The annual MindShare Clutter Watch study measures how much non-programming activity occurs during an hour on television. It’s now routinely over 15 minutes except for CBS has 14:18 per hour. That’s up 58 percent from the good old days of the early 80’s when per-hour clutter stood at a brief 9.5 minutes.
It’s well known that increased clutter reduces ad recall and decreased clutter increases it but networks can’t themselves from sniffing the line of ever diminishing ad dollars to keep themselves high on revenue. Networks are now in a pre-orgasmic state of urgency, fully aware the ride is almost over but equally unable to stop the incessant pummeling of viewers until their clutter violently explodes in the face of viewers leading to the inevitable post-coital recovery period where networks will have to re-tool and limp back to a workable business model.
