TV listing are pointless.

Would the British public be in "favour" of seeing the ads of the internal breaks (about 2/3 mins long) being moved to the "end breaks" (about 3/4 mins long) on kids channels creating a somehow big break between two shows, e.g. between 12:23 and 12:29, as a mitigation effect indicated by OFCOM?
And here I'm only referring about shows that are just one segment, not two (e.g. Spongebog Squarepants, The Amazing World of Gumball etc.; which can be easily split into the EPG)

But I guess companies like Disney and Viacom feel that would alienate viewers, so that they would rather change the regular "30 mins schedule" to something like "25mins+30mins", if they weren't to use the 31mins+29mins mitigation effect they're using now, especially in the case this was prohibited (which in reality I think is more 32mins+28mins/33mins+27mins, in order to not have a very long break at the end of the clock hour, since 30mins scheduled shows are often just 21/22mins long)

The more "25mins" based schedule structure is found in a few European countries (well, not just kids channels), where such restictions about an internal break during 30-mins long shows were present since a rather long time already: for example, in my country, Italy, since the late 90 (as a drawback scheduled times in Italy and even a few other European countries are not respected as they should be; e.g. scheduled 18:05 a few times 18:02, 18:07, 18:10 etc.), some more than others

By the way, CITV appears to be the only one "really " respecting this law, and it does that by using 5 mins "filler" shows such as Oddbods

That is similar to how it used to be when CITV was a strand on ITV itself. You only had breaks between the programmes, not during them and as most of them at that time were 25 minutes long, but the breaks were your typical 2/3 minutes.

Don't forget there is a limit per clock hour on how much advertising can be shown.

I think a lot of it comes down to how we've always traditionally done advertising in this country during programmes, typically one break in a half hour programme, and two (later three) in an hour long programme and it's only recently that's applied to childrens programming.

Does seem odd for OFCOM to reintroduce that restriction considering there hasn't been a huge demand for it and the commercial childrens section is struggling like never before, plus of course it has been completely ineffective by broadcasters extending shows by a minute.

There was a time in the UK were having a break inside of a 30 mins children show was prohibited? Or you just mean those slots under the 30-mins length? I suppose CITV on ITV used 25-mins long slots in order to pack as many shows as possible, given the limited extension of the block

I know there's a limit about how much advertising can be shown (8 mins average, 12 mins peak), but still, an ad break 6 mins long per 30 mins (and this case I'm referring more to peak times) isn't prohibited, I think..
whether this is a good strategy or not in order to not alienate viewers, well, this is another matter

Anyway, it's a somehow stupid legislation, since loopholes can be found in order to keep an ad break per hour (sometimes two).. and it makes everything so inconsistent

Ads in 30-minute slots were prohibited, so CITV shows which aired 4.40-5.10 had no ad break.

Ad break wise the limit on actual commercials within an ad break is 3.5 minutes for the PSBs and I think 4.5 minutes for other channels. However for breaks in between two programmes they can pack in as many promos as they like - though in reality it is rarely more than 5-6 minutes at most.

It all becomes about supply and demand too - the longer the break the less likely people will actually watch the commercials so the less advertisers will pay for them, so it's possible a broadcaster could earn as much money for a three minute break as they might for a six minute break for example.

As outlined by an OFCOM statement, I think commercial kids channels actually can have 6-mins long end breaks (the limit just being of a 8/12 ads per hour) it's just that they won't; as you've just said, it is not the best idea and would have consequences

Hence why, I believe that without the "31 mins" mitigation effect being available, a few kids channels would have to reformulate the 30mins+30mins based schedule they have, into a somehow more difficult one, posing maybe some challenges:
ex. 16:00, 16:30, 17:00, 17:30 becoming : 16:00, 16:30, 16:55, 17:25 etc.

Actually something like that has happened recently in Australia, where now the limit appears to be 10 mins ads per hour.. ironic from a country where ads are without limits on the remaining channels

The other side of the coin is most if not all of the commercial children's channels show imported programming which doesn't totally fill the EPG slot anyway. Many of the Nickelodeon programmes for example come from its American sister channel and only run for about 22 minutes, so the rest of the time has to be filled with adverts, trailers, fillers, etc.

CBBC had similar timing issues in its first year or so because it was using shows that were originally made for a 24 minute slot on CBBC One and they had to do a heck of a lot of padding for scheduling them in a 30 minute EPG slot. These days of course they don't need to worry about that and most of it is the regular "length of slot - a minute or so" length. The imported stuff can get padded out with Dick & Dom or whatever.

That's precisely my point: most Nickelodeon, Disney, Turner, Kix (and not just kids channels) 30 time slots in reality contain a 21 or 22 mins long shows: therefore generally in order to fill these slots in an adequate way, they have 2 promos and up to 2 and 3 minutes of ads during a break, inc. an internal break

Therefore, if the channels were going to be forced to respect this 30-mins law without a loophole, then, realistically, we would've likely seen the slots changing from 30 mins to 25 mins, in order not to have a 8 mins end break (trailer+ads back to back; you can add trailersa and fillers, yes, but your average viewer would still consider them ads, and it would get boring), since the internal break can't fill the time anymore: but also, more likely, a mixture (25mins+30mins; in reality, in TX, prob. 27mins+28mins, in order to balance things up and not have a long break per hour)
Of course that's hypothetical, since the 31-mins slot is an easy loophole in order not to ruin a comfortable 30-mins schedule; however, some OFCOM international channels which used to run like that, now run more in the way I described, such as Cartoon Network Scandinavia
There are international operations that have 8-mins breaks (of course in order to keep a 30 mins slot), such as a few Turkish kids channels, but I don't think the British public would bear that

As for CBBC: I think many imports now have a 20 or 25 mins slot now (e.g. The Next Step).. but a channel such as CBBC (without ads etc.) has loads of fillers and particular unregular scheduling structures, so they're more prepared for that
Actually I believe that even some CBBC shows are 22 mins, in order to be exported

BTW you just have to look at the recent Disney Channel scheduling to see the success of this law..

A very irregular scheduling in order to keep an internal ad break almost all the time (unlike Nick and Turner more logical 31mins+29mins per hour approach), hence a schedule more based on the 31s/32s/33s, with very odd times

Tiny Pop happens to air the last few episodes (four, if the listings published earlier were to believe) of MLP FIM series 6 earlier than the USA, early this October. One of them, "Where the Apple Lies" (apparently about the family of a farmer girl named Applejack, one of the main characters in the series), was supposed to air today, but it was delayed to later this month. (Rumours say it was because of some apple beaverage named 'cider'*.) The change was reflected in the listings on Tiny Pop's website, but apparently it was not on other guides and EPGs elsewhere. So, those who believed in other guides had their dreams crushed.

Other new FIM episodes to air on Tiny Pop this month include, indeed, the two-part series 6 finale which is tomorrow and the day after, and another episode about the Wonderbolts flight squad which is next week, all if the listings are to believe.

* In the USA, 'cider' also refers to a kind of non-alcoholic apple juice. Elsewhere, it refers exclusively to the alcoholic apple drink.



Update (7 October) : Both parts of series 6 finale, "To Where And Back Again", aired as scheduled.
Update (10 October) : "Top Bolt" was aired today as it was scheduled to do so.

I believe "hard cider" is the term for the alcoholic kind in the US.

Windy Miller getting smashed on scrumpy was OK on kids TV in my day!

The "hard cider" name seems to be coming to they UK too, sadly. Had some that was made in Reading of all places with that name.