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Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

> In the analogue era the rule of thumb was that ads could comprise no more than 33-50% of TV or radio programming, or of a magazine’s pages, says Rishad Tobaccowala, of Publicis, an advertising firm.

My tolerance is way lower than that now. Commercial TV is basically unwatchable, as is commercial radio. The internet is pretty horrible without an ad blocker. Anything more than 10-20% advertising just gets turned off immediately.

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Indeed, 50% advertising seems outright ridiculous. Want to watch a 2-hours film? You'll watch two hours (!) of advertising. That's silly.

My memory is that ~20 years ago or so bottom-tier cable networks would get to that point during off-peak hours. I had to be tremendously bored before even contemplating watching them, but it happened a time or two - and I discovered that that much advertising did make pretty much anything unwatchable.

Or they'll just cut out part of the movie and give you 90 minutes of ads with 90 minutes of movie. Australian free to air networks have done this.

I saw that a few times in New Zealand, too. I think I've seen TV shows lose scenes and lines for more ads, as well.

What really got me was back when the Battlestar Galactica pilot screened on TV. I was very keen to see it, and heard the pilot was three hours three minutes long.

It was split up, on TV3 I think, into two 180 minute slots, which means there were almost as many minutes of ads as there were of the show. I had to turn it off after one scene was interrupted in the middle for an ad-break that was longer than the scene, then we came back for a single line (now out-of-context) and one camera change, then cut to another break. (For reference, it was a scene with the nuke hitting the Galactica, then six minutes of ads interrupted by about 25 seconds of show.)

I turned off my TV, found an email address, and explained to them just why I was going to buy the DVD and not watch another second of their broadcast.

TV advertising is so intrusive these days that I haven't watched broadcast TV in years.

Or they will speed up the original movie or show so they can fit more ads.

https://lifehacker.com/network-television-stations-speed-up-...

Isn't that how super bowl works? Did try to see it once but was more ads than play. Not sure if all American "football" matches are like that or if it's only the final

My understanding is that Super Bowl adverts are more interesting than rugby-with-helmets

We don't watch adverts - Netflix, amazon, IPlayer. However each year we do make an effort to hunt out the Christmas adverts on YouTube -- John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Tesco etc.

Adverts cost a fortune. If 10 million people watch a half hour program, that's 1.5m hours of wasted time - costing something like $20m. Then you end up paying through increased prices of the goods being advertised (there's obviously a return on investment)

The Superbowl has sort of grown to become a traition where big companies fight to pay exorbitant amounts to play ads that are generally mildly more entertaining than the usual garbage. Its pretty specific to only the Superbowl, as its the most televised event in total viewership (at over 100 million). It is a lot of ads, but since football has a lot of ads anyway (more than normal TV) it isnt too abnormal. Football has a lot of ads because there is a lot of stopping during the game for time outs and such.

>> Football has a lot of ads because there is a lot of stopping during the game for time outs and such.

I'd always assumed the causation arrow was in the opposite direction. Or at least a big reason a sport is popular in the US is its ad-friendliness.

The other kind of football is flowing and therefore less attractive to ad supported TV networks.

TV has certainly increased the number of timeouts in college and professional football. However, the whole business of spotting the ball, lining the teams up, maybe huddling, means that American football has never been flowing to the degree that the other football is.

There are a few other reasons that American football is popular:

The action is short and violent, which makes it both exciting and yet easy to watch while chatting with your friends. You can't miss a critical shift in the play because you had to look away for a few moments.

Most men (and many women) played it as children and teenagers, and so have a strong sense of nostalgia for it.

Many small towns pretty much only had football as entertainment for many years prior to the internet - it has momentum among the older audiences.

Football represents the epitome of the American dream. Everyone "knows" someone who has "made it" to the NFL, no matter how tenuous the connection may be. It reinforces the idea that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough.

The problem is that supply on the internet is unlimited. You can make a webpage as long as you want and keep adding more ad units. It's also hard to measure with the sheer scale of it all.

Add in the complete lack of regulation and the highly political sales process for most large campaigns and you end up with the current mess.

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