Cable Companies Shortening Ad Breaks In Response to Cord Cutters

I have been cable free for years now and use Netflix and Hulu ad free. At this point I will never go back to anything with commercials if I am paying for it.
If I use a free service and I have to watch commercials then so be it, but double dipping via commercials and a monthly fee is not going to happen for me ever again.

Also it is time that all the low viewership channels just go away. If a channel can not function on its own content without being bundled then tough shit.
These 200 channels that have 50k viewers should be paid for by people that want them not "subsidized" with crazy cable costs.

A la Carte or die.
 
Haven't had cable for a few years now, if I could get a truly unlimited data plan for $40/mo that I could use with a hotspot at home I'd cancel my internet service too. Since that's not possible afaik, I'm paying $40 for internet, $14 for 3GB mobile data per month, and $90/yr for prime. $61.50/mo total.

If cable can get me all that for $80/mo, I might think about getting it...probably not.
 
I just use an antenna in my attic i paid $100 for hooked to my TV.. Im 40 miles from the transmitters, they work great.
 
They are gonna cut back the amount of commercials in commercial breaks, but are these guys gonna also remove that crap they throw on the bottom 20% of the screen. It is really annoying as hell when they do that and cover up things like subtitles.
 
I personally hate when ad's or promos pop up on the bottom or the corner of the show I am watching.

These are even worse then the commercial breaks.
I've lost count of how many times one of these stupid popup ads as blocked something important on the screen.

Plus you can't skip them without skipping part of the show.

I'd rather have regular long commercial breaks since I mainly watch recorded or delayed shows on my DVR. :D
 
I just use an antenna in my attic i paid $100 for hooked to my TV.. Im 40 miles from the transmitters, they work great.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend setting up a plex server with a HD Homerun - I love the plex DVR functionality (now with automatic commercial removal) and haven't bothered watching "live" OTA in a while.
 
I haven't had cable for around 6 years, before that I DVRed everything, before that my family recorded shows that we really wanted to sit down and watch with a VCR. Endless ads is part of the problem, needing to tune in at a specific time is another big one. The garbage cable box, garbage encoding quality, high costs ... and many more issues ... I doubt I'll ever go back.
 
Most cartoons and shows that have 30min blocks are generally 10mins of show and 20mins of commercials.

Sometimes channels would slightly speed up the playing speed of the shows to just the point of just barely noticing something isn't quite right with the sound or movements to get to commercials quicker.

Channels even split screen the previous show's credits that are speed up with the next show's intro to decrease the show time for increased commercials.
 
How are they going to cut commercial time and have proper show time blocks. The shows aren't going to suddenly become longer. And if new content is to be made longer, that changes the whole production cost structure. They can't have dead air, so cut down the commercials and......?
 
Most cartoons and shows that have 30min blocks are generally 10mins of show and 20mins of commercials.

Sometimes channels would slightly speed up the playing speed of the shows to just the point of just barely noticing something isn't quite right with the sound or movements to get to commercials quicker.

Channels even split screen the previous show's credits that are speed up with the next show's intro to decrease the show time for increased commercials.


30 minute shows are ~18 minutes without credits 21 minutes with credits, hour long shows are ~39 minutes without credits 43 minutes with credits..

but i'd definitely say cutting down on commercials might help slow down the cord cutting rate but it's not the key reason for it.
 
I went to a movie in a theater the other night and had to sit through 20 min of freaking television commercials. If I hadn't just dropped almost 50 bucks for the wife and I to go and get a couple drinks and a popcorn I might have just walked out.

Not even giving me 100% free cable could make me sit through one commercial on a screen at home anymore.
Show up later. I sometimes walk in early, in which case you get the commercials for TV programming, but most of the time I show up a few minutes before the show starts.
 
Wasn't the original purpose for paid cable TV to eliminate commercials for those customer willing to subscribe?
Pretty sure cable was created because some areas had poor OTA reception. In the 80s, if a station was struggling for viewers (see early MTV) they had very few commercials, but once they had an audience they added commercials, which allowed them to become profitable.
 
Have to wonder about Fox's claim of 13 minutes per hour. I remember back in the 90's when I was taping one of the Star Trek series and pausing during the commercials that the length of show went from 45 minutes counting the credits to 43.5 minutes. So 16.5 minutes of commercials per hour. So either Fox has already scaled back on commercials to some degree or they are only counting Fox commercials and not the locally inserted ones. IIRC, the Star Trek Original Series ran about 53 minutes of show per hour.

Amazon has current episodes of X-Files for download (rental?...whatever) and aside from the first episode (which was super short), they run 44-45 minutes, so we know that that hour has 15 minutes of commercials. That said, they are probably only referring to network commercials, not local ads.
 
This makes me hate traditional TV less, but they will never have me back unless they let me choose my channels a la carte for a reasonable price per channel
 
Then I got an email "please stay we'll give you the same plan 40% off!". So I called knowing full well that was going to be some fuzzy math BS. They cut my plan down a tier and the price was.... 12% lower? Um, wtf are these companies smoking?

Their fuzzy math is epic at times. I cut the cord with my ISP to switch to another, was paying about $100. Got a call telling me they want me back as a customer, and they'd give me a great deal. I was curious, called in and they offered me the same package I had before for $140. For that insult I kept the operator on the line for an hour while I ranted about how dumb the offer was.
 
Pretty sure cable was created because some areas had poor OTA reception. In the 80s, if a station was struggling for viewers (see early MTV) they had very few commercials, but once they had an audience they added commercials, which allowed them to become profitable.

The main reason I remember for cable years ago was to provide access to channels that where not available over the air.
Back then you could get HBO and I think Show Time over the air.
The signals where scrambled, and there where people selling kits to build descrambler boxes.

Once cable was common enough, these premium channels switched to cable. No more OTA pirate boxes :cool:
If you wanted anything other than the local channels, you needed cable, and later Satellite TV.
Most of the premium channels where commercial free back then. Local channels had commercials of course.
Many, many years ago, I remember a huge controversy when the city found out that the new cable company was planning on adding the playboy channel. :eek:

Now days, many new apartment buildings and neighborhoods are prewired for cable. There is antenna connection available.
Legally they have to let you install a satellite dish, depending on the location of you apartment, that might not be possible, so you are stuck with cable or streaming.

It's hilly where I live, and I'm on the wrong side of the hill, so I get no over the air channels.
I either have to pay for cable, or get satellite.
The wife likes to leave the TV on most the day, so streaming isn't viable since it would push me way over the cable data caps.
 
A case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. This poor goose has been bled slowly but surely. For a 55/5 ratio across all channels, i might pay a service fee of 10$ for such cable ( and i mean all channels, and dvr that i can buy myself, locked-in equals f-u). For cable as is, not one red cent i would pay.
It truly BOGGLES my mind anyone will pay for cable as it is now.
They are screwed however, its a jungle of contracts that will never be worked out in order to rebuild the entire landscape... The best thing that can happen is several large companies to go broke, dead and broke, so something more functional and reasonable to customers can be put in place... But there needs to be some collapse or sorts, sadly.
 
You said 20%? That's admirable, but anything less than 80% won't have any noticeable effect. My patience runs out in about 3 minutes. And that's when I switch off the tv or go to another channel even if I was interested in the program on air.
 
And I don't like how streaming has reduced our previously fast unlimited cheap internet to what we have now. You'll all go back eventually and drop the streaming as shows are still made to have an ad buffer in their run time, putting them outside of reliable set determined hours, and the streaming companies will introduce ads or just simply keep their price increases each year eventually pricing themselves out as they start to become liable for the internet bandwidth they consume. Or even worse, it'll all just be one huge variety hour where there is just prattle between the same hosts between shows, you'll beg for ads. :D
 
Personally I'm sick of the American TV formula of everything being either dumbed down as fuck, or hyped as balls. Compare the documentaries found on places like the Discovery or History channels with something like BBC documentaries.

Fast and Loud + the Kardashians vs Fred Dibnah. No fucking comparison.









Everything about American TV is catered to the lowest common denominator.
 
And I don't like how streaming has reduced our previously fast unlimited cheap internet to what we have now. You'll all go back eventually and drop the streaming as shows are still made to have an ad buffer in their run time, putting them outside of reliable set determined hours, and the streaming companies will introduce ads or just simply keep their price increases each year eventually pricing themselves out as they start to become liable for the internet bandwidth they consume. Or even worse, it'll all just be one huge variety hour where there is just prattle between the same hosts between shows, you'll beg for ads. :D
Wont bother me. There are few shows that I enjoy even online, and of those there are few that are also on TV. Even if they were, I wouldn't be able to watch them unless I recorded them. I'll watch OTA TV when I have nothing else to do, otherwise I'll catch up on my favorite shows on Amazon or crunchyroll. They need to go under, so someone with better ideas can come up and replace them, imho. They can't compete anymore, and they're struggling to stay afloat.
 
Hard to compete with ads cut to ZERO seconds ever. Now will Cable companies start throttling internet speeds of the non-cable TV purchasing customers?
 
I'll believe it when I see it. I can see it for news and reality programming, and it'll take at least a season for shows in production to expand their running times.

But have a hard time seeing a two minute/hr ads limit for sports programming. Those MLB/NFL/NASCAR/etc broadcast licenses are not cheap.
 
The main reason I remember for cable years ago was to provide access to channels that where not available over the air.
Back then you could get HBO and I think Show Time over the air.
The signals where scrambled, and there where people selling kits to build descrambler boxes.

Once cable was common enough, these premium channels switched to cable. No more OTA pirate boxes :cool:
If you wanted anything other than the local channels, you needed cable, and later Satellite TV.
Most of the premium channels where commercial free back then. Local channels had commercials of course.
Many, many years ago, I remember a huge controversy when the city found out that the new cable company was planning on adding the playboy channel. :eek:

Now days, many new apartment buildings and neighborhoods are prewired for cable. There is antenna connection available.
Legally they have to let you install a satellite dish, depending on the location of you apartment, that might not be possible, so you are stuck with cable or streaming.

It's hilly where I live, and I'm on the wrong side of the hill, so I get no over the air channels.
I either have to pay for cable, or get satellite.
The wife likes to leave the TV on most the day, so streaming isn't viable since it would push me way over the cable data caps.
Pretty sure if there was HBO over a scrambled UHF signal, it was only because cable didn't exist in some areas (though I don't remember that...i do remember WHT, which was kind of HBO lite, but it wasn't HBO and it was around for about 9 years starting in the late 70s).

HBO wouldn't have been involved in this, since, AFAIK, HBO (and Time Warner) had no cable interests back then. Never mind that until there were addressable cable boxes (late 80s or early 90s), the only thing blocking HBO was an easily removed filter where the cable came into a house, which made stealing it easier than buying a cable box.
 
Pretty sure if there was HBO over a scrambled UHF signal, it was only because cable didn't exist in some areas (though I don't remember that...i do remember WHT, which was kind of HBO lite, but it wasn't HBO and it was around for about 9 years starting in the late 70s).

HBO wouldn't have been involved in this, since, AFAIK, HBO (and Time Warner) had no cable interests back then. Never mind that until there were addressable cable boxes (late 80s or early 90s), the only thing blocking HBO was an easily removed filter where the cable came into a house, which made stealing it easier than buying a cable box.

The descramblers where for the over the air UHF signals.
You could buy the circuit board, and most the other parts where available at radio shack. Yes it was that long ago :p
 
My kids watch the most awful shit too... Let's play videos????? Wtf!!

They don't play with the same goddamn toys when they have em

There is nothing wrong with lets play videos. Some are much worse than others I will give you that. But some times it is fun just to watch not so much for the game but for the personality. Watching somebody play Emily wants to play in VR can be great if they are a terrified of horror games. Watches somebody jump so badly they pulled the headset out of the computer when they turned and ran.

Honestly I'm amazed it's taken this long for the cable companies to start reacting. I mean they had to have seen this coming a long ways off... right?

The issue comes down to profit. Making an item cheaper doesn't mean that you will sell more. So if I make a widget for $20 per widget and sell 2000 widgets a month I make $40,000 a month. lets say i drop that down to $15 per widget, and projections show that I will sell 2500 per month then, that is only $37,500. So even though I will sell more widgets I am better off to keep my pricing at $20 and sell to fewer people to make more money. Same here, fewer commercials means a loss of money from what is being cut. They would have a formula to say how many people paying for service makes up a single commercial so as long as they can sell the spots for a good amount of money losing a certain number of people doesn't hurt their bottom line as much as losing minutes sold. For example, a 30 second spot during American Idol will run you $475,000. So if you cut that from 13 to 12 minutes, you have just lost $950,000 from that minute that you cut. Normally a national show runs closer to about $100,000 on average from what I can find doing a quick search. So looking at that, if you cut 1 minute per house, that is 24 minutes or $2.4 million a day assuming the cheapest spot for all shows. Looking at 30 days average for a month you are looking at $72 million. If you assume they get $10 per sub, they would need to lose 7.2 million people before they have lost more due to people leaving than from cutting 1 minute per hour of commercials.
 
The descramblers where for the over the air UHF signals.
You could buy the circuit board, and most the other parts where available at radio shack. Yes it was that long ago :p
Were these OTA? I don't remember HBO or Showtime being UHF. Satellite sure. No doubt satellite is through the air but different than traditional OTA.
I was in the Air Force and out of country when this would have been starting so I wouldn't know for sure. It's just that I didn't see HBO or Showtime until I saw satellite or cable.
 
AFAIK commercial time cost is still decided by Neilson ratings or something like it which is only accurate for a very small percentage of the actual audience for any given show. Actual show time has decreased quite a bit over the years. IIRC back in the 50's and 60's you got about 26 minutes of show and four for commercials; usually a minute at the beginning and end, and a break in the middle somewhere. Now there's a break every ten minutes, max, and shows are specifically written with 'cliffhanger' ends for each ten minute mini episode. Then you get the recap of the previous ten minutes which eats up another minute of two, and you wind up with 20% less actual show to watch. Then to add insult to injury, today you can find shows that are compressed so that you get 13 minutes of show and 17 minutes of commercial in a half hour slot (The ones I've caught doing that were Everybody loves Raymond and Friends, feel free to check your favorite half hour of commercials).

Sports are the worst. in 1970 you could watch an entire NFL game in a little over two hours. Today it's usually three +.
NBA games were often broadcast in 90 minutes. Now three hours. They stick in a break in the game so often, if you're actually at the field you might just be bored to death. So they made the ball more lively to get the scores up, all to compensate for all that commercial time. In many cases, you now have time to take a dump during a routine commercial break.

Those profits have to come from somewhere.
 
Personally I'm sick of the American TV formula of everything being either dumbed down as fuck, or hyped as balls. Compare the documentaries found on places like the Discovery or History channels with something like BBC documentaries.

Fast and Loud + the Kardashians vs Fred Dibnah. No fucking comparison.


Everything about American TV is catered to the lowest common denominator.
Well I wouldn't even call them documentaries, they're recorded in the reality format each and all of them. With transparent attempts at dramatization. And ZERO, NADA, NIL, 0 educational value.
 
Personally I'm sick of the American TV formula of everything being either dumbed down as fuck, or hyped as balls. Compare the documentaries found on places like the Discovery or History channels with something like BBC documentaries.

Fast and Loud + the Kardashians vs Fred Dibnah. No fucking comparison.









Everything about American TV is catered to the lowest common denominator.


The problem is that is what gets views here. If that stopped being the kind of content more people watched they would stop airing it. However we (on average as a country) care more about gossip and the lives of others than we do real content. We carry on more about the lives of the royal family here than they do in England as far as i know.
 
Do like the Japanese. The tv show is uninterrupted. It plays beginning to end. Then inbetween tv shows, they have like 10-15 min of ads. Then the next show starts. The only time you really see ads during a tv show, is the tv show is like a 1-2 hour long show. So at 30 mins, a few ads.
 
Were these OTA? I don't remember HBO or Showtime being UHF. Satellite sure. No doubt satellite is through the air but different than traditional OTA.
I was in the Air Force and out of country when this would have been starting so I wouldn't know for sure. It's just that I didn't see HBO or Showtime until I saw satellite or cable.

Had to do a little research, this was 40 years ago, and my memory isn't quite as good as it used to be :(

This was before HBO, and it was called ON-TV. Broadcast scrambled on UHF channel 52 in the LA area. Late 70's early 80's, back when I was in high school/college.
 
Had to do a little research, this was 40 years ago, and my memory isn't quite as good as it used to be :(

This was before HBO, and it was called ON-TV. Broadcast scrambled on UHF channel 52 in the LA area. Late 70's early 80's, back when I was in high school/college.

A few people at my work were talking about that service a few weeks ago. About the same age as you and they also used that service, talked about how most people used descramblers to watch it.
 
Had to do a little research, this was 40 years ago, and my memory isn't quite as good as it used to be :(

This was before HBO, and it was called ON-TV. Broadcast scrambled on UHF channel 52 in the LA area. Late 70's early 80's, back when I was in high school/college.
That makes more sense. FWIW, HBO was around since the early 70s and apparently switched from using a microwave to send content to cable providers to satellite in 1975. I know when I left the NE in 81, we had no cable in the area. However where we moved to did have it (newer area).

Back on topic, to get an idea about commercials, one need only look at recordings of MTV. By 85, they had tons of commercials, so commercials aren't a new thing. I'll add that while they're annoying, without them, it's unlikely you'd get a Walking Dead or the Americans on what is essentially basic cable.

I guess one question is how much commercial revenue per viewer they get for a 1 hour show. I know i'm waiting for Hulu to join the 21st century with 5.1 surround. I'd pay them for content in a heart beat if they'd do that. If CBS All Access gets more content, then I'll probably subscribe to them through Amazon (higher resolution and 5.1 surround).
 
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