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"Clutter" on U. S. Television is Becoming a Pain
"Clutter" - is all the junk that one collects over extended periods of time on a crowded desk. But clutter is also non-program content in most commercial television shows during prime time. Clutter makes people switch to a different channel in a heart beat - just to encounter more of the same.
PhaseOne Communications in Los Angeles performed a study of different television shows and found out: There is more clutter on US television programs today than at any other time in the history of the medium: 36% more than just 10 years ago. Clutter is considered good - and bad. It means that advertisers want to be present on the air at a particular station in a marketplace. But it also means, “channel surfing” is going to take place. Viewers are going to miss the beginning of the next segment of the regular show. Or, even worse - they might stay on another channel altogether and miss the entire ending.
Over 50 minutes of nonprogram content were found during an average primetime evening on commercial television channels in the United States. ABC is the leader of the four-network-pack with 54.6 minutes. CBS is number four - with “only” 50.8 minutes of commercials, promotional materials and public-service announcements per primetime per day.
Because of the fact that viewers are beginning to consider clutter to be a major pain, networks and individual stations have considered alternatives: product placement, cross-platform marketing and sponsored programming. But nothing seems to have replaced regular clutter so far. The average commercial break in primetime television programs is about three minutes long - which is up over 40% from half a decade ago. Besides PhaseOne, companies like Court TV, OMD and Universal McCann have recently performed their own studies. Court TV has based its study on materials from the Nielsen Monitor Plus data and covered 38 cable networks as well as the four big television networks – ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. It turned out that American Movie Classics carried the least amount of clutter among the cable stations - just 10 minutes per hour. And MTV was "Numero Uno" - just 17 minutes clutter per hour.
Everyone seems to agree that commercial clutter like that - including promotional spots about future programming at the individual channel - is not what program directors and network executives want. They feel that it can be destructive, unhealthy, even dangerous, if unhealthy activities are shown in front of minors. They are also afraid that more and more people will scan television programs with Tivo and other equipment, in order to remove clutter and make their evening in front of the living room television set a more enjoyable event.
(More information: http://www.phaseone.net http://www.universalmccan.com http://www.omdmedia.com http://www.nielsenmedia.com )
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Erdstation
E-Mail: astrocal@hotmail.com
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