As a rabid tv watcher I also watch for the things that make watching not as enjoyable. As you read this don’t check the total accuracy of my numbers, but they are in the ballpark. The first thing is how many minutes of actual program do you get in an hour? The actual answer is about 40 minutes. The other 20 minutes are commercial breaks. Oh, sure there are station breaks, but they are miniscule. It is amazing how many they stuff together. The other day I counted five different commercials in one break. I did read that the requirement for children’s programing is 12 minutes an hour. One check you can do is when a movie is shown, take the amount of airtime and subtract from it the actual length of the movie. This can be gotten from IMDB on google.
What do viewers do during these commercials? I heard on the radio the other day that about 50% of viewers record programs so they can fast forward through these commercials. I am not sure I accept that number, but I do have friends who do this. Others go to the bathroom or get something to eat while the commercial is on. Another tact taken is they don’t really see them. I found this to be true about myself. When I got to thinking about this subject, I realized that I had just watched several hours of television and could not recall one of the companies that had paid for their product to be shown and explained. So, I made a point of observing myself and discovered my mind goes somewhere else during these commercials.
This brings up the final question, what kind of return on their investment are the sponsors getting for their money.
These are just the wonderings of a tv addict
