Adverts On TV. A Rant.

I've searched the forum but couldn't find anything. Hopefully I'm not duplicating another thread.

Something I've noticed on TV over the years is the amount of adverts (commercials for anyone in far away lands).

It's getting worse in Britain, we pay for our TV license, which only covers BBC channels and I totally understand the others need to make money but my problem is when the take shows and films and stretch them over a massively long period and still edit them.

A few examples I have:
Scrubs. I have a boxset of Scrubs, each episode is 19 minutes long. On TV, it's edited down to barely 12 minutes yet it's stretched over a 35 minute slot.
I saw James Cameron's Aliens a while back, it was the short version and was still edited down by the channel anyway so you're looking at maybe 1 hour 45 minutes of actual movie. They stuck it in a two hour 45 minute slot. That's half a movie's running time taken up by adverts.
Top Gear on Dave. A BBC show, made without adverts, 1 hour long anyway yet Dave is able to stick the same show into a 1 hour slot and still have 25 minutes of adverts. Where's the rest of the show?

The worst example I have and this is no exagerration, I won't say which channel. Scrubs had ended, I noticed it ended quite early for the schedule, then I realised: The next programme's start time was about half an hour away.
So I time-watched.
They stuck a 26 and a half minute ad break on before the next programme.
The channel in question have done this numerous times since but recently have stopped. I guess they've been reported .

Surely it's false advertisment to say they're showing these programmes? If I advertised a healthy dog for sale and it was actually a one legged, half dead parrot. I'd get busted.

Maybe I'm just @nal about certain things but does anyone else get fed up with pi$$ taking, money grabbing TV?

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They edit down Scrubs to 12 minutes there? Really? Here they're all about 21-22 minutes. I've never heard of a normal half-hour show being edited down while rebroadcast. That's weird.

Dave is awful for adverts.

I hardly watch television - but when I do it's usually BBC channels and Channel 4/E4(adverts not so bad on Channel 4 and E4), or watch on catch up television(so can fast forwards the adverts/or there are none at all). I'm more a box set girl, prefer buying/renting television box sets and watching them on dvd/blu-ray.

As for films, I rarely watch films on television for the editing for time slot/cutting out violence, sex, swearing reasons.

How else can they make money?

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

British TV is terrible for it, Yoda.
Pu it this way, they show films like Jurassic Park, Gremlins, The 'Burbs, Ghostbusters at early times on weekends and shred all the adult material out of them. If they need that sort of treatment, don't show them so early.

A few weeks back Young Guns 2 was on at 5pm on a sunday yet it was still put in to a slot that lasted from 5pm till 7:15pm. The uncut version is only about 90 minutes long, so you can imagine how much was slashed from the movie and how many adverts were jammed into it.

I record just about everything I watch, but I'll record something on a non-BBC channel even if I've nothing to do at the time, just so I can skip the adverts. I don't even ff them usually. I stop it, jump forward 4 minutes and then continue.

Still, they're not as annoying as squishing the credits so they can promote another programme. Even worse when they talk OVER THE END OF A PROGRAMME WHICH IS STILL BEING BROADCAST!!!!

Ooof. I had no idea that happened. I knew it happened with movies--that happens here, too, all the time. But not TV shows. That's especially lame.

That said, every single Scrubs episode, ever, is on Netflix Instant, if that's available to you.

Nice one Yoda mate. Will have a look.

I tend to steer clear of TV these days now. My DVD player is certainly showing it's worth, I'll need another one soon.

You must be in love with your commercial breaks or something because you sure do seem very worked up about it. Just don't watch TV. Buy everything - or steal everything - and just watch it in a way that's outside of what the TV channels do. TV -- maybe more so in Britain -- is designed for the lazy who have nothing to do. Commercials are fed to the comatose couch potatoes. You wanna watch Aliens, an old movie from 1986, on TV, you're gonna get it with all sorts of additives mixed in. Just think of TV as being an unhealthy solution to getting your entertainment needs.

I have to ask what channel you're watching Scrubs on? I'm not a fan or anything, but I can't remember it ever lasting 12 minutes. Maybe you only saw the first half.

Also, for the most part, films are only edited when they're shown before an 'appropriate' time. Although I have seen 'edited for tv versions' that've been shown after the watershed, which I agree is crap. Sounds like you're watching too much channel 5, rodent.

12 minutes of Scrubs sounds way too long.

I wasn't going to mention the naughty advert loving channel, but funnily enough it's E4, which was mentioned in an earlier post by Nausicaa as being a decent channel for adverts.
E4 was the same channel that had the near half-hour advert-marathon too.

lol... My g/f would definately agree with you. The programme winds her up like little else I've ever seen. If it didn't put her in such a foul mood it'd be funny. Well, funnier.

As for E4, I don't really watch anything on it (especially now that Friends has moved) but I've never noticed it's any worse than most satellite channels. I mean, is it worse than More4 for example? As More4 usually shows 1 long programmes (which are really 40-42 minutes) as opposed to the half hour programmes which populate E4 (which are really 21-22 minutes) then, if anything, there should be less adverts in an hour slot.

Two recent traits I've noticed that annoy me. One is having a really late ad break and then coming back for about 2 minutes of the programme and, the other, is giving an half hour/hour programme an extra 5-10 minute slot, so an extra ad break can be taken. This doesn't happen too often, though C4 seems to be the biggest culprit of this and only on programmes it pushed really hard. I noticed OFCOM held up a complaint about this last year.

Lastly, was the 30 minutes ad marathon the last 30 minutes of broadcasting? Because while I've never seen that much, when this happens, there's filler programmes, extended trailers, etc at the end of the broadcast. Usually upto about 10 minutes. But, again, it's at the end of their broadcast, so it's usually something like 3:50am till 4am or something like that.

Totally agree with you on when they have an ad break then show the last two minutes of the programme then have more ads before the next programme.

As for the 26 minute ad break, it was 11:20 till 11:46 lunchtime, I've just dug out my note (yes, I took a note) and have the times. Damn I'm @nal.

They'd put a Scrubs episode into their typical 35 minute slot, 11:00 till 11:35, when it ended at 11:20, the next Scrubs was due to start at 11:35 and end at 12:10, but it actually started at 11:46 and ended on time (albeit with more ads in the middle).
26 mins of adverts in between the two episodes.

Maybe they c0cked up their schedule but it was a right nasty trick to pull if it was intentional (which I think it was).

Oh, I know how Whoopi gets when she's wound up.

Like

Never encourage evil.

I only watch Skins, and Misfits on it, so don't watch it a lot. Might be lucky with those programmes, adverts didn't seem out of the ordinary for me.

But when adverts come on, I usually do something while they are on.

Quoting for truth...

On TV tonight in the UK, at 6:45pm.
Tea time.
Basically kids' TV time.



Edit:

That slot is 6:45 till 9pm.
The uncut version is 90 minutes.

So not only are they padding out with adverts... they're also cutting out most of the movie as it's not suitable for the time of day they're showing it.

So, a 2hr 15 minute slot... for maybe 40 minutes of movie.