Spike TVs More Ads Campaign Ends Quietly

Well, it seems that the programming people over at Spike TV woke up and realized that doubling the amount of ads is just not a very good idea. After experimenting with a new format that turned an hour long show into something like an hour and 15 to an hour and 25 minutes (without adding any programming, just commercials), they appear to have tucked tail and given up, as the schedule appears to be back to normal.

Following up on our story of Spike TV extra ads, other stories started to appear, like this one in the LA Times, that shows we aren’t the only ones seeing this stupid trend. Advertising Age ran this story that showed that not only were consumers getting upset, but advertisers as well, as super long breaks mean that up to 20 advertisers are crammed on top of each other in the breaks, which they suggests were long enough to “take a brisk walk around the block” or “brown a chicken”. It is suggested that part of the problem is that Spike overpaid for programming, specifically $600,000 an episode for Entourage, the raunchy HBO hit that has to be severely edited to make it onto basic cable.

It appears that the MTV networks people that run Spike woke up and realized that they were making nobody happy, that they were not helping their bottom line, and so on. Rather than taking their programming mistakes out on consumers, perhaps they should look at themselves and work it out internally. You have to wonder how much this blunder has cost Spike in viewership.