And now, a word from our sponsors

[vikramaditya]

Preparing to watch a televised movie last night, I decided to tally up the amount of time devoted to commercial interruptions. My resulting observation rounded off to 23 minutes of each programming hour, not even accounting for those irritating popups & crawlers that have infested the bottom of the screen.

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA? I remember when cable TV was a new idea & its proponents were claiming they'd eliminate product sponsorship through user subscription fees. As it stands now, I'm seriously thinking about ditching the damn idiot box permanently.

[YaroMan86]

Preparing to watch a televised movie last night, I decided to tally up the amount of time devoted to commercial interruptions. My resulting observation rounded off to 23 minutes of each programming hour, not even accounting for those irritating popups & crawlers that have infested the bottom of the screen.

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA? I remember when cable TV was a new idea & its proponents were claiming they'd eliminate product sponsorship through user subscription fees. As it stands now, I'm seriously thinking about ditching the damn idiot box permanently.

Be careful. Those sneaky marketers will find other ways to get to you. I hear they have these newfangled "adware" things... and something called... "Pop ups."

[Bachstelze]

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA?

Not that bad, but I guess we'll be there pretty son. I didn(y do some precise accounting, but I think we should be somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the channel and moment of the day.

[schauerlich]

Preparing to watch a televised movie last night, I decided to tally up the amount of time devoted to commercial interruptions. My resulting observation rounded off to 23 minutes of each programming hour, not even accounting for those irritating popups & crawlers that have infested the bottom of the screen.

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA? I remember when cable TV was a new idea & its proponents were claiming they'd eliminate product sponsorship through user subscription fees. As it stands now, I'm seriously thinking about ditching the damn idiot box permanently.

Standard in the US is approximately 23 minutes of content per half hour show and 44 minutes per hour show

[NovaAesa]

I don't watch TV, so I wouldn't know.

[Swarms]

Steering away from channels that are too heavy with ads, either by watching less infestec channels or watching them at night when less are watching = commercial breaks are shorter.

[Canis familiaris]

I dont watch much TV.
I only watch Football(not American or Australian ones) and ads come only during Half-Time break which is bearable, so OK for me.

[billgoldberg]

Preparing to watch a televised movie last night, I decided to tally up the amount of time devoted to commercial interruptions. My resulting observation rounded off to 23 minutes of each programming hour, not even accounting for those irritating popups & crawlers that have infested the bottom of the screen.

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA? I remember when cable TV was a new idea & its proponents were claiming they'd eliminate product sponsorship through user subscription fees. As it stands now, I'm seriously thinking about ditching the damn idiot box permanently.

I never watch tv (well, maybe an hour a week) because of the advertisements.

I can't stand them at all.

It's not that bad here. On the state channels there are no commercial breaks, but the shows there aren't very interesting most of the time.

On the commercial channels there is a break every 30 minutes for around 5 minutes during the movies. During a sitcom there is also 1 5 min break.

It get's on my nerves very fast.

When I'm watching an American show, I always feel sorry for you guys. You can really tell where the show should switch to commercials, here they don't most of the time.

And thank Jebus they don't those inscreen ads you are talking about.

[lisati]

I have at least two gripes with some TV shows:

The first is when there are a number of commercial breaks, and just before the break there is a "coming up" teaser, it's annoying to have the same teaser several times in a half-hour show.

The other is when they have a section at the end of a show where they say "coming up on <programme name>", and it's something you're interested in, so you quickly finish reading the thread on the forums so you can pay attention to the show, only to find that the show is ending.

[darthmob]

it's the same here in germany. I stopped actively viewing tv a few years ago and I don't miss it.

PS: there are online services where you can record tv shows / movies and and download them via torrent. as far as I know they offer the option to remove commercials on user input - eg. someone writes down the times when commercials are shown and they get cut.

[smbm]

I don't watch live telly for these reasons exactly, I download everything via torrents and watch at my leisure.

As soon as I get my myth box up and running again I will be recording and having all the junk edited out instead.

[mips]

Over here it depends. "Movie" channels do not have commercial interruptions.

[lukjad]

It wasn't that bad before I stopped watching televison but I heard that it is now up there with you in Canada. :(

[swoll1980]

PBS good shows, no ads

[Tmi]

Yeah it's probably about the same here in Sweden.

Most of the stuff on TV are US shows with the same kind of scheduling, i.e. one hour for a ~43 minute episode, half an hour for a ~22 minute episode.
There is however no commercial outside of the commercial breakes anywhere on the screen.

I hardly ever watch commercial channels anymore. Commercial breakes is one reason. The main reason is however that we're always so far behind that half the world has already seen the same episode half a year ago :P.

Everything I want and need I can get from the internet commercial free.

[Superkoop]

Yeah I hardly watch any shows on tv anymore, too many commercials, and then when the show is on they sometimes have ads on the bottom of the screen...and then when those ads on the bottom of the screen are really loud, and I can't hear what they are saying...:mad:

The last movie I watched, had five min of content, and then 5min of commercials. Pissed me off so much.
Now the only time I watch things are via computer or dvd, or else on a channel which doesn't have commercial breaks in the middle of shows.

[yabbadabbadont]

PBS good shows, no ads

They do have ads. They just show them before and after the show. (and they call them "sponsorships" ;))

[barbedsaber]

I Have a PVR (you Americans would call it a tivo ripoff) it lets me press a button 6 times, (each time skips about 1 ad) and then its back to my program.

[swoll1980]

They do have ads. They just show them before and after the show. (and they call them "sponsorships" ;))

no ads during the show. if you tune in on the hour or half hour you can watch a full program with no ads

[starcannon]

I turned DirecTV off in July because of it. I have netflix, I'll just rent the season episodes of the programs I want, and not be bothered with the constant onslaught of that god forsaken excuse for a media outlet called Television Broadcasting.

My house is much more peaceful now as well, not hearing commercials for everything from insect killer to womens hygiene products being screamed at me all day long.

Advertisers destroyed the value system of the programming.

Then to top it all off I went and watched The Century of the Self (http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&q=century of the self&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#) and decided I would cut out as much advertising and structured televised programming as possible. So in the end I don't miss it a bit. I will say though that the first week was kinda strange, had to remember how to be a human when I got bored.


Preparing to watch a televised movie last night, I decided to tally up the amount of time devoted to commercial interruptions. My resulting observation rounded off to 23 minutes of each programming hour, not even accounting for those irritating popups & crawlers that have infested the bottom of the screen.

Has it become this bad anywhere outside of the USA? I remember when cable TV was a new idea & its proponents were claiming they'd eliminate product sponsorship through user subscription fees. As it stands now, I'm seriously thinking about ditching the damn idiot box permanently.

[mips]

I Have a PVR (you Americans would call it a tivo ripoff) it lets me press a button 6 times, (each time skips about 1 ad) and then its back to my program.

What I would like to see is broadcasters inserting a little "tag" before & after commercials start so things like vcr, pvr & tv can automatically cut the commercials out.

But we all know that is not going to happen ;)

EDIT: Just came across this IEEE article, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/45/28740/01309790.pdf?tp=&arnumber=1309790&isnumber=28740