Advt breaks to be shorter and more frequent

Press, 15 May 1989, Page 17

Advt breaks to be shorter and more frequent

PA Auckland New Zealand viewers will soon have to make shorter calls, if they can, at their comfort stations, and quicker cups of tea during commercial breaks. In a move aping practices in Australia and the United States, one which that also harks back to the days of South Pacific Television in the 19705, Television New Zealand is radically changing its programme presentation pattern from June 5. From then, there will no longer be three commercial breaks in an hour but four, placed about eight minutes apart. There will be two commercial breaks within any half-hour programme. The present commercial break between programmes, sometimes lasting as long as 3>/ 2 minutes, will vanish altogether. Shows will flow from one to the other with the first commercial break appearing, perhaps, three or four minutes or even longer into the programme.

There will, similarly, be commercial breaks placed four or five minutes, more or less, before the end of each show.

There will not, though, be any more commercial time.

The present commercial hour of 46 minutes (14 minutes of commercials) which came into effect last year, will remain, along with the commercial half-hour of 23 minutes (seven minutes of commercials). This allows for more than 14 minutes of commercials to be run within one hour provided that, between 4 p.m. and 8 p. m., they do not exceed 42 minutes in all or, between 8 p.m. and midnight, do not exceed 40

minutes. The TVNZ presentation says that, in practice, the new pattern should be more congenial to viewers in that the commercial breaks in a peak hour, though up by one, will be shorter, say two or 2j/ 2 minutes in duration, the “Herald” reports. The changes are closely patterned with Australia’s Channel 9, with which TVNZ has major links. Having no commercials between programmes is aimed at deterring viewers from switching channels after one show ends and before another starts.

This may not matter a lot now, Television One and Network Two being stablemates, but will matter a lot in November when TV3 is scheduled to start, the “Herald” reports.

South Pacific Television, in the days when it was a fierce competitor of Television One, used the same ploy to keep viewers tuned in to its shows. This ended when SPTV was wiped and, under the tutelage of the Broadcasting Corporation chief executive, lan Cross, the networks became lookalike.

Subsequently, the then programming chief, Des Monaghan, now with Channel 7 in Sydney, decreed that commercial breaks be restricted to three in any hour. Viewers who feel like quibbling about the prospect of four commercial breaks, as against three, should bear in mind that in Australia some. hour long shows have as many as six commercial breaks.

Some hour-long American shows, such as “Matlock,” have as many as five or six commercial breaks built in. And “Sons and Daughters” has two in each commercial halfhour episode.