Cable Channels - why so long advert breaks?

[Pinotage]

Why do cable channels - I'm thinking of UK Gold and the rest of the UK lot & History Channel especially - bludgeon viewers with such long advert breaks. Its not only the paid for adverts, but they'te top & tailed by long repetitive adverts for other programmes on that and partner channels.

So much so that a programme that ran 25 minutes whenshown originally on the BBC lasts 40 minutes on UK Gold.

Surely I'm not the only person who cannot bear watching the same adverts three times in 30 minutes and turn off?

[milly143]

I know what you mean and it drives me crazy! Channel 4 have a habit of making a really long advert about another program and then insist on playing it in every break. they get very boring, very quickly.

[Smiffy]

That's why I record a lot of programmes, then whizz through the ads when I watch them.

As an example my partner has never seen the Inspector Morse series before so we've been watching them on ITV3. We actually record them and watch them in 1 hour 35 minutes instead of the two hours that it takes watching them in real time.

Of course, we miss all those ads for personal loans, car insurance,  pro-biotic yoghurt drinks, broadband services, etc, etc, etc....

[manilow]

...and why on Sky do we have commercials at all?  We pay for the pleasure of watching all the repeats. Having said that I do try out most of the cleaning products I see on tv.  Sad or what?

[gavinbecky]

At one time ITV were only allowed to have 6 minutes of advert breaks an hour. However this changed a few years ago. It's going the way of USA. Will we end up having the Corrie titles come up then an advert straight away? You bet!

[petesgrayz]

Another thing that gets up my nose about the adverts on cable is, most programmes start on the hour or half past the hour and last for 30 mins or 1 hour.  This means the commercial breaks are on at the same time on all the channels.  This means you can't even switch over during the breaks because the breaks are on the other channels at thesame time.