UKC

I was really looking forward to watching Harriet Walter and Steve Coogan in the show Brian and Maggie. However I've given up as Channel 4 have gone advert crazy. 

I hate adverts at the best of times, but with 12 minutes of show then 3 minutes of adverts then another 12 and 3 I just can't watch any more.

A shame really as the 24 minutes I did watch were pretty good. I'm aware that adverts bring in revenue that enables them to produce shows of this calibre, but please can we have a better balance. 

Rant over, now to bed to watch the footy results come in. 

It could be worse, I watch Sky Mix/Pick or whatever it's called now, for a few shows I like. The adverts are 5 minutes long, and half of them are adverts for their own shows. Even adverts for the show you're watching! 

In Europe the add times are truly crazy! Watching a movie on Star in Greece for instance is impossible with 15 mins of adds. There is one of the Finnish channels that has 5 to 7 mins of add breaks too.  Stopped watching them all together and went Netflix. 

I might be imagining it, but on catch up the ad beaks seem shorter??

It was worth watching though, first part was the set up, interview bit tonight 

I thought it was great. The actors involved were brilliant.

The "secret" is to record these things then fast forward the recording at the adverts.  They just fly by...

That's just crazy talk

The Channel 4 Ap often has fewer adverts, especially after a while. Just checked the specific show. 90 secs at the start and you can fast forward through ads although it's fiddly to get the right timing and it won't work if the ads have started.

Ofcom allows 12 mins of advertising an hour - this has been the case for years, so C4 cannot show any more adverts today than they could 10 years ago.  Most commonly in 3 x 4 min or 4 x 3 min blocks.  Promotions for own-channel programming (i.e. C4 promoting C4) do not count towards advertising minutage, so actual breaks between programme parts can be longer.

I wasn't aware of any advert timing regulation, I think there was a mix of external and internal ads.

I think the way forward is to watch on catch-up and FF the ad breaks.

Agree with others, it looked a great show and very well acted.

Shhh don't tell everyone

Remember the days when ads were as good as the telly?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=skWFyop_pxU&pp=ygUIbGV2aXMgYWQ%3D

’Surfer’, the Guiness advert, extended version. Possibly one of the best 90 seconds of anything ever filmed

youtube.com/watch?v=rE1lIdtDs2g&

I could never work out how they got the horses to do that

Aye, probably the best track usage as well to boot! Leftfield "Phat Planet"....

Thanks for that, an excellent ad. However, I had to watch a YouTube advert before it. Oh the irony 

Yes - definitly worth getting a recording device.

In an interview with Alex Horne, he said one of the main reasons Taskmaster failed in the US was they could only show each episode in 8-minute sections before another advert break, which was seldom enough time to go through all the attempts or keep the flow of the show.

I believe in the USA it varies by channel, so if a larger network picked it up, they might get longer segments, but still a challenge.