h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems to me that residents of North America are far more tolerant of advertising than European residents. US TV seems to carry far more advertising than European TV, US Newspapers again seem to more advertising than their European counterparts.

If you want an interactive demonstration of this phenomenon may I suggest that you visit the US & European version's of one of the major web portal sites such as Lycos or Yahoo and once again the European versions appear to carry less advertising.

Yeah that is true on the net, market forces and all that. I can speak for european tv but here in the UK we're used to a situation of relatively few ad breaks or on the BBC channels non at all (bliss!).

TV in the US did my head in not stop, inane adverts (lets face it most ads are inane in the UK aswell). It seemed like there was no actual programme. The worst thing though was the adverts for presciption drugs (not allowed in the UK), I think its dangerous people harranging there GP for, perhaps, inappropiate products (did you know: drug companies spens 2-3 times on advertising than on research and have the cheek to say drugs are so expensive as they cost so much to develop!).

In the UK there is a law that regulates the maximum amount of advertising that commercial TV can carry. I believe the current maximum is 10 minutes out of every hour. Similar rules also exist for radio broadcasters.

The rule is 15 minutes in an hour, and there is no limit on radio ads.

15 min an hour is still too much if you ask me!

It's fine if they leave it in one big chunk so you can do something else...what annoys me is when they have lots and lots of little chunks of adverts.

Yeah I noticed on a couple of digital channels that they sometimes have a really short break then put the programme back on for <5min then finish it and have another ad break, crazy.

This is an American idea. They always have ads just before the end of the programme, especially if it's a thriller or murder mystery. This is because they know that viewers will stay with that channel to see 'whodunit' or catch the climax of the programme. I don't have digital, so it's not something I've had to suffer. It would annoy me no end if I had to sit through it.

Belive me its ultra annoying