Annoying Breaks

It is obvious where the US show their ads in Desperate Housewives and General Hospital. Why can't C4 and ABC1 respectively show their breaks at the same time? The programmes would run more smoothly then.

It is the same with Home and Away on Five.

It's the same with Neighbours on the BBC. Neighbours has three add breaks. You can always tell where they come even if you've not seen the Australian edits, as there is a mini-cliffhanger point, an outside stockshot of one of the houses and then back into the scene.

However, there's not really a lot you can do about it. They are made for the networks they are shown on. Channel 4/five/BBC just but them and show them. They have to join up the add breaks to make it look smooth.

They would have a break but Ofcom says no..

It doesn't matter so much with Neighbours - the mini-cliffhangers are just that, and they don't require a break to have the same effect. In fact I think Neighbours works much better without the breaks as the BBC shows it, than how it's shown in Australia.

But with shows like Desperate Housewives, it really does show, and C4 seem to break at the most unlikely points. Trouble is, (IIRC) it has more than 3 breaks when broadcast in the US, so to sync up C4's breaks with ABC's might be a bit tricky. They could at least try, though. It also annoys me slightly how they don't signpost the beginning of the next part after the break - they just jump straight back in after a trailer, which I find doesn't really seperate the break from the actual show that well. Minor point though!

We've discussed this in detail here: The Structure of Ad Breaks

Basically, both the US and Aussie networks have 6 breaks an hour, all within the programme. We have 4 breaks an hour, one of which is at a programme junction.

US programmes are usually shown as follows, broken up in this way for UK viewing:

Recap > Pre-title sequence > Opening titles > BREAK > Part 2 > BREAK

Part 3 > BREAK >

Part 4 > BREAK > Part 5 > BREAK

Part 6 > BREAK > Closing scene > Credits

Thats why quite often the bigger cliffhanger is in the scene before the final scene in many programmes.

Personally, I think UK broadcasters should be allowed to air an extra break between Part 4 & 5 instead of at the end of the programmes.

Also note that on C4, programmes like Desperate Housewives which only run for 44 minutes are aired in a 65 minute slot - generally meaning extended trailers before and after the programme.

I agree about Neighbours. When I was in Australia recently, I thought the breaks were a nuisance, and much better when Neighbours is shown here.

In Home and Away tonight, Five took a break in the MIDDLE of a scene (I've never noticed them do that before). There was an Australian break-point about a minute later - surely it would have made more sense to wait until then?

Regarding Neighbours, AFAIK it is actually the distributors (Pearsons/Fremantle) who edit out the 'fades-to-black' and insert additional 'scene-setting' shots where applicable. I don't have a problem with this if it looks smooth on screen. They do the same with Five's Sons and Daughters, but also have a tendancy to swap scenes around to disguise 'jump-cuts' at the break points, sometimes to such an extent that the storyline no longer makes sense (eg. scenes from the following morning being shown before those from the night before!). In these cases, it would surely be so much easier to just leave the fades-to-black, which in this show are clean (ie. caption-less).

I got annoyed with Desperate Housewives last night. Channel 4 took one break just ONE SCENE (roughly a minute) before the natural break point. Is it really too much to ask that they put them in the right places?

Up until very recently, possibly the end of January, C4 were screening US programmes with breaks at their natural points - but I have noticed a change in the last week with The OC, Home and Away and Desperate Housewives, so maybe OFCOM have changed the rules.

The rules were that stations should preferbly put breaks in existing slot - but this has certainly been different in the last week. Maybe they are now strictly enforcing the 20 minute rule, which states 20 minutes must pass between the start of one part and the next.

You're right. The rules for imported programmes under the ITC were that breaks should be scheduled at naturally approriate points in the show, which in most cases means putting them where they would be in the original broadcast.

I remember that under the IBA, the rules were that an ad-break could only be inserted at a change-of-scene point, or if some time has lapsed on returning from the break. On many US and Australian shows, this wasn't the case (eg. at the end of one segment Person A would say to Person B 'I love you', and on returning from the break Person B would respond 'Are you serious?' - ie. no time had passed). That effectively broke this ruling, so breaks tended to be inserted elsewhere. I'm not sure when that ruling changed, because even local (ie. UK) dramas and soaps now return from breaks with no time having passed.