TV Commercials -- are there any official guidelines for their lengths ?

vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

May be a domb question, but I would like to know if there are any official guidelines or standards for the length of tv comercials and ads ??

Any info would be great, thanks..

-vhelp 4798
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gadgetguy · Contestant Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Location: Michigan, USA

Are you talking about what length to make a commercial or how long a station commercial break lasts?
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vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

The latter.. the length of the breaks. But maybe I should be asking for both

While working in my TEC (time expansion / compression) tool I got an idea and wondered about the length of the commercials or ads, and I wanted to incorporate this into a function as a crude calaculator.

(I think that it prob should be Commercial vs. Ads, because I believe that at certain times or broadcast events/contents, they have (or purchased) a certain amount of extra time/space. And this would reflect the calculated outcome for those purchased times vs. if normal broadcast and commercial times)

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DB83 · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Location: United Kingdom

I think that would vary from channel to channel.

In the UK, the maximum total ad-breaks per hour on standard commercial tv (not subscription based satellite) was six minutes. But that has recently been relaxed and ad-breaks could in future be as much as twelve minutes.

Still not as bad as the US where the programs interupt the ads.

gadgetguy · Contestant Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Location: Michigan, USA

I don't know of any hard and fast rules, other than "as much as the viewing public will bear".
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vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

Well, I would like to know why are they pushing "banner ads" across the screen during the programing, and especially during those criticle scenes where you need to see (and even, hear) whats going on. I mean, I've been seeing so many interuptions of this kind that it has become so annoying and intrusive that I am begining to reconsider watching tv programs. Now, almost every station is broadcasting overly aggresive banners ads to hype an upcomming or future-date program during the show.

It was bad enough that put a watermark down at the bottom. In the beginning, you might of thought that they were pushing their station brand.

Then, they started to push the logo or watermark even higher into the video so that when the program content is letterboxed the logo would appear inside the video.

Then, they began pushing different kinds of small watermark logos, like Holograms; Translucent; Opaque; Solid; and Colorful logos.

Then, they pushed small sprite type logos that gave a splash down in the corer screen. Annoying at first, but wait till you see more..

Then, then pushed small tickerbox logos.

Then, they pushed small animated or motion moving logos

Now, they are pushing larger logos; larger tickerbox logos; larger sprite logs; larger animiation logos; ...

And, now they are even pushing even larger logos and motion video and so on up to 40% into the video.

All this nonense is just too intrusive. And, I can't see how it doesn't bother anyone enough to make a stand and officially bar them or limit their effectiveness by some measure.

From where I sit, its gone beyond the perceive notion for the purpose of limiting those groups that were copying videos at the time that all this nonsense became the reason for reducing that. I don't know

-vhelp 4800
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usually_quiet · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Location: United States

All the banner ads and pop-ups are too much for me as well, though up until recently, I never met a watermark I couln't ignore. Thankfully, the station changed it to something more reasonable last week. Maybe they received a lot of complaints or conducted a survey to find out why their ratings suddenly dropped?

I can think of three reasons why programming-related ads are now part of the show. 1. More people are using PVR's so they can fast-forward to avoid regular advertising. 2. It frees up enough time to squeeze in one or two more paid ads per hour. 3. It encouages more people to buy DVD's so they can see a nice clean picture.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

The FCC has lots of regulations on advertising on broadcast TV. They cover things from amount of advertising per hour, what can be advertised in children's programming, etc. I don't think those banner ads are covered though. That's probably why they're used so much and getting more intrusive.