Ads Now Saturate TV Shows

Here’s a telling report from WaynesThisandThat.com on “How Much TV Commercial Length has Grown over the Years:

“We all accept commercials as a necessary evil because they pay for the shows we love to watch. But, how much is reasonable to accept? This question was answered for me while watching a 2004 episode of Star Trek Enterprise. The commercials came so often and lasted so long that is was almost impossible to maintain a sense of continuity with the show.

This situation got me wondering how much the percentage of time given to a show is lost to commercials has increased over the years. Thanks to the availability of video recordings of past shows, this was easy to determine. Scouring my video library I found shows ranging from 1964 to the present, 2004. Here's what I discovered:

* 1964 - 17.8 percent of the time devoted to commercials

* 1977 - 17.8 percent

* 1994 - 24.5 percent

* 2004 - 30.0 percent

These were all for main line shows aired during prime time hours. So, how did the show that kicked this little study off do? Would you believe that a full 35 percent of the air time given to Star Trek Enterprise in 2004 was sacrificed to commercials? It was. To make matters worse the end credits were pushed into the far right margin to make room for a side bar ad, the station logo was continually displayed in the lower right hand corner of the screen, and twice an annoying pop up ad appeared in the left hand corner of the screen during the show. Taking these into account the total effective commercial time was crowding 38 percent.