I will post in here aswell, it's not myself taking posts from digitalspy and posting them onto here. It is an imposter horribly taking my name and adding a 2, something that I myself had to do on digitalspy (due to login problems with fanoftv).
If you don't like it then complain - officially this is still a trial period (after another one just before Christmas which fewer people seemed to notice) so it's all still a bit up in the air. Personally I hate it as it makes my job a lot more complicated, but apparently it will generate millions of pounds of extra revenue...looking at the complaints log however would suggest no-one has been moved to complain so far.
Indeed they're not. It's been quite common practice in Radio over the past few years to stick a jingle or station ID in the middle of a break.
One of the theories is that your listener (or viewer) will not notice that the ad break is as long as it actually is because they will perceive that it only began after the trailer... which has in fact been placed in the middle.
Whether that actually works or not is a matter for debate. I haven't measured timings, but would anyone like to ckech whether a typical ad break with trailers plonked in the middle is actually longer than those without?
US networks used to put a short sting in the middle of a break along the lines of "dont go away, 24 will be right back on FOX". It kind of "re-sets" the ad break and makes it subconsciously shorter. US networks dont do that any more - it's a waste of 5 seconds.
If you look at how US networks air their trailers, they usually air 2-3 in a row at the end of every break - a huge warning that the commercial break is over!
