As if consumers haven’t rebelled enough about increased commercial and promotional proliferation on television, broadcasters are inserting the knife deeper and twisting it more aggressively. While ABC says the total number of minutes per hour of advertising hasn’t change in three years, the network, which began the practice last season, this year has required show producers to slice episodes into six acts versus the traditional four increasing the number of breaks per hour and angering viewers in the process.
Seemingly oblivious to people’s abhorance of advertising, ABC Ad Sales Chief Mike Shaw said, “We’ve had the exact same commercial load for three years in a row. People must “feel that way because they love the show so much, that they really notice it when the breaks are there.” That’s precious.
Everwood producer Greg Berlanti doesn’t like the practice saying, “It makes you long for the day when everything comes out in boxed sets of DVDs so you can enjoy it.” Given the rise in outraged, DVR-enabled consumers, that day may not be far off. The current television advertising model is a losing proposition. As broadcasters struggle to maintain ad revenue by shoving more ads through consumer’s eyeballs, people, increasingly armed with methods of avoiding ads, will rebel, lowering ad viewership thereby causing broadcasters to foist even more insanity-based methods of forced ad viewership upon consumers until the entire broadcast television model implodes on itself and finally experiences the death it so dearly deserves.
