Here are some excerpts from TV Guide, December 17, 1960:
IS THERE ANY LIMIT TO COMMERCIALS?
The ABC's of the code which regulates them--In some cases
A TV station in a small Ohio town recently permitted the commercial on a five minutes news program to run two full minutes. This was 45 seconds too long for a five-minute program, according to the Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which accused the station of this Code violation. The station management apologized for what it said was an oversight, immediately trimmed the commercial back to the permissible one minute, 15 seconds.
There are definite time standards for TV commercials. They comprise an important part of the Television Code. Stations that subscribe to the Code and are permitted to display the NAB's "Seal Of Good Practice" must adhere to these standards.
Generally the Code has prevented too many and overly long commercials. However, subscription to the Code is voluntary. Besides the three networks, only 380 of the country's 526 commercial stations are subscribers. The Code, moreover, has loopholes through which a station or sponsor can exceed the time standards for commercials.
Members of the TV Code committee, who administer the standards, recognize that these loopholes exist. "Don't forget that TV commercial practices, like Topsy, just grew," said a Code spokesman. "The Code has been revised 5 times since it was first adopted in March 1952 (The last revision: July 1960). We'll undoubtedly find ways to prohibit these practices when we sit down to revise it again."
The Code time standards, printed on two pages of a slim booklet published by the NAB are separated into " 'AA' and "A" time," and "all other time." On the three networks and most stations, "A" time refers to the hours between 6 and 11 o'clock each night. "AA" time applies to exceptionally choice time within that period. Both are considered "prime" time, in which rates charged for advertising are higher.
Basically the Code permits three minutes of commercials for each half hour of prime time and four minutes, 15 seconds for a half hour of all other time. Each station determines which hours fall into its prime time. Some stations have postponed the start of their prime time from 6PM to 7:30. They can then televise a syndicated program from 7 to 7:30 and sell four minutes and 15 seconds worth of commercials, permissible in "all other time," rather that the three minutes allowed if that half hour were considered prime time.
Other stations, to beat the Code standards legally, have sold what normally is considered a half hour program in prime time, as two, 15 minute programs. In that way they can dump five minutes of commercials into the period instead of the usual three minutes. That's because the Code permits two-and-a-half minutes of commercials for each 15 minute program.
There are other ways a station can get more than three minutes of commercials inside that half hour of prime time without breaking the rules. Holding a stop watch on NBC's New York station on a recent Tuesday evening revealed how. At 8:30 Alfred Hitchcock Presents came on the network. Before the story began, a picture of the sponsor's product flashed on the screen for 10 seconds, indentified by an off-screen announcer. This identification is known as a billboard. The Code permits billboards at the opening and closing of each program, so long as they do not run more than 10 seconds each in a half-hour show.
Within the Hitchcock show there were three one-minute commercials, followed by the closing 10-second billboard. Then at 8:59 there followed a 20-second public service announcement, a 10-second network identification, a 20-second commercial and a 10-second sponsored station break. Total: another 60 seconds. That adds up to 4 minutes and 20 seconds more than the basic three minutes specified in the time-standards chart. Yet all this extra time is allowable.
The Code permits networks and stations two separate announcements at station-break time, plus the conventional sponsored 10-second stations identification. The total of these spots is not to exceed 70 seconds. NBC, with only 60 seconds, was consequently well within the prescribed limits.
Jack Paar's is probably the show viewers most often accuse of carrying too many commercials. As a "participating" program televised in "all other time," the Paar show is permitted six minutes of commercials for each half hour. The network sells 3 minutes of this time to national advertisers in each of the two half-hour periods between 11:30PM and 12:30AM. Local stations are then permitted to sell the remaining 3 minutes in each half hour to local advertisers.
So, as not to interrupt the program with too many commercials bunched together, the stations reserve three, one-minute time periods within the five-minutes between 11:55 and midnight, and between 12:25 and 12:30 for spot commercials. Clocking the show in New York on a recent evening revealed one-minute network commercials at 11:35, 11:40, and 11:51. Local commercials were spotted at 11:55, 11:57, and 11:59.
"Sure, we could space those three local spots out during the half hour, but then the contents of the Paar show would be cut to ribbons," explained an NBC spokesman.
On those network commercials, Paar or announcer Hugh Downs usually lead into each one with about 10 seconds of commentary. The Code committee has never warned NBC against this practice, apparently agrees with the network that the lead-in is necessary to cue the master-control crew to start the filmed commercial.
The Code is lenient with other practices that sometimes irritate viewers. A placard bearing the sponsor's name, such as the one hung on the panel's desk on To Tell The Truth, appears on camera through much of the show. On a dramatic show or a Western, such as Bat Masterson, the sponsor's product is on the screen while the closing credits are shown. The Code permits these so long as they do not intrude on "program interest" or so long as they appear "fleetingly" on camera.
On giveaway shows, such as The Price Is Right, the Code permits "reasonable and limited identification" of the prize and its manufacturer, disagreeing with viewers who believe this should be included as commercial time.
Feeling that sponsors of women's service shows or programs featuring shopping and market information, provide "a special service," the Code permits stations to waive time standards "to a reasonable extent" on these. The stations themselves decide what "a reasonable extent" means.
The NAB checks commercials on stations in 75 markets through Broadcast Advertisers Reports, an independent firm that monitors all programs in these large markets for advertisers. In the cities not covered by BAR, the NAB tries to do its own spot checks. Between 1956 and 1959, the NAB says every Code subscriber in the country was checked at least once.
Few Code stations have been accused of "overcommercializing" during the last few years, but that doesn't mean they don't try. A vice president of Young & Rubicam, one of the larger ad agencies, charged recently that there "has been a profusion of advertising resented by the viewers and disruptive of good programming." The vice president, William E. Matthews, accused stations and networks of evading "all too frequently" rulings of the Federal Communications Commission and industry codes pertaining to the number of commercials permitted.
Before 1957, a number of stations had been charged with violating Code time standards. The Code committee warned the guilty stations either to clean up their schedules or resign their Code memberships. Some 10 stations chose to resign.
The NAB originally established the TV Code as a self-policing step, a way to stave off the threat of outside censorship and control. Since membership is voluntary, enforced resignation seems to represent the only teeth written into the Code (and they don't have much bite). While this doesn't seem much of a threat to hold over the heads of stations, it has one important implication: When station licenses come up for renewal every three years, the FCC takes into account each station's Code record.
Edited by Kronosis - 7/3/2009 at 05:35 am GMT
TV Shows went from being 50-52 minutes long in the 1960s to 45-48 Minutes in the 1980s, it's been during this Decade that weve seen Hour-Long Shows lasting LESS than 40 Minutes once the Commercials have been removed. 
Combined with the infestation called "Reality" Shows, I decided, in the Fall of 2006, that TV wasn't going to get any better, and I began collecting DVDs.
