How many commercials will they tolerate?

[CoolBreeze]

It's apparent to anyone who watches TV or listens to radio (especially TALK radio) that the commercial interruptions are at an all time high. The Cable channels are often even worse.

Today I used a stopwatch and timed "The Simpsons" episode from last night:

Act 1 = 6 minutes 10 seconds.

Commercial break= 2 minutes 35 seconds

Act 2= 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Commercial break= 4 minutes

Act 3= Two minutes forty seconds

Commercial break= Two minutes thirty seconds

Act 4= three minutes.

The total show time was 18 minutes 30 seconds.
The total commercial time (within the opening and closing) was just over 9 minutes, and that's not counting commercials AFTER the show ended. So we have commercial time taking up half the show time itself. Now, they are running the shows opening credits a full 3 minutes into the show itself. Cable shows are often worse than this.

Radio for the most part is just as bad, although I could (but wont) name stations that aren't. When it comes to Talk radio, I have literally cooked my entire breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, grits, and toast during commercial breaks. I started noticing this in the last couple of years. I don't listen to radio as much as I used to. I used to listen pretty much all day long. Now it's off and on. I cant imagine how people do it today.

Then... there's the BAD commercials: Like the "Progressive Insurance" that runs non stop. When a commercial pisses me off, I refuse to buy the product out of spite. I wouldn't purchase Progressive if it were the last insurance company in town. I'm not the only one that feels this way about many other commercials. I often wonder if the dumbass Ad agencies and their clients understand that they can turn OFF a prospective buyer just as easily as turn him on? I wonder how much business is actually lost due to irritating commercials?

Today the commercials and Ads are everywhere. They left the INSIDE of the bus and now they ARE the bus. They are on the sides of schools buildings and on the handles of shopping carts. They are everywhere we look and it's sometimes hard to find one single scene in your field of vision that doesn't include an Ad.

So our entire world is now covered with Ads. It's non stop overload, and I wonder if it's shutting people off. Sending them to satellite or wherever they can find solitude without commercial interruption, including turning everything OFF.

There are much brighter people then myself who have studied all of this and sell that information. But I personally would love to know "what's the limit, if any, for our tolerance level" to all this?

( This should probably be moved to WV Broadcasting)

[genlock]

Apparently, when you are old and retired, you don't have much to do.
Coolbreeze is wasting his time, he could be watching WSAZ for screw-ups.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Then... there's the BAD commercials: Like the "Progressive Insurance" that runs non stop. When a commercial pisses me off, I refuse to buy the product out of spite. I wouldn't purchase Progressive if it were the last insurance company in town.

The Progressive chick (Stephanie Courtney) is hot.
GEICO is the insurance company to hate for their horrid commercials.

Just sayin'

[CoolBreeze]

The Progressive chick looks like most people's wives, except maybe 50 pounds lighter. Enough said.

[fearpeddler]

The Progressive chick looks like most people's wives, except maybe 50 pounds lighter. Enough said.

I thought she looked kinda like christine habrle...

[Hoosier Daddy]

The Progressive chick looks like most people's wives, except maybe 50 pounds lighter. Enough said.

Uh, most of the wives I see look like Rosanne Barr, pre-gastric bypass.
Stephanie is a dollbaby, especially wearing something other than her all white Progressive outfit with the overdone lipstick.

[David Paleg]

The Progressive chick (Stephanie Courtney) is hot.
GEICO is the insurance company to hate for their horrid commercials.

What's funny is that Stephanie Courtney (Flo, the Progressive chick) appeared in two episodes of "Cavemen" (based on those Geico guys). But what was NOT funny was "Cavemen."

[RadioCriminal]

[quote="CoolBreeze"]It's apparent to anyone who watches TV or listens to radio (especially TALK radio) that the commercial interruptions are at an all time high ..... I don't listen to radio as much as I used to ..... It's non stop overload, and I wonder if it's shutting people off. /quote]

I think it's offputting to people either to the extent they go away or that they put up their shields. I'm a former radio employee and too old to be in anybody's target demo. But to me, endless blah blah blah becomes a distant drone and the station loses my attention or I simply turn it off. Even on the best of days I can barely stand to listen to radio anymore. It has become no longer relevant to my lifestyle. And clutter helped that happen.

Thanks to time shifting and being able to zap past tv spots, my time spent watching television is still pretty high. But if I had to watch commercial channels in real time, I would be scrambling to find other things to do.

Plus, now that I am not an industry insider, I have come to think of clutter as not just commercials. Station promos might be worse than chinese water torture. I recall a media analyst some years back saying the biggest polluter of the airwaves are stations themselves going ape shit crazy with self promotion. Radio is very good at trashing itself this way but I think cable TV channels take the prize here by pounding us with the same 30 second promo every 4 minutes. Sometimes chopping the program for no reason but to run their promo.

I had hoped to see some 21st century gurus step forward with bold new ways to shift the radio business model. Old school lives on, unfortunately.

[Jay Nunley]

I don't know about TV. I don't even watch football games live anymore. I've discovered that DVRing the games and then start watching it about an hour after kickoff is plenty of time to avoid commercials (except for the last few seconds of the ones at the end of the break or possibly beer commercials I want to see).

When most talk radio shows (syndicated) added another stopset a couple of years ago it didn't effect my usage level, but did guarantee a lot more sampling of other shows.

As far as OTA music format radio, the last set of PPM data I saw showed that a stopset is not as big a tune out as we had always feared (this is all based on the assumption that PPM is an accurate indicator of listening). The fifth unit seems to be the deal breaker. The length of the commercials doesn't matter (many of us had that one right all along). All that preaching about stopset structuring (I used to believe it too) with putting :60s before :30s and "high production" spots before "low production" spots was nothing but radio nerds bullshitting themselves. Unit count is the key. Number of stopsets per hour should be based on the average TSL per occasion in the marketplace, but I have no hard data on that. There is no way to determine how much of stopset (or music for that matter) listening is active or passive.

Radio's future is coupling itself with new technology to be the delivery vehicle for on demand audio and web product as the primary service and "broadcasting" or "streaming" as a secondary feature of the primary service. Radio's future is either that or death. Others are already providing that primary service, but very little of it is localized enough nor do they have the expertise in localized marketing and audience manufacturing to kill us. Yet.

[AmpedNow]

I had hoped to see some 21st century gurus step forward with bold new ways to shift the radio business model.

Twitter would be a good start. Its integration potential is huge.

Plus, it's free to use.

[Hoosier Daddy]

All that preaching about stopset structuring (I used to believe it too) with putting :60s before :30s and "high production" spots before "low production" spots was nothing but radio nerds bullshitting themselves.

It still sounds better to do it the old fashioned way.

[Jay Nunley]

All that preaching about stopset structuring (I used to believe it too) with putting :60s before :30s and "high production" spots before "low production" spots was nothing but radio nerds bullshitting themselves.

It still sounds better to do it the old fashioned way.

Yeah, it's hard for us dinosaurs to let go of certain things. Being old sucks.

[lastone]

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

[Dave Loudin]

Portions of today's programming were produced by mechanical reproduction.

[Rock]

Portions of today's programming were produced by mechanical reproduction.

Which is a big problem, in and of itself. While some of you cats still get to play live & fun radio, (ok, well it's still live)there are many of us lil' folks out here who are held captive by a network automation clock. I think they load up way too much on spots, especially since so many of them are the 'cleanse your colon with our special sauce', or the International Star registry variety. So, if you're not willing to offer 5 dollar spots and advertisers are staying light, you end up putting those damnably ugly PSAs on.