time, so looking at the wiki the episode lengths are 46, 44, 50, and 44 the the bare minimum there is ~20m of ad time (assuming that 50m ep recording wasn't actually 1h15m or more).

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WeDriftEternal t1_iue4u5d wrote

AMC does some funky stuff when they have these off-timing shows occasionally. Really, they're the only channel that does, they may be doing the thing where they push more ads right at the beginning of the hour (as the show extended a few minutes into the next hour), which is why they are extending the length slightly. It allows them to push more ad viewership for nielsen into a 5th quarter hour time slot.

This is highly unusual though, so they are kinda one-off weird exceptions.

Generally the most you'd see is 18 minutes in an hour, but even this is rare, 16 is more common for max ad time per hour, and its usually fairly spaced out evenly, give or take

1h9m would realistically be a about 22 minutes, at most of commercial time, that is if they do some awkward stuff with the extra 9 minutes, and go full steam on ads during the first hour

Just more explaining how it actually works for commercial blocks during airings

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