October 17, 2005, 8:41 a.m.
Commander & Commercials
The future of network television looks bleak.

The latest rage on network television is ABC’s Commander in Chief. For those bookworms who refuse to turn on the tube, the program is about a woman who inherits the position of president of the United States. It was my wife who encouraged me to watch the first installment of the program. Hey, not bad. Geena Davis plays the president (Mackenzie Allen) and Peter Coyote (Gen. Warren Keaton) has been nominated to fill her vacated slot as vice president.

But I have a problem. Network executives — who like all of us have a profit motive — have an incentive to partition their programming with paying commercials. Nothing wrong with that. But for most of us, there’s a reasonable number of commercials and time that should be allocated to pay for a program. If Commander is indicative of program-to-commercial ratios today, I am convinced that the ultimate demise of network television is at hand.

I don’t come to this conclusion qualitatively, but quantitatively. With my stopwatch and notepad in hand, I tracked the actual program time, commercial time, and number of commercials that filled one hour of Commander. Here are the results:

Timing Commander from the top of the hour, the first installment of the program ran for seven minutes and 50 seconds. This seemed reasonable, as the first installment was followed by only six commercials that lasted a total of two minutes and 55 seconds.

The second program installment ran for eleven minutes and 30 seconds, which was better than I had anticipated. Unfortunately, the good times on my couch ended here. (I guess the network executives figured they had me hooked for sure.) The next commercial break comprised nine commercials and ran for three minutes and 40 seconds. The third program installment lasted a short five minutes and 35 seconds, and was followed by three minutes and 32 seconds of commercials, seven in all. The fourth program installment ran four minutes and 45 seconds, the shortest so far, and was followed by eight commercials that lasted a combined three minutes and 35 seconds. The fifth program installment tied with the length of the fourth at four minutes, 45 seconds. But that segment was followed by a whopping twelve consecutive commercials, lasting four minutes and 57 seconds, marking the first time the commercial break lasted longer than the preceding program segment. The sixth program installment rebounded for a six minute, 10 second run, bringing me and the rest of the viewing audience to a final “watch the show next week” promotion.

Here’s a graphic representation of Commander’s program-to-commercial relationship:

During this one-hour program, viewing America was subjected to 42 commercials lasting over eighteen minutes in total, nearly a third of the viewing hour. It seems to me that two minutes of commercials for every fifteen minutes of programming would be enough to pay for the show. But four-and-a-half minutes for each fifteen seems ridiculous — and potentially bad business, to boot.

The rebellion has already begun. Smart recorders like Tivo and ReplayTV offer functionality that allows viewers to hop over commercial interruptions. There’s also a new technique of being able to buy programs over the Internet within a few days of broadcast. In my case, I’ve decided to record Commander and then replay it with remote in hand, skipping all the commercials along the way. So, instead of giving advertisers their fare due, I’ll relegate their spots to a few seconds of fast forward. As another option, I could just wait for the entire season of Commander to come out on DVD, just like another good show, 24.

Times have changed, particularly for many of us who used to spend a lot of hours watching only the networks. There are simply more choices now. Today we rent DVDs from companies like Netflix, drop in to Blockbuster on a minutes notice, or subscribe to premium television stations and enjoy the benefits of zero commercials.

Of course, when we successfully avoid commercials, we spend more time doing the things we want to do — like watching good programming. If we were to count up all the time we’ve spent watching commercials, we’d see just how much of our good lives have been shortened. Take my one example alone: I gave eighteen of my life minutes to commercials in exchange for forty minutes of Geena Davis. Multiply that by all the network programs you watch and your prime time has been cut dramatically.

Fortunately, in today’s world of advancing technology, you can do something about it. Unless you are “into” uninvited advertising, you can seek other viewing options until the network bigs realize that fewer commercials will be the only way to bring back an audience that is moving on. Investors in the networks should also take note: Commercials were once an unavoidable annoyance that came with the territory. But now they’re a negative incentive that pushes consumers to commercial-free alternatives.

— Thomas E. Nugent is executive vice president and chief investment officer of PlanMember Advisors, Inc. and principal of Victoria Capital Management, Inc.

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