Why are american advert breaks so long compard to european ones?

Question

Im a bit suprised, over in europe our commercial breaks last 4 minutes every 20 minutes or so where in america they last for 7 minutes every 5 minutes! Why is it allowed?

Answer 1

You are exaggerating, of course, but you are correct in that there are more commercials on U.S. television. The simple reason is that European television is funded by public money in the form of television licenses paid annually by the viewing public while U.S. television is not. U.S. television stations have to cover their expenses (and make a profit) by selling advertising time.

Answer 2

The British Broadcasting Corporation was set up in 1922 as a public service broadcaster so that the British people could have news and entertainment without all those annoying comercials and political influences. It covered radio, then added on tv, and now also has internet. It was never meant to be a profit situation, so levying television licence fees helped pay for it. It's now a quasi-autonomous organization that has governors appointed by the Queen to run it. Because more and more British shows are becoming popular elsewhere, not to mention generating merchandise like DVDs, they are having more money to make better quality shows.

In America just about every station is about money. They want shows that pull in viewers, demographic studies, and so on to target specific groups of people with an overwhelming amount of commercials. It's beyond ridiculous. Everybody is getting more and more frantic about VCRs and Tivos recording things and people just fast forwarding through commercials, so now they'll manage to squeeze in product placements in the shows themselves.

Answer 3

It's all about the money. The stations sell advertising time and the more they sell the more money they make, and since the FCC (the ridiculous group that governs television in this country) doesn't ahve any regulation about ahow much time during a show is allowed to be devoted to advertising they can put as ,uch in as they want...

What I really hate is that the amount of advertizing time has changed significantly over the last few years and older shows have been cut to accomidate extra advertising (which is reallly a hassle becasue I am a big Star Trek and M*A*S*H fand that both of those shows have been cut to allow for extra advertising time).


So, it all comes down to being more about money than anything else...

Answer 4

The phrase you are looking for is "advertising revenue". Companies pay television stations to advertise their products. Television stations then use that money to buy equipment, pay staff and purchase the rights to events. The more ads they play, the more money they make, the more they can pay staff and buy events, which attracts viewers to the more popular shows / events, which cost more for the advertising space (because companies want as many eyes to see their products as possible), which means more money .... and upwards and onwards.

Pay TV channels don't have to run as many ads, because they generate their money through the subscriptions - most of the ads they show are for other shows within the same network. This then draws your attention to the other shows, which convinces you to renew your subscription, which maintains revenue, so you can keep watching the shows you enjoy.

Why is it allowed? Well, I guess that comes down to "what the market will bear". How many ads will people put up with before they decide not to watch the shows?

A final word about advertising space during television programs in the US - did you know that when the US hosted the football World Cup in '94, the organisers asked FIFA if they could make the game 4 quarters rather than two halves - to allow them to fit in more advertising? Obviously, FIFA said no, but it makes you think .....

Answer 5

wow, you just managed to tar two whole continents with two tiny brushes, how do you do it?

I don't have enough experience of TV across America, though I know Colombian TV also has a surfeit of adverts.

As for europe, I'd consider rephrasing your question until you've sat through three hours of a one and a half hour film on spanish TV. Now that's some hardcore advertising

Talking about Britain, however, our television uses the BBC as a benchmark, which only has adverts between programs and then only has them for other shows on the channel. As such, the public won't stand for insane quantities of adverts, unless they're watching superbowl, in which case you get the same amount of adverts as you would in the USA, but without the adverts which you'd get in the USA, which is the main reason for watching the superbowl as I understand it.

That said, spain has a nationalised TV channel much like the BBC, only difference is that the programming is terrible and it has the longest adverts of all the spanish channels

Answer 6

Because (most) American broadcasting companies are businesses...and their business is to sell ads. The broadcasters' product is the audience, which they sell to advertisers. (The product is NOT the programming.."sold" to viewers...or listeners, etc.)

They sell as many ads as they can without risking losing the audience...it's a careful balance. Notice how the ad breaks get longer and longer toward the end of a movie or program? That's because the broadcaster is fairly confident that most people are unlikely to switch off the show that late in the game.

Quite frankly, if a broadcaster could figure out how to get someone to watch or listen to a station that played nothing but ads, they'd do it.

Programming is 100% overhead...advertising is 100% revenue.

Answer 7

7 minutes!
I hardly watch any television anymore
Except when i watch some DVD's... Or playing videogames
With us, in The Netherlands, depending on the channel, it's about 5 to 7 minutes of boring commercials every 15 minutes.

Answer 8

Even better in the UK where the BBC have no adverts at all! The commercial channels are getting longer and longer adverts - horrible! It spoild all continuity

Answer 9

Because commercialism over here in the US is totally out of hand.

Answer 10

Because Americans have cash to spend, whereas we, Europeans, don't.