03.04 | "The horrible, ruinous amount of advertising"

The extremely great James Foley emailed me the following a few days ago, after the broadcast of the first episode of series three. Unbelievably, it's the first contribution I've had from a reader, and he makes some good points about Sky's treatment of '24'. So, over to him...

I'm just completely BUMMED about the horrible, ruinous amount of advertizing
on the Sky version of '24'. It's completely ruined all the suspense that
builds with the ticking clock and the fast-paced action - only to be
interrupted every few minutes for what seems like endless brainless adverts.
They are destroying one of the best programmes ever created with this
exploitative approach.

Get this - I was living in the US when the first series of '24' was shown. It
occupied a one-hour slot, and this was bearable (hey, they do have to earn a
living I guess). You see, this fact was built-into the production of '24', so
that the 50 minutes of actual screen time was extended to the 60 minutes of
'live-time' through advert padding. You knew that when '24' stated the time as
"00.35AM" that it was indeed 35 minutes passed the hour. The ads almost kept
it all in pace, so they served some useful function.

OK, so I moved back to the UK and absolutely loved the fact that BBC2 were
showing the series without any commercial breaks. It just added to the
suspense and build-up and was even better than the US version because of it.

So last nights exploitative episode was nothing sort of tragic. To think
that even in the US, where commercialism is king, they only pad the series
with 10 minutes of adverts, just how do Sky believe that can justify adding
a further 15 minutes of ads over the US version. Think about it - that's 50
minutes of programming and 25 minutes of ads. For every 10 minutes of
programme, used to pump up the adrenelin and get the action moving, there
are 5 minutes of ads to deflate you and kill the suspense. Just who do they
think they are. They don't OWN the show. They PRESENT the show, and have a
'duty of care' to their viewers, who may have been with the series from the
first minute of Day 1.

This is only served to turn me off Sky Broadcasting completely. I feel
insulted, let down and exploited. I'm inclined to let the series pass and
wait till the summer where I can buy the DVD from US-based websites and play
them all back to back over the course of a few evenings '24 parties'. Better
that than give my time to Sky television which they're only seeking to
exploit for advertizing dollars. As I said, I'm disgusted with Sky and it's
cost them at least four viewers in this house.