More but shorter ad breaks in an hour?

Is this what is happening as it's not clear from this online article of today from the FT?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8d1361f8-7885-11dd-acc3-0000779fd18c,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F8d1361f8-7885-11dd-acc3-0000779fd18c.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.syndication.digitalspy.co.uk%2Fforums%2Fshowthread.php%3Fp%3D27224687%23post27224687

Not necessarily - there can be more, but they don't have to be shorter.

The rules changed this week scrapping the 20-minute rule to allow programme makers to air ads when they want within the programme, but they can't air any more ads or any more ad breaks - so an hour long programme will still be split into four parts.

However, on non-PSB channels the rules do permit 30-minute programmes to have two internal breaks (like ABC1 used to do), and this now might be more attractive to broadcasters as they can have a break after the credits and midway through, rather than after the credits and before the last couple of scenes which they used to have to do to comply with the 20-minute rule.


A next phase of consultation will consider the length of ad breaks, number of ad breaks and amount of ads in total each hour, but both broadcasters and advertisers have already informed OFCOM they don't believe broadcasters, advertisers or viewers would benefit from more ads.

As did Sky One, in its half hour game shows, like Sale of the Century, Love at First Sight and The Price is Right. They were ten past, twenty past breaks rather than during the credits.

They also experimented with the 'credit breaks' a few years ago with their Thursday evening schedule, which included The Nanny and Seinfeld.

Good.
Too many adverts as it is.
These days you can see "End Of Part One" on your TV screen and make some tea, have a bath, wash the car, wax the car, tarmac the front drive and creosote the shed before Part Two. Or so it seems some days anyway.

On-demand programming is clearly where things are going, therefore I would expect that more advertising will appear on the break points for those in due course than you'd see on linear services that we have now to a point where they'll become the norm.

I dare say in twenty years time we won't have linear television channels and schedules save for a safety net of Freeview with a bunch of HD channels but with a strong emphasis on on-demand programming. If you want to watch a (by then) 30 year-old episode of Whose Line is It Anyway?, you wouldn't tune into Dave at 7pm on a Tuesday night, you'd flick onto whichever channel has the rights, click a button and watch it when you want.

Slightly confusing...

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that C4 does not believe there should be an increase in the total amount of advertising - but ITV and five both believe they should be ALLOWED to sell the same amount as the digital-only channels even if they may not take full advantage of this.

Certainly I think I'm correct in saying that Michael Grade regards the limits on ITV1 as part of the "Antiques Roadshow of regulation" he wants Ofcom to abolish. However he's also said that the fact ITV1's principal competition (as far as the public are concerned anyway) is from BBC1 so that would act as a practical limit to the amount of advertising viewers would find acceptable.

However the digital only channels definitely don't want more - and this may be what that article referred to. Although I think EU rules would prevent any significant rise anyway.

There's only one group who benefit from more ad-space, and that's the advertisers (and even there I'm not so sure it's a good idea, as ads are more likely to be lost in the sea of commercialism).

Viewers certainly don't benefit. TV companies don't either -- the advertising pot is limited, in a recession it's difficult to fill the existing spaces up and the only difference more ads makes is to decrease the per-unit cost.

It is therefore fitting that the trained chimps in charge of ITV want the right to show more -- I'd expect nothing more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/07/ofcom.itv

OFCOM are considering letting ITV having an extra 20 minutes of ads in peak time a couple of nights a week.... ALARM BELLS!!!!!

Actually the reality is rather than a fixed 40 minutes per night, OFCOM are considering letting PSBs move their ads around the schedules so more ads are shown on higher rating nights with less shown on other nights to compensate. That's probably not so bad, but I think a jump to 60 minutes from 40 minutes even if just once a week is still too much. I'd say split the difference and go for 50 minutes.


Interestingly though the PSBs reject OFCOM's notion that the PSBs could make an extra £30m from an extra minute of advertising an hour in peak time, concerned that the extra ad time would devalue the price advertisers pay - and ultimately cost them in the long run.

There's only one potential way that may be acceptable - right now, they sometimes have ad breaks with no ads (since they want to save up the ad time for Coronation St, etc). If they tweaked things so that they could put ads in there while keeping the same or fewer ads in stuff like Coronation St, that may be acceptable. If it just exaggerates the current situation, that's another matter.

Well the maximum of 12 minutes in any one hour wouldn't change, but if they had 60 minutes between 6pm and 11pm that would mean 12 minutes every hour for five minutes.

I guess realistically that isn't really going to happen - rating figures tend to die off after 9pm on Saturdays and early in the schedule on Sunday nights - and with shows like The X Factor running in a two hour slot other restrictions in place mean over that period they could only show 21 minutes of ads anyway.