When people talk about why they became a cord cutter TV commercials is often ranked right up there with the cost of pay TV. Over the last few years the number of commercials has slowly increased to the point where some 1-hour TV shows have 20 minutes of commercials.
It has even been reported that the average cable TV subscriber will watch 160 hours of commercials in 2017. It seems many Americans are not a fan of spending over 6 days a year watching commercials.
Now Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, the parent company behind channels such as ESPN and ABC, agrees. “I think that, in general, there is probably too much commercial interruption in television,” he told investors on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
Disney identified two specific channels for which it plans to cut back. In the earnings call Bob Iger said Disney will specifically look at lowering ad load on ABC and ESPN.
The only question is will cutting back on commercials change anything for the dwindling viewership, especially on channels such as ESPN. The simple fact that Disney is talking about cutting back on commercials is a sign that everything has changed.
After many years of doing everything to put more ad space into shows to flip it around to fewer ads is a fundamental change at the ground level. It is even likely that other networks will be forced to follow suit in an effort to not be left behind. Disney is often seen as a trendsetter when it comes to ad sales.
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