TV Clutter Continues to Worry Advertisers

TV CLUTTER CONTINUES TO WORRY ADVERTISERS
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Willow Duttge]
It's upfront time and marketers' fears about advertising on TV might be coming to fruition. Clutter continues to remain high during prime-time network programming and increased by 5% on cable overall, according to MindShare's 2005 Clutter Watch survey. For the first time since Mindshare began tracking in 2000, cable ran more clutter than broadcast networks. Among the broadcast networks, ABC gets the prize for the most non-program minutes (a category that includes network commercials, local commercials, PSAs and promos) -- 15 minutes and 26 seconds per hour. However, Fox beat out ABC when it came to total commercial minutes. Fox had 11 more seconds of commercials than ABC, at 12 minutes 55 seconds. UPN has the least clutter, but not by much. UPN's total non-program time was still up to 14 minutes and 26 seconds and total commercial minutes were nearly 12 minutes. MTV was the cable clutter leader, with more than 16 minutes of non-program material. But close behind with more than 15 minutes of non-program material were Discovery, Lifetime, USA and Spike. ESPN had the least non-program minutes, while TNT had the least minutes of commercials. Even though TV is less cluttered than print and online, viewers believe TV has too much advertising, according to MindShare's research.
http://www.adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=108995

* More Clutter on Broadcast, Cable
http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=9921