Commercial Breaks Peacock - UK Originals/Acquosition

[rkolsen]

Okay, so I have Peacock Ad free as premium is free if you’re a Comcast subscriber and it was a few extra bucks to bump it to get no ads. 

Anyway I was watching a “Peacock Original” Trigger Point (ITV) even though I don’t see any production relationship between Comcast/Universal or and HTM. 

It seemed like to me there were commercial breaks every four minutes (as denoted by the title card - something I learned about UK TV the title card denoted breaks). I know in the UK there’s a 7 minute average per hour law. Now does the law dictate the frequency. Or is this just the show more likely chopped up to different segments for international audiences?

From what I understand ad breaks on Peacock are under a minute so it’s usually not that much time. 

The running time of the show is equivalent to an hours long show in the US - 41-44 minutes. But we usually have longer spans of time between breaks which then result into 2-3 minute times.

[Neil Jones]

The title card itself doesn't necessarily denote breaks (indeed on a lot of older content you just get "End of Part One"), but the concept was because of the need for separation and to clearly identify where programme ends and advertising begins. These days "End of Part One/Two/Three" has fallen by the wayside in favour of the title cards and a break bumper either side of the adverts.

It is an average of 12 minutes advertising per clock hour in the UK, so an hour long programme runs (typically) 48 minutes.

Of course once what happens to those breaks outside of UK transmission is not ITV's problem, so if Peacock have decided to shove extra breaks into it, that's pretty much up to them on their streaming service.

[technologist]

These are the rules
“ Code on the scheduling of television advertising”
Better known as COSTA …
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on...dvertising
Part A is for what you can see In the UK.

In an hours programme three internal breaks…
Because the minuteage of advertising is done by clock hour And the love of programmes to be billed as starting on the hour
The ad break on the hour is typically short or even non existent
With trailers/promos so that if there is a breakdown Which delays or advances  the schedule
there is no chance of more than the allowed quantity of adverts being  played out

Note also there are content  restrictions in the BCAP code 
Like no tobacco adverts limited on alcohol and things not to be advertised to children

[telebox2001]

All seems very complex. I'm guessing that's why X Factor was ad-break central but programmes around it would have a very light inventory.

Interesting point on overseas live programmes; if ITV had Eurovision, by my interpretation of the rules Ofcom would be happy to let them take the 7 or 8 minute advertising break before the results are unveiled? Same situation for British simulcasts of WWE Wrestling etc?

[Brekkie]

Well OFCOM rules are irrelevant to the situation here of Trigger Point airing in the US. Indeed I'm not sure how advertising rules apply to streaming services on both sides of the Atlantic - here they do seem to basically follow the TV pattern of three and a half minutes maximum and only split shows in the way they're split for broadcast. From what I've read in the US the catch up services generally have a lighter ad load than broadcast, although catch up is a bit more complex there.

As for Trigger Point - I gave up after the first episode so can't remember much about it's style but did the "countdown" screens used in the promos feature prominently in the episodes as a way of dividing scenes, which maybe where the cuts to ads are here. Also possible Peacock are experimenting with more frequent ads but shorter ad breaks, but every 4-5 minutes would clearly be very frustrating, even if it was just one or two ads per break.


As for the theoretical ITV Eurovision question. Firstly Eurovision wouldn't permit that anyway but if they did I'm not so sure the flexibility enables longer ad breaks - generally it is to permit shorter more frequent ad breaks such as one minute breaks between sets in tennis, rounds in boxing or overs in cricket. I think the maximum ad break length and maximum of 12 minutes of ads per hour applies in all circumstances, but in situations (usually breaking news rather than pre-planned events) where less ads may be aired than normal there can be an agreement to transfer that airtime to another day.

[rkolsen]

Well OFCOM rules are irrelevant to the situation here of Trigger Point airing in the US. Indeed I'm not sure how advertising rules apply to streaming services on both sides of the Atlantic - here they do seem to basically follow the TV pattern of three and a half minutes maximum and only split shows in the way they're split for broadcast. From what I've read in the US the catch up services generally have a lighter ad load than broadcast, although catch up is a bit more complex there.

As for Trigger Point - I gave up after the first episode so can't remember much about it's style but did the "countdown" screens used in the promos feature prominently in the episodes as a way of dividing scenes, which maybe where the cuts to ads are here. Also possible Peacock are experimenting with more frequent ads but shorter ad breaks, but every 4-5 minutes would clearly be very frustrating, even if it was just one or two ads per break.


As for the theoretical ITV Eurovision question. Firstly Eurovision wouldn't permit that anyway but if they did I'm not so sure the flexibility enables longer ad breaks - generally it is to permit shorter more frequent ad breaks such as one minute breaks between sets in tennis, rounds in boxing or overs in cricket. I think the maximum ad break length and maximum of 12 minutes of ads per hour applies in all circumstances, but in situations (usually breaking news rather than pre-planned events) where less ads may be aired than normal there can be an agreement to transfer that airtime to another day.

Maybe I will try looking at it on ITV using a VPN. The title cards could also seemed to separate different scenes.

[technologist]

How a programme is parted for different Slots / territories / Regulatory regimes is far from simple!
... and here in the UK we have programmes made for / by the BBC which were never made to be parted
yet they have Ad breaks put in when shown on UKTV (which means a half hour programme runs in a 40 min slot)
Some break points are more elegant than others!!!!!

If you are making programmes for a wide distribution you are likely to be aware of having "points" to use a radio term
where the action can be opted out (or back in) as well as the formal Break or Break opportunity by using captions.
so that it is easier to produce the version for the particular market. ... Note aware rather than actually scripting every one....
Of course these days there is the Technology to do this (which happens to be how you delver to Netflix or in UHD to the BBC)
its called IMF - see the short films bs401 to 6 at https://mrmxf.com/shorts/ or if you like SMPTE ST 2067

On the Eurovision thing - OFCOM could be happy if there was more than one break in the hour
and that the hourly minutage was not exceeded... but a 8 min break full of adverts would not be acceptable.
but they are currently consulting - so views welcome!

[Kunst]

More annoying I think is that UKTV should use 75/80 mins slots for original 58 mins programmes from the BBC, but they're too obsessed by the tight US-like schedule approach based on the half hour and the top of the hour.

So programmes shouldn't be edited, more annoying for dramas than anything else.

As for Eurovision: the breaks aren't particularly long or frequent, this means that broadcasters mostly give up on the potentially 12 minutes advertising per hour.

After all, many public broadcasters can broadcast much less than that by law (the ones that carry advertising) in Europe, either on average, or on maximum.

On RAI advertising can't surpass something like 7/8 minutes per hour, against the 12 minutes per hour on commercial operations like Mediaset and Discovery

[Aplus1]

More annoying I think is that UKTV should use 75/80 mins slots for original 58 mins programmes from the BBC, but they're too obsessed by the tight US-like schedule approach based on the half hour and the top of the hour.

UKTV tried that approach (and many others) in their early days, but it didn't work very well for them, because when almost every other channel schedules on the hour and half hour, the number of new viewers becoming available to change channels at, say, 40 minutes past the hour, is fairly small.

[Brekkie]

They air far more in the 40/80 minute format than they don't nowadays, certainly with scripted content. It's a bit different with factual where often commercial transmissions are a consideration from the beginning and segments may be included for the BBC transmission which are intended to be dropped from commercial airings.

[JAS84]

Yeah, there's a reason Homes Under The Hammer for example has those recaps/coming up pieces between each segment. Cutting those out gives room for at least one ad break - and they can re-edit it to only show two properties per episode instead of three too. It's pretty flexible, and a lot of the daytime fodder is similar.

[Transmission]

All seems very complex.  I'm guessing that's why X Factor was ad-break central but programmes around it would have a very light inventory.

Interesting point on overseas live programmes; if ITV had Eurovision, by my interpretation of the rules Ofcom would be happy to let them take the 7 or 8 minute advertising break before the results are unveiled?  Same situation for British simulcasts of WWE Wrestling etc?

WWE very dependably take five breaks per hour, so it's quite easy to plan for compared to a lot of other American productions but as those breaks are all usually over three minutes long, they all need some promos in to keep the commercial content below the 12 minutes. 

With a lot of American sports you end up sometimes having to drop commercials to keep below the 12 minute clock hour. The rules about overseas live programmes are more about having to follow their break patterns, for example it's not uncommon for the US to take a long break in the build-up to a sporting event, come back live for about 10 seconds just to suddenly go for another long break. And as Brekkie said, the other rules about live events are to allow for things like 30 second breaks between overs in cricket or at the change of ends in tennis, where there wouldn't be time for a full-length break for hours, they're not about taking really long breaks - if an event was taking an eight-minute break, the UK break would be heavily padded out with promos or perhaps even a short filler (though in the context of Eurovision, they're still providing live content so you'd either rejoin at an appropriate point or not take the break at all).

[Brekkie]

Straying off topic slightly but Sky in domestic sports coverage almost always just before kick off go to a break, return for a very short part which is usually just promoting other Sky content, before then going for another shorter break.

In the event ITV or whoever had an 8 minute slot to fill they'd likely do something similar - there used to be fairly strictly rules about how long the bits between the ads could be but they could probably get away with just a couple of minutes nowadays. This is also where the 40 minute limit on primetime ads is useful and probably why the PSBs have previously not wanted to drop it - it gives them that flexibility to run events in primetime where they are limited in how often they can show ads by redistributing them elsewhere.

The US are much more willing to experiment with ad load than we see with British broadcasters, who usually pretty strictly stick with the three and a half minutes + 1 promo they're allowed in every break. Whilst the norm in the US is the 5 or 6 breaks an hour totalling 18-20 minutes of the hour (with promos) they do stray from that occassionally with things like one minute ad breaks, split screen ads or even hours of shows presented commercial free, but in conjunction with a partner. Here it seems even though there is flexibility within the existing rules to try some other strategies it's rare other than the odd programme beginning immediately after the last (the norm in the US) the only thing done different with ad breaks is the "special" ad breaks which have become quite frequent on ITV and C4 in recent years in an attempt to keep viewers watching throughout.