All campaigns
0 supporters and counting
Cap the ad breaks — stop punishing viewers for profit
Commercial TV breaks in the UK now run to ten or more adverts back to back. Viewers pay for broadband, licence obligations and subscriptions, then sit through advert blocks longer than the programme segments between them. This is profit put ahead of people, and the rules that are supposed to limit it are toothless.
Our specific ask
Ofcom must cap the number of adverts in any single break, apply advertising minute limits per clock hour in peak time rather than averaged across the day, require on-screen break duration to be disclosed, and open a public complaints route on advert loading with published quarterly compliance data for every broadcaster.
Evidence base
- Ofcom's Code on the Scheduling of Television Advertising permits an average of 7 minutes of advertising per hour on commercial public service channels and 9 minutes per hour on other channels, with breaks of up to 12 minutes in any clock hour.
- Those limits are averaged across the day, so broadcasters can legally stack the heaviest advert loads into peak evening viewing when audiences are largest.
- There is no cap on the number of individual adverts within a single break — only on total minutes — which is why viewers routinely count ten or more spots in one interruption.
- Households already fund television through the licence fee, subscriptions and the advertising costs built into everyday prices, and are given no meaningful way to complain about break length.
Government response tracker
Status: Awaiting response. We update this when government publishes a formal position relevant to this ask.