As I mentioned in my previous post, although there are several cultural differences between the United States and Madrid, they become the most prevalent to me when I sit down to watch television with my host family. A couple of days ago during dinner, we began watching a competition-style television program with several women on it trying what seemed like farm chores. I didn't get too into asking my host family what the show was about, but I did notice that the programming was live and thought that the show might be something similar to "Fear Factor" back in the States.
What I found interesting about this show wasn't the show itself though, it was actually how commercials were shown during it. Usually in American programming, there will be 30 seconds-2 minute breaks in-between program, live or not, to show commercials for sponsors of the show or for people who have bought that advertising spot. However during this program, the screen was split in two: the program continued to air in a small box in the lower left corner and the majority of the space on the upper right corner was used to show commercials. Instead of cutting away completely from the program it continued to show what was going on. This is something I have never seen done in the U.S. and I found it really weird and distracting to watch. Although the two were happening at the same time, I couldn't help but wonder what was going on in the live program since all I could hear now was whatever the commercial was promoting. I asked my host sister if this was normal and she said it was and that she assumed that viewers of live programming must get tired of watching the show and the commercials are brought up to give people breaks. I still couldn't understand why they didn't cut away from the show completely if that was the case.
Another factor I noticed about commercial airing here in Spain is that the blocks used for commercials are way longer than those in the U.S. While in the U.S. there are multiple commercial breaks, here in Spain, it seems as though there is only one commercial break and in that break all of the commercials for the program are shown, resulting in a very long break in-between the program. I've only seen something like that in the States when a special show or movie has "limited commercial interruptions," but in Spain it seems very common.
As I continued to watch the program I also noticed something else that I found extremely weird. As the challenge on one program continued, another live talk show cut in the middle and the hosts of the two shows began talking to each other. My assumption was that this talk show was scheduled to be coming up next after the challenge show, but then they switched over to the talk-show, aired a little bit of an argument that was happening on the show and then cut back to the challenge-show when something began to happen. I personally found it distracting because who wants to watch another show in the middle of the previous show still going on? The station could have wanted fans of the talk-show to stay tuned and not leave because the other show was still going on, but the same way I get frustrated when I miss programming because the President has to speak, it got me frustrated that I didn't know what was going on in the challenge-show. Also, arguments aren't as interesting to watch on television when you don't get to see what's happening from the beginning of it.
It might have been a special situation with the shows both being live that caused the programming to be different, and I'm not sure if this is the common practice of showing commercials, but it was definitely something I was not used to. I wonder if other channels in Spain utilize the same method of programming.
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