Too Many TV Commercials?

NOTE: The following is excerpted from an article covering several aspects of German television programming and regulation. None of it is applicable to television in the United States except this segment.

The next time you moan and groan because of television commercials, just thank your lucky stars you don’t live in the United States. There, commercials run almost every other minute.

That’s what market researchers at TNS Media found during the first quarter of 2008. According to them, commercial messages made up more than 27 minutes per hour during prime time. Nearly half of that consists of so-called Branded Entertainment, something we here in Germany would call covert advertising. More than twelve minutes of “entertainment with commercial content” shows that commercial broadcasters in America have found the answer to increased use of digital video recorders with the ability to automatically block out commercials. Instead of commercial breaks, the commercial is now simply written into the program itself. Talk show hosts (like our Harald Schmidt) are thus being paid to mention products during the course of their conversation.

To the chagrin of many airtime salespeople over here, the nearly 20-year old European television guidelines are still in effect. According to these, advertising may make up no more than 15 percent of the daily broadcast clock with a maximum of 20 percent in any given hour. But even here, advertisers are working feverishly to develop acceptable formats for “entertainment with commercial content.”

Up until now, broadcasters making such attempts have been given the “yellow card” by national media agencies.

(Trans. note: For those unfamiliar with the game Americans call soccer and the rest of the world calls football, referees show the yellow card to players guilty of misconduct. Any player getting two yellow cards in one game is then shown the red card and is ejected from the playing field.)