How long can a cable channel run commercials before viewers forget what they were watching and — literally — tune out? That’s the question that the folks at Spike TV appear to be tacitly asking their audience, as it stretches the length of some of its commercial breaks well past existing standards — some to as long as 10 minutes.
According to Ad Age, Spike’s cleansed-for-basic-cable rebroadcasts of HBO’s Entourage contains ad breaks that are longer than some of the segments on the show itself.
Here are the ingredients of one 10-minute ad break during an Aug. 27 airing of Entourage:
Spike started off with a promo for its UFC programming, then ran spots for DirecTV; Unilever’s Axe shampoo; B.F. Goodrich; Schering-Plough’s Zegerid OTC; Jack Link’s beef jerky; VF Corp.’s Lee Jeans; Screen Gems’ latest “Resident Evil” movie; AT&T; Miller Lite beer; and Progressive Insurance.
But wait, there’s more: Ads also ran during the break for PepsiCo’s Mtn Dew soda; Pep Boys; Trojan condoms; Outback Steakhouse; Mobil motor oil; Sony Corp.’s Vaio laptop; Diageo’s Captain Morgan Lime Bite rum; Kraft Foods’ Dentyne gum; a DVD for the FX program “Sons of Anarchy”; and UFC action figures. The break was then garnished with what appeared to be two ads from local cable operators.
For the sake of comparison, Ad Age timed the ad breaks on a few other channels and found them to average 3-4 minutes with the occasional 5-minute break.
A VP of Sales at Viacom, Spike’s parent company, responded as you’d probably expect:
We don’t want to put our customers in an environment that is not appropriate for their commercial messages… If there’s a problem, we’ll fix it.
Thanks to Gene for the tip!
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Really, I can wait about a min without changing the channel but most times I watch TV and do something else, If I notice the program not coming back on I will change it.
A 10 min break is to long really I much rather watch tv on the Net at least the stream commercials are 10secs-1.5mins which is fine with me, but more then 2 mins is pushing it for me, not like I will buy anything because of commercials in fact I stopped buying stuff because of crappy commercials.
Nowdays, I watch all my shows from the xbox/xbmc mediaplayer. No ads. Done.
Stations are getting more greedy every year. Longer breaks, less content, and is it just me, or are reruns during regular season now commonplace?
I’ve noticed this on a lot of shows my wife watches (like Grey’s anatomy), but I now watch Lie To Me, and I have to check the channel guide every week to see if it’s actually going to play (it seems like they’re only playing part-time nowdays…)
Oh, and another thing, if you want to build a strong following on your shows (especially the new ones), don’t go on a 4 months-long hiatus mid-season. *cough* Flash Forward *cough*
I don’t watch tv anymore because I can’t stand commercials. It has been YEARS since I have actually sat down and watched a tv program.
G4′s been doing this for years.
I don’t watch tv anymore but I would have no problem with a 10 minute commercial break. Put it at 10 till the hour so I know I have a consistently long gap of time to get something to eat or use the restroom. Make it the only commercial per hour segment. Seems like a better plan to me than random length, random timed commercials.
If you ask me, both Spike and FX channels have far too many commercial breaks that last a really long time. FX will broadcast movies that are 90 minutes long in a 3 hour time slot. What do you think fills the additional 90 minutes? Commercials!!! Same with Spike TV. I don’t watch either of the stations because of this. It’s just too much. It’s no sense emailing them because they know people don’t want excessive commerials but they do it anyway. They don’t need focus groups to tell them they have too much advertising so they really don’t care about the viewer apparently.