Mark Garay guest blogs about TV commercial ad breaks growing longer, longer and longer
BY MARK GARAY
“I’ve got the brains,
You’ve got the looks.
Let’s make lots of money”
Pet Shop Boys
1986
We all recognized the sanctity of Saturday morning. It was part of our weekly existence. An absent-minded ritual that unconsciously felt warm and safe. Maybe mine was like yours. You couldn’t touch the contentment. But it was all around you.
It began shortly after dawn, typically with the smell of bacon wafting through the dimly lit atmosphere. I get my robe and slippers on. Up and out of bed in a brisk, deft leap towards the kitchen. A bowl secured, milk retrieved from the door in the fridge. The cereal to milk ratio had to be perfect, but could be adjusted properly and effectively if performed briskly. We all marveled at how sugar could be any color. Back then, television sets didn’t hang plush to interior walls. No. Ours sat on the orange shag carpet in our den, situated often in room corners at an angle. It extended four feet from the baseboard molding. Once the tv was active, only more cereal or quick bathroom breaks were allowed. I was now immersed for the next three hours. Even phone calls planning football at the park with friends later were accommodated in front of our statically unreliable Zenith.
We all had our favorites. There were the standards: Bugs. Porky. Popeye. Scooby. The lesser worshipped Tennessee Tuxedo. Grape Ape. Fleegle, Drooper, Snorky and Bingo, the dudes known as The Splits. Even “The Monkees”, programming’s original Milli Vanilli.
Upon that ocean of choice, sailed the commercials of the day. An owl who tells us how many licks it takes. Mikey, who surprisingly loves Life. A little Irish dude who shouted “Magically Delicious!” The game that allows the child to outsmart the adult. But unlike today, those commercials were not only part of the entertainment, they were wholly viewed and appreciated. We loved them. At least I did. In fact, I don’t recall ever complaining about commercials. (By the way, how would we classify SchoolhouseRock? Episodes weren’t long enough to be considered programming. But they were way beyond the standard commercial lengths of the day. 🤷 )
I’m going with MTV meets Mr. Rogers.
Anyway, after a recent headline caught my eye, it got me to thinKIN. Because I’ve been wondering for a while now if commercial time on broadcast and cable is getting longer.
I read how NFL Red Zone is adding commercials for the first time. NFL Network, which airs RedZone, was acquired by ESPN last month, along with the network’s accompanying media assets. RedZone has been a Sunday institution, running real-time updates on scores, injuries, and everything else since 2009. RedZone host Scott Hanson will now have to change his show opening announcement: “Seven hours of COMMERCIAL - FREE football starts now!”
I admittedly watch too much TV. But all that viewing has led me to believe commercial breaks aren’t just long. They’re too long, and growing like a virus.
As we all remember from our Broadcast 101 textbooks, for every 30 minutes of tv programming, 8 minutes is dedicated to sponsors. That was the going rate when I was in college. It was what every professor taught, and what every college broadcast text avowed. And that sounded reasonable, to me at least. Not that I had a vote.
But the business of commercial sponsorships is plied and played in a new arena, with fresh technologies and new protocols to figure out. Take YouTube.
Are their ads based on how much I watch personally? Or is it tied to total views and thumbs? What was the methodology and specs on interrupting streaming shows to push self-serving promos and blue pill ads? And are the goods and services offered designed to specifically target me based on what I view? Or is it a hodgepodge of preparatory and softly related elements more randomly distributed?
We all accepted TV ads in the 70s. But by the early 80s, news from somewhere mentioned something called cable. What? No commercials? Foul language? Gratuitous boobies bouncing freely? Sign me up. I’ll pay!
A lot of people said it wouldn’t work. “Who’s gonna pay for something that’s free”? In my household, that’s also what my parents said. But as months passed, after Robert Klein’s standup special on HBO and CNN’s coverage of a little girl stuck in a well, attitudes began to soften. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. No commercials? At least the programming wasn’t suffering.
So, gradually, we softened. And as programming improved, my attitude changed. I wasn’t alone. Cable tv grew, due in large part to the lack of ads. We seemed to get accustomed to it. And in a way, I became entitled.
Over recent years, there’s been so much more to see, and to complain about. I began sensing the TV-broadcast-shift-in-commercials over the last few years. Ad breaks getting longer. So I did my own non-scientific research. I chose 5 programs at random and timed the commercials for 30 minutes. My methodology is probably laughably flawed, unprofessional, and if faced with questions by a 2nd year law student, would fold under questioning. That said, here are the results.
On ESPNs afternoon live show “Pardon The Interruption”, I recorded 2 breaks in what is surely a liquid show. The first was 4:00 minutes and the second 4:40.
8:40 total.
On Nickelodeon, “Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge On The Run” produced 2 commercial breaks during its first 30 minutes, the first 3 minutes and 35 seconds, the second 3 and a half for a total of 7 minutes and 5 seconds.
At the 5:00pm News on Chanel 11, KHOU, 4 breaks appeared, in order: 3:05, 2:30, 2:30, and 3:00, for a total of 11 minutes and 5 seconds.
CNN took 2 commercial breaks from 12:00 to 12:30pm. One break ran 4:35, the other 4:25, for a total of 9 minutes.
And finally, at Catchy Comedy, a half hour produced a “Cheers” rerun and 3 commercial breaks: 4:00, 1:10 and 2:40, with a tally of 7 and 50 seconds.
So what have we learned? Absolutely nothing. But the experts say yes, commercial breaks are getting longer. And they’ve been on the rise for years.
“The average commercial break typically lasts between 2 and 3 minutes, though this can vary based on the network, time of day, and type of programming, with some breaks, especially during special events like sporting matches, lasting longer” according to my AI search.
“TV cable commercials seem long because networks, struggling with decreasing viewership, are adding more ad time to maintain revenue. Longer ads also allow more time to tell a story and deliver a deeper message, which can increase viewer recall and conversions.”
None of that really matters to me. I profess my respect for American nostalgia. Like Tony The Tiger, Pecan Sam and Count Choculah , my comfort zone has had to relocate. Stay tuned for more, after this…
GARANDOM THOUGHTS:
Why do we need shower mats? Seems to me, bathtub and shower makers could simply line the bottoms of their products with a gentle non slip coating. Why not that instead of ME having to devote a Saturday afternoon to shopping for a mat at Bed, Bath and Beyond?
(Former ABC13 Houston KTRK anchor Mark Garay returns to mikemcguff.com as a guest blogger!)
