If you increasingly find yourself irritated by the number of commercials airing during your favorite broadcast show, you may not be imagining it. In 2008, the number of minutes of commercials shown on the broadcast networks during prime time increased 3.5 percent over 2007.
Granted, 3.5 percent may not be a huge number. But that's 3.5 percent in one year.
According to this chart, there has been an increase of almost 20 percent in total prime-time commercial minutes on broadcast networks since 2000. Since 2000! Not since Texaco Star Theater or The Honeymooners — we're talking about 20 percent more broadcast commercial minutes just since the year Survivor premiered.
[IMPORTANT CAVEAT: These are totals across all networks, not per-hour averages. That means that the simple fact that MyNetworkTV, which is counted here, didn't exist in 2000 could affect the numbers — although at that time, what's now the CW was split into the WB and UPN. What I'm saying is that what constitutes "broadcast television" shifts in various ways that make longer-term comparisons tougher to interpret than they seem. Averages — especially per-hour network-specific averages — would be be more meaningful.]
For people who watch their TV live, this means (naturally) that you're sitting through more ads than you used to. But even if you watch everything on a DVR and fast-forward through the commercials, the increased minutes given over to advertising aren't available for content.
Cable is getting squeezed as well — witness Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's recent dust-up with AMC over its desire to cut show length by two minutes to fit in more ads. (Weiner won, kind of, though the network got its extra two minutes of ads anyway.)
Just another lovely day in the economic life of broadcast television in 2009.
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