Television Advertising Overload

If you think that there is more and more advertising than ever today on television you are probably right. Advertising is coming at you more often than ever on television and in new and sometimes unethical ways. Here are some of the trends I have noticed:

Extra Commercials: I first noticed this change a few months ago when two of the shows I watch regularly changed the length of their segments. Both Fast Money and Mad Money are 60 minute shows on CNBC. Each used to go to commercial only once between the 45 minute mark and the end of the show at the bottom of the hour. Then a few months back they both starting splitting that last 12-13 minute segment into two segments 5-6 minutes long. This allowed them to sneak in an extra 2-3 minutes of advertising.

At first I thought this was simply a sign that they were able to sell some extra advertising space but I have since come to the conclusion that this move is more likely motivated by greed. They are just trying to cram more and more commercials into their time slot. It's one thing if a show is successful and is able to sell more advertising space. It's quite another to dramatically change the flow and content of the show for the sake of the all mighty dollar.

Coming Back From A Commercial To Go To A Commercial: Both Fast Money and Mad Money occasionally employ the most evil of all advertising tactics. They come back from a commercial to go to a commercial. This happened most recently yesterday on Fast Money at about 5:51pm ET. They came back from 3 minutes of commercials, talked for about 15 seconds, and then went to 3 more minutes of commercials.

Between the extra advertising segment and the coming back from commercial to go to a commercial, my opinion of both Fast Money and Mad Money has gone way down. In fact, I regularly switch the channel to ESPN to watch PTI when that first commercial break happens at 45 past the hour. There is so little actual content and commentary from that point to the bottom of the hour that I am not really missing anything. They want their viewers to sit there through those extra ads but I refuse to do so.

Product Placement: Product placement is nothing new in the world of television. An occasional can of Coke here or an Apple logo there is no big deal in my opinion. Unfortunately product placement has gotten totally out of hand. The best example of this recently was the How I Met Your Mother (which isn't even about how Ted met his wife anymore) episode on 10/11/2010. They should have just retitled the show "How I Met Microsoft" that night. The number of product placements Microsoft had in this 22 minute show was incredulous. I am not going to quantify them as it's already been done. Check it out! The bottom line is that it was extremely egregious.

Cutting Out Content: This is the newest and most disturbing trend I have seen. Some networks are now editing classic shows and reducing their running length so they can cram in more ads. One of my favorite shows growing up was The Wonder Years. There was no mistaking when it came on the air as the Joe Cocker cover of The Beatles "With A Little Help From My Friends" was always played at the top of the show. The Wonder Years is now on The Hub on weekday evenings, but it's theme song is often left on the cutting room floor. In addition, The Hub seems to edit out some of the content of the actual show as well. Quite often the show will suddenly go to commercial in the middle of a scene and when it comes back from commercial it is in the middle of a new, unrelated scene.

Mood: Enraged.


Song of the Day:

"What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me."

-With A Little Help From My Friends

Joe Cocker