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With the Lionsgate TV series Mad Men set to make its Season 3 bow in August on AMC, I’m told there’s a big fight leading up to the premiere over, of all things, ads. AMC has told the show’s producers to make allowances for another commercial break each hour — so that’ll be two minutes less of actual programming. That might not sound like such a big deal, but it’s galling given how well the show has done, how carefully it’s put together, and how much money it’s already making AMC and parent company Cablevision which recently announced a $20M 1st-quarter profit, while subsidiary Rainbow Media cited a 7.6% increase in ad sales. Naturally, the suits are blaming the bad economy and saying the show simply doesn’t bring in enough revenue. Producers are raising a big stink, but it looks like AMC isn’t budging. At a time when networks are cutting back on commercial breaks, you’ve got to wonder why AMC is screwing its golden goose. How can Mad Men compete with premium cable when basic cable is squeezing it for every penny?
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Let me cut to the chase. I will not watch a 1 Hour drama that has 21 minutes of commercials. For me it is just that simple. I will not sit through 21 minutes of commercials. That’s it, see you. good bye. It’s just not worth my investment of time.
“The show is so successful”????
Don’t believe the hype. It may be critically acclaimed, but in terms of ratings, Mad Men is totally mediocre. AMC is paying through the nose for the program, markets it to a fare-thee-well way beyond what it’s revenue suggests it deserves, and has treated it like gold. Goddamn right they’re entitled to make a buck off of it.
I surprised a business-savvy audience like the readers of DHD would be so pinheaded as to go tut-tutting because a business wants to manage its product and generate revenue… like a business.
Sad.
Although not much will take away from the best show on television.
Nikki, this is the most self-destructive thing that networks and now cable nets have done to television: the insertion of both more ad time per hour AND more act breaks. And make no mistake, it’s connected to what’s happened with television’s ratings.
Fifteen years ago, the average hour of television was 48 minutes of show, 12 minutes of ads. Now? It’s 41 minutes of show, 19 minutes of ads. That is a 20% difference. That is huge. It means when you’re telling a procedural mystery, it’s one less twist or turn in the telling of the mystery; it means when you’re telling an ensemble character show, it’s one less story-line to handle one or more of your characters.
That’s bad. But what makes things worse are having additional act breaks. ABC’s shows have sometimes as many as six or seven acts. Given that every act before a commercial involves a reveal of new information or a discovery or a setback, just think what happens when you have six or seven of them. It’s jolting, manic, and not an organic way of telling a story, making watching a story unfold an unpleasant experience. I never thought I’d say this, but I’d actually prefer product placement with four acts to what there is now.
On Fox, Fringe this year offered viewers 50 minute episodes, with only ten minutes ads. The result? One of the only two hit dramas of the year (besides Mentalist).
The smartest thing a basic cable network would do is to offer 50 minute episodes of their new series, setting themselves apart from the networks and their ad-strewn shows. Or NBC, which is so struggling, could at least give people more show for their shows. I promise you, it would make an impact in their ratings if people didn’t feel that every five minutes the show was breaking for another ad, and that they were watching one minute of ad for every two minutes of shows. The networks’ whittling down the amount of time for each episode has been nothing less than self-destructive, and all it would take is one network to be visionary and offer the alternative — to be the Ford and offer quality cars while Chrysler and Chevy are turning out drek.
The networks are so shortsighted. More ad time = more likely for people to Tivo and watch later so they can skip commercials or download the episode, without commercials mind you.
More ad time also means more opportunity for me to the change channel.
Literally, who are the ad wizards that came up with this one? All they’re doing is making their viewing public change their viewing habits because they’re so shortsightedly greedy.
If Matt was sooo concerned about encroaching ad time, let him chip in some of his mad salary to lower the budget on his show. Hey, AMC has to find the money SOMEWHERE to pay him his network-sized salary for what is a low-profit-margin niche show. AMC can’t even get economies of scale through any kind of amort because of the show’s small order every season. No knock on Matt, but it’s time to get your priorities right — big salary/above-the-line fees and more ad time vs. smaller salaries/lower budget and fewer ads.
What? Greedy suits? Shocking. What bothers me more is all the boo-hooing. Two minutes. One more commercial break. Big freaking deal. Good storytellers are more than able to adapt, and today’s Tivo audience won’t even notice. As much as I love Weiner & Co., they (and apparently, many here) would be best advised not to throw a fit over this because they’re lucky to even have jobs in this climate, let alone their dream jobs on such an amazing show. Get some perspective and suck it up or get out of the game. There are plenty of struggling artists in this town who would love to have your “problems”.
Agreeing with rushmore. When the Reagan FCC began deregulating broadcasting — which included softening limits on commercial minutes — the prevailing wisdom was, “If the public doesn’t like it, they’ll stop watching.” Well, TA-DAA.
What I find interesting is that as TV-DVD profits are increasingly exceeding the initial broadcast revenue from advertising. As carefully branded, higher quality entertainment (such as MAD MEN) fares better in this lucrative “after market” than many other shows, these ancilary markets should become the primary source of production financing.
AMC is undermining the quality and presentation of MAD MEN; they should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds them, given they are simply a first run outlet for material that will later be seen and viewed on DVD. Whatever is excised from MAD MEN to make way for commercial breaks can and should end up on DVD.
THE SOPRANOS had episodes that ran 48 minutes and episodes that ran 67 minutes.
HBO v AMC is apples v oranges, but still…
For the sake of not pissing off TiVo viewership, AMC should make the time slot 8-9:15 PM. This way, everyone recording the show gets the entire program.
Episodes might only run until 9:04. But at least AMC could sell their extra ads, and the episodes would still run as long (if not longer) than they had been. In fact, Weiner and Company could even put in MORE content to their episodes.
Freedom from time constraints = ability to tell a whole story rather than clipping here and there just to fill the time slot. Which is the freedom that HBO gave to David Chase and gives to its other programs.
The simple solution is just to have the program run two minutes over – say from 10-11:02 p.m. – and let AMC add the additional spots to the existing commercial pods. That way, AMC gets its extra ad time, the producers don’t have to compromise their creative vision and fans don’t miss a single moment of Don Draper. It’s a basic cable network for goodness sake – who cares if the next program starts right on the hour or not? The broadcast networks have been doing this for years – pioneered by NBC’s Jeff Zucker with his idea of super-sizing (adding an extra minute or two) to the program time of the most popular shows in a lineup. Now, Desperate Housewives, American Idol, The Office, etc. routinely run an extra minute or even few minutes over the hour. If the Big Four broadcasters, with their relatively rigid schedule formats, can accommodate this, I certainly don’t see why little AMC can’t do it.
Nikki – seriously? TV is in a veritable free fall. DVR + Online viewing + recession = a serious problem.
MAD MEN is not a charity and AMC is not a public service.
I appreciate your unwavering support of creative talent, but these networks NEED money or they’re going to fail, even with their sub fees.
Adding commercial time is not the end-all solution but we need to be supportive of the engines that allow these shows to happen. Especially when all the network wants is to monetize its investment.
Wake up kids…AMC LOSES a boatload of money on Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc. Without increased ad load, you wouldn’t get your precious little show. And note to NOTASNOB, Mad Men’s ratings aren’t mediorche, they’re puny.
Wow. Real advertising screwing up a show about advertising agencies that is even by Hollywood standards ridiculously contemptuous of what actually happens in, you know, advertising agencies.
Two minutes less of an all-style, no-substance POS that stars a creative director–in 1960!–who is dismissive and ignorant of TV, when any cd of that time would be obsessed with nothing else but, is a blessing.
Yeah, yeah, I know, the ad agency is just a mechanism to tell a story, not the reason for the show. But Jesus Whipped, people. Put a thin tie on a guy and let him smoke, and show hot chicks in hose, and you just fall all over yourselves.
You people in the Industry really are special, aren’t ya?
And I mean that in the most ironic sense of the word.
Fun to watch like a big, bloody, body parts all over car wreck, though.
What’s the fuss? Let it run long. Make it up on some old movie that runs overnight. Jeez.
Wake Up, you obviously work for Always More Commercials, or another network, as evidenced by your inability to spell a simple word like mediocre.
I’d like to let everyone here in on a little game I like to play called “What’s on AMC?” What you do is, you take out the newspaper and look at what is playing that night. It used to just be for fun, but is now infuriating when you realize that this network is ruining it’s only real contribution to television– and using the two minutes after the show has aired to play the first two minutes of a pan-and-scan version of Johnny Mnemonic. WHAT THE FUCK
By the way, tonight on AMC they are showing Return to Me (some shitty movie with Minnie Driver) and Quigley Down Under, which stars Tom Selleck and the country of Australia.
I love the opening credits but you can just do a quick card and save the longer version for the DVD, and then get rid of the “next week on Mad Men” part and you’ve got a minute right there. It’s not so hard.
Gully Foyle is a little too angry about this. Mad Men is not an expensive show and has raked in millions on DVD for AMC and will continue to do so. It is also a smash world wide which will also drive even more DVD sales. It’s a great show, it wins awards and its fans are devoted. Isn’t that everything a TV show is supposed to do? Mad Men producers are trying to protect what is a truly successful product from erosion. People need to calm down.
How else did anyone expect them to pay for Matt Weiner’s payday?
It doesn’t matter to me, I’ll just buy it on DVD and watch them all through in one sitting anyway.
This is what you get when you have a failed Ad Sales Guy (yes Charlie Collier was unemployed when he was hired to head up AMC two years ago) running a channel. Of course AMC wants to make MORE money off the show and there was certainly a way to deal with the situation had Charlie brought up the additional commercial time during the negotiations for season three. But because of Charlie’s lack of programming experience and the fact that he’s not an honest guy despite the ever present grin, he waited to let Matt and his producers know about the addition of the two minutes of commercials until after they had closed his deal for season three. It was a sleazy, underhanded move but sadly not surprising if you know Charlie or the way he runs the channel.
Weiner is getting paid much less than Bochco, David Chase, Glenn Daniels, James Duff and so many others.
How shortsighted are these idiots at AMC? If they actually want to drive audiences to watch their series on the net, on their iPhone or other of the numerous emerging media platforms than they’re going the right way to do it. Where’s the incentive to tune in? Get with the 21st Century guys, or you’ll be extinct in a year.
Jesus! MAD MEN is being ordered to cut 2 minutes from each of the episodes and everyone is raising a fuss. It’s just two minutes.
Just finished watching the season finale. All I can say is that the extra commercials were incredibly noticeable. At one point in the season, my wife and I started losing interest because there were so many breaks (choppy stories are none-to-engaging) and the noticeably omitted scenes went a long way toward ruining what used to portray intriguing and sometimes intense moments. The show felt shorter as well. Overall, a disappointing season, primarily due to the extra commercials. Pathetic move on AMC’s part. Never mess with a great recipe, you’ll just upset your patrons.
The previous two seasons were perfect. This “ad” experiment FAILED miserably. Fortunately, this final episode was most excellent.