US TV Presentation

Don't know if US tv presentation has been discussed here much before.

I am currently on holiday in the US so have had the chance to watch various tv channels both in the morning and evening (out through the day) and find the way they do things quite interesting, but no good for people like us who like tv pres, as it doesn't exist! (well very little compared to the UK)

The main channels here are ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW. These are basically like our BBC1, ITV, C4 & C5.

They all provide news, moreso with ABC, CBS and NBC (the big 3), which have news programmes every morning (Good Morning America, Today etc, like our Breakfast and Daybreak), these programmes all start at 7pm which news hours before.

The thing I really wanted to talk about though is the branding and pres of these channels, or the lack of. They don't have idents, break bumpers, menus, stings etc. They do have promos, but very randomly placed. Sometimes they are at the start of the ads, sometimes at the end, sometimes mid way through the ad break. The promo style seems to be to provide a completely unique style for each programme, as long as it contains the channels logo somewhere, then anything goes. They don't have any standard promo end boards like BBC, ITV etc do.

A programme will just stop and go straight into the first advert, no break bumper inbetween, and same back into the programme, so you sometimes miss the start of the programme as you think its still ads!

At the end of a programme, the credits are usually squashed instantly to show promos, and at the end of the credits an announcer (prerecorded) will tell you whats coming on next, and when I say next, I mean straight after the credits, no ads between two programmes, one programme finished another starts instantly, occasionally split by a promo.
Some channels (TBS does this a lot), will start the next programme while the current programme's credits are running! the credits will be squashed into one side in a smaller box, while the new programme will be playing in a bigger box on the other side.

Ads are usually placed roughly at 5 past, quarter past, 25 past, 25 to, quarter to, and 5 to the hour. They don't always follow this, but this is common. Sometimes they miss out the quarter to and quarter past breaks.

Sponsorship is also different, programmes don't seem to have specific sponsors like they do in the UK (ie Corrie has Compare the Market/Meerkat). Sometimes you will see a brand logo and hear an announcement like "*such a brand* part sponsors prime time on CBS" and you might see two or three of these during a programme, each time with a different brand being mentioned.

Channels don't have continuity announcers, apart from the little prerecorded bits you occasionally hear.

I have to say, I miss how UK TV does it. I miss idents and continuity announcers, break bumpers etc. I know people seem to complain about various aspects of british tv, but we have it so much better than the US!

Does anyone else here have any experiences of watching tv in the US? Would love to know what others think, and hear from anyone that knows the US tv system better (obviously I don't know it very well, only been here a few days and only watching in the mornings and evenings).

The US are famous for taking things to extremes, and TV is no different. To the broadcasters, every second has to be spent either gathering/maintaining viewers, or showing commercials. Nothing else matters; things like credits and idents are simply opportunities for a viewer to reach for their remote. It's totally cynical.

What I've noticed over the years is that every programme starts bang on the top of the hour, eg 8pm. Their programmes never run late, and if they do they usually throw up an on screen message saying that 'Normal scheduling will resume as soon as possible', whereas over here they start late and end late causing all kind of chaos.

American TV in my opinion though seems pretty slick and everything flows well continuously, yeah the lack of idents and break bumpers and the amount of adverts ruin it, but during the weekdays Mon-Fri, its the same programming throughout the week, the only difference is Primetime programming...

A prime example is Emmerdale. This week i've noticed it start at 18:59, 19:01 and 19:02!

American TV is based around set slots and grids. The slots and adverrt breaks (more than we have on UK tv) are the important thing, and the shows just fill the slots and the slots are based on genre. Very rarely are schedules changed and this is usually for planned events like football games and sports, where show slots will take a week off.

UK schedules are formed around the shows themselves, and we usually have lots more Live shows and so programmes have a rough show length and certain rules on how many advert breaks, of what length have to be shown per 30mins or per hour.

Also have you notice that many shows have short intros now compared to years ago, about 20sec nowaday, just to get in more adverts.

Here's an episode of a podcast that explains public radio in the United States is heavily governed by clocks. I imagine some of it translates to television as well. These constraints force producers to make their programmes at a certain pace, which makes them sound more slick.

https://soundcloud.com/roman-mars/99-invisible-88-the-broadcast

No they're not.

The five you mention are networks not channels as we know them. PBS is the other big network and there are lots of smaller ones like MyTV and the religious and spanish networks.

All the TV stations are local - these are the ones with names like Wxxx or Kxxx - and either do their own thing or affiliate to one of the networks and show network programmes alongside their own news and other syndicated repeats. What they do outside of the network slots is up to them.

Unlike in the UK there's no national terrestrial TV channels, what networks you get depends on what market you're in or can recieve signals from. Even though you're very likely to get at least one ABC, NBC or CBS station there are exceptions and sometimes they will just lose or change affiliation overnight - imagine waking up and finding that ITV in your town had disappeared and been replaced by BBC1 and what was BBC1 is now a spanish channel.



It, especially terrestrial, is a fascinating culture shock when you first see it. The cable stations less so but even something like Discovery feels very different. I would say to try and stray off piste and watch some of the smaller stations outside of the big 5 networks

Hi, thanks for the explanation. I realised I was wrong with what I said, I did actually know about all the local stations that affiliate with the big networks. I don't know why I didn't mention this, as I find it all quite fascinating. Thanks for explaining it all in more details.

Idents in the states (if they do get shown) is usually in the ad breaks and its not really that special (emphasis is on promos and ECP) This is ABC's current one:


NBC's (you'd see this before a show on Hulu)


And as Inspector Sands said, the networks aren't like networks like in Australia or Europe, its like the affiliates have more control (not in an old-ITV way, except if its a cable channel) I've previously lived out there for a couple of years, so I'll try and explain more if I have time.

I'd rather have our less rigid system than the US way of doing things.

Isn't that pretty much true here at least until 7:30ish on most channels?

A couple of other things. Not all stations that show ABC, CBS or NBC shows are just affiliates. There are also O&Os (Owned and Operated stations) - but ISTR that the number of these is relatively limited.

Live shows are less popular in the US because of the timezones - with a couple of hours between the East and West Coast, it is very tricky to do a networked show live in both timezones simultaneously (as it will be early evening and late evening on the two coasts - and not many genres of programmes work in both slots), so often West Coast shows are delayed. This makes live shows with interactivity much less workable than in the little, single time-zone, UK...

As for slick clock starts, it is heavily driven by the massively distributed affiliate nature of US networks. If you aren't going to start at the top of the hour you have to tell a LOT of stations your actual on-air time. They're not all on talkback listening.

As for prompt time-keeping - US TV is driven massively by advertising. If a show goes over by 30", that's 30" less commercial income. That's money lost. That's not acceptable apart from in the most severe of circumstances. It isn't a single network that would lose money - it's LOTS of different affiliates that are owned by lots of different companies.

It really is very difficult to compare UK and US broadcasting - it's like chalk and cheese.