Timing commercial breaks for TV

R

rrk1962

I've been looking for details on the exact timing for TV shows. I believe 48 minutes is the standard, actual lenght for an hour of TV. We have a 55 minute comedy short that would be pretty easy to trim, and after watching with an audience for the first time, needs some cutting. I'll bet it would fit perfectly. Are there hard rules on the exact time for commercial breaks, ie break at 7 min, 21 min, etc..? I guess I could also just watch an few hours of TV and time the breaks but who wants to do that?

Any help is apprecieated, google does not know the answer to this one. Am posting this thread in distribution as it seems more related to that than anything else.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Commercial breaks are generally 2 minutes a piece. An hour long program usually has six commercial breaks, for a total of approx. 12 minutes. Meaning the programing for an hour long show is usually around 48 minutes.

The rundown usually looks like this.

Set Up (short segement, usually no longer than two minutes in length)
Break One
Act One
Break Two
Act Two
Break Three
Act Three
Break Four
Act Four
Break Five
Act Five
Break Six
Closing (similar to Set Up in length)

Poke
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Your show should be 47 min 56 sec total as FFC regulations mandate that at the top of every hour the station does a station identification (which is generally a 4 sec. id spot hence the 56 sec.). Just watch any tv station at 1 minute before the hour and you will see them run a spot that says the name of the station in it. With the rundown Poke posted you should also be aware that your show needs to make the 10 minute mark. The Neilsen rating system only gives your show credit if a viewer watches it for the first ten minutes. So your first 10 minutes is the most important of the entire show. You see this in news programs as they will run the full weather report roughly 10 minutes into the newscast. So your first commercial break needs to be in the first ten minutes then right about 10 minutes you should be going to another one. It makes the show more buyable for advertisers.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
rrk1962 said:
We have a 55 minute comedy short that would be pretty easy to trim, and after watching with an audience for the first time, needs some cutting.
Click to expand...

Here's my question: what exactly are you going to do with a one-off hour-long comedy? It's not a series. It's not a movie. It seems to me that whatever it is, it's a tough sell in terms of TV programming.

Btw, in American TV at least, half hour shows are 22 minutes, and hour shows are 44 minutes. The act breaks vary, but usually run on what are called "sevens" or "elevens." You can have 3 seven-minute acts or 2 eleven-minute acts.

But I say that's an less important question than the intended market for your short film.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top