HEROES breaks new commercial gound

[beemaster]

Anyone else watch Heroes the first 3 episodes this season, if you did I hope you noticed the same scary thing I did - a SHIFT in the way commercials are inserted.

I didn't stop watch it, but here is roughly how they inserted commercials, chck it out yourself and you will be watching ALL NETWORK SHOWS on the web as I plan to do, they have minimal commercials there.

During Heroes, they would break ever 4 to 6 minutes for a 1.5 minute commercial break. In other words, you sat through 3 30 second commercials roughly every 6 minutes all show long.

Opposingly, Fox TV had the opening show to FRINGE (an interesting show that I still am two episodes behind - I'll watch them today on fox-web) but during the TV broadcast, they had limited commercials, literally saying we will be back in 60 seconds, 90 seconds, etc. I didn't see this same thing in the second show, show I think it was a pitch to hook us.

But back to Heroes, breaking the long standing 43 minute show in a 60 minute time slot goes against decades of prearranged breaks used to allow local stations to add their own content as they see fit.

So one of two things will likely happen, Heroes will start a new trend and we all will be eating comercials every 5 minutes ((although shorter breaks - there are many more of them) I haven't seen if it still works out to a 43 minute hour or not, but since the writers strike, nearly all content on all network and cable is available on the web for viewing and much of it in high-def. I plan to use my PC to watch TV at my pace, or go the extra 10 dollars a month and get the high-def DVR which I'll probably do anyway :)

By the Way..... What do you think of heroes this season? I'm finding it a bit confusing, but the possibilities are endless ESPECIALLY with the introduction of so many new characters and the twists of interactions of the old ones. It should be a great season, although we may need to watch each show twice to follow the plots.

[Scadsobees]

I don't watch much tv, but those breaks sound annoying.  1.5 minutes ain't enough time to hardly take potty break, and those are getting longer every year :roll:

So whaddya supposed to do...jump up and race to get some pop...then jump up again to get a quick snack...then quick jump up to throw away a wrapper... uhg...

[Jerrymac]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081002/sc_livescience/tvadsgrabattentioninfastforward



TV Ads Grab Attention in Fast-Forward
Jeremy Hsu
Staff Writer
LiveScience.com

 

NBC's "Heroes" remains a marketer's delight after its third season premiere drew 10 million viewers. But the network worried about one glaring anomaly - almost a third of the show's viewers use DVRs to record the program and possibly fast-forward through commercials.


Now a neuromarketing study finds that viewers aren't zoning out, but actually pay attention to ads when hitting their fast-forward button.


"Our conclusion was that people don't skip ads," said Carl Marci, cofounder and CEO of Innerscope Research. "They're just processing them differently."


TV networks can rake in big sums selling time slots during prime-time shows. The rising popularity of DVRs may challenge that source of revenue by taking viewer eyeballs away from ads, or so networks have feared.


NBC Universal turned to Marci, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist by training who started Innerscope because he wanted to "study emotion on a large scale." The "Heroes" example raised the question of whether ads still had an emotional impact even during fast-forward.


Thirty percent of viewers who watch "Heroes" are watching in a time-shifted manner," Marci told LiveScience. "Nationwide it's more like 15 to 20 percent."


Innerscope recruited 100 study participants, including many fans of "Heroes," and sat them down in a living room setting to watch a pilot episode of NBC's science fiction drama "Journeyman" with the usual TV ads and network promos.


This wasn't just free TV time, though. Viewers in the study wore a wireless, lightweight vest that indirectly measured their emotional state with biometrics such as:

Skin conductance or skin sweat - a sign of emotional arousal Electrocardiography - capable of measuring heartbeats through a heart's electrical activity Respiration bands - sensors stretched across the chest and stomach to gauge breathing rate Accelerometer - detects motion as viewers lean forward, back or side to side.

An eye-tracking device also recorded where viewers looked on or off the TV screen.


A total of 60 of the 100 viewers frequently used DVR during prime-time TV. They ended up in two groups, with one able to fast-forward at 3x normal speed and the other at 6x normal speed. The final study detailed in the International Journal of Advertising includes results from the control group and the 6x normal speed group.


Viewers who watched live better remembered ads a day later than viewers who used DVR to fast-forward through commercials at 6x normal speed. But the DVR group still recalled ads and recognized brands at twice the expected rate, given the fast-forwarding and the complete loss of sound from the commercials.


"People were in a hyper-alert state emotionally, because they don't want to miss their show," Marci noted.


Seeing a familiar ad also jogged memories among both live viewers and DVR viewers. The ad recall of DVR viewers shot up from 15 percent to 53 percent when they had seen the ad before.


Such findings reinforce earlier small studies that suggest advertisers can still reach the coveted "Heroes" audience that fast-forwards through commercials. Some advertisers have even begun developing ads that take advantage of the hyper-alert gaze by centering bigger product images on the screen.


"They were starting to talk about it and experiment with things," Marci said. "I think this study will give some credibility to those experiments."

[Melilem]

Interesting, I was going to watch Heroes this season, but the first 10 minutes came across as insanely boring, so I haven't watched since the premier. Maybe it was the commercials, I didn't really think about it- I watched a chef Ramsey rerun instead. I have been watching Fringe though, the commercials seem to be the usual @2-3 minutes every quarter hour. I didn't time them though. Interesting (yet very boring at the same time ;) ) post Jerrymac, I wonder what will come of that research.

[beemaster]

I think FRINGE is one of the better network shows on right now - the first 4 are on www.fox.com right now and FOX is streaming their shows NOT ONLY IN HI-DEF but COMMERCIAL FREE unlike their competitor stations.

I hope anyone interested in the world of paranormal, OBE, conspiracy stuff watches Fringe - I think the cast is great and I believe it will be around for a few seasons BECAUSE each week they tackle something completely different, from ESP to the high-tech gadgetry that surely isn't far from reality.

I am evolving though in the way I watch TV - everything I can watch on the PC (you can't imagine the top rated series that are streamed live for you to watch) to the great sites like Fancast.

Why watch TV on their schedule when you can do it on yours? I truly believe we are in the ENTERTAINMENT AGE, well past the COMMUNICATION AGE that the Internet and Cell Phones created, now we want audio and video pumped at us 24/4 and TV (thanks much to the writers strike) now has nearly everything from seasons of every CSI or ER, to the latest pilot shows and again with www.fancast.com a walk into the golden years and innocense of early TV - we are very lucky today.

No longer do you have to wait for a MOVIE like Charlies Angels or Dukes of Hazzards to prompt a reshowing of old canned series that will probably never even make it to TVLand, you just go on the web and hit sites like fancast and catch every Mary Tyler Moore or Batman show. You have the control.

A few years ago I found a site with a collection of hundreds of classic radio shows, entire series of Jack Benny and Milton Berle, now you have the same option with TV shows, so take advantage of these great web resources and take a step back to a time when life was indeed simpler and the worries of today were as futuristic as flying cars, enjoy our TV and radio history, and for many of us - see and hear shows that were before our time, you'll be amazed that the evolution really captured the times and they paint a realistic picture of life when the DOW JONES MARKET didn't worry us too death, when collapsing economies and the constant threat of losing our jobs was not making us old before our times. I'm enjoying getting lost in TV's past - I get to see the days when my parents were young and what the world looked like to them.