her34

is it planned that way by various stations?

Lee Harvey Oswald

Its planned by the company advertising their product. They buy blocks of advertising time that they feel will get their product the best exposure. They feel that the people watching that show would be the target audience for those who would want to buy their product. Like all the beer commericals and viagara commercials during sports events.

her34

i meant more so that commercials play during 8:08-8:10pm and then 8:19-8:21pm for most channels. so when you change a channel during commercial for one station, you end up watching commercials from another station.

why doesn't some underdog channel stagger their commercials in hopes of catching people flipping out of other shows

mndtrp

Beacuse it will happen to them when their commercials show.

If there are 10 stations showing commercials at once and one that isn't, that one may catch you until their commercials start up. Then, you have 10 other stations that will catch your attention when you start flipping.

There have been times I've started flipping channels when the commercials start, just to come back to my original channel when nothing else is on. Of course, I also only have about 10 channels worth watching. No cable/satellite for me.

Brain Stew

Exactly. Competing on that level is really a no-win situation. Once one station gains a lead doing it, everyone else will follow the leader. So there is no incentive to do so.

marty888

What amazes me is that if I'm following two baseball games, and switch from one to the other when an inning ends and commercials begin - you guessed it, 9 out of 10 times, the other game is also having a commercial. So it's not all simply corporate strategy, a lot of it has to do with the power of the God of Commercialism. When it's your time to see a commercial, there's nothing you can do about it to escape the inevitable..

Deftones

yeah, but baseball is different though because the commercials will only air when the inning ends. it's not often that if you were watching 2 games that the innings would end at the same time.

resinrats

There is something I always wondered about about live sports on TV. What exactly goes on at the stadium during the commercials. Do they just stand around waiting for the commercial break to end before beginning to play? That would suck to go to a game and watch the players stand there doing nothing just so people that stayed at home can see the plastic Burger King in some guy's yard.

shadowself

they show secret footage of you scratching your balls then switch to toilet cam to see you take a wizz.

GuessWho

have you never been to a game of any kind?

NitroJMS

For the NFL, the networks place men in orange mittens on the sidelines to signal to the ref as to when to take a television time-out. These are just like regular time-outs but neither team is charged for it. They do this in case neither team is using their time-outs or there aren't alot of breaks in the action, so they have to force time to get to the ads.

GuessWho

Using your example, it looks like the shows are divided into three equal, 8-minute-or-so segments.

To do anything elseto divide the approx 24 minutes would be silly:
5 minutes
commercial
12 minutes
commercial
7 minutes

Seems weird, right? Spacing the show into equal parts will of course lead to many breaks seeming similar