THE RISE AND FALL OF THE 15-SECOND AD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993                   TAG: 9302030053
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STUART ELLIOTT THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE 15-SECOND AD
Couch potatoes might have closed their eyes to a surprising development: the programs they watch are becoming somewhat less cluttered with commercials. That's because advertisers and their agencies are cooling to 15-second spots, once the fastest-growing phenomenon on television since Roseanne Arnold.
According to an annual analysis by the Network Television Association, 15-second commercials accounted for just 31.8 percent of all spots that ran during the 1991-92 season on programming broadcast by its members. That marked a sharp decline from a peak achieved as recently as the 1988-89 season, when 37.7 percent of all commercials airing on ABC, CBS and NBC were 15 seconds long.
Indeed, last season's figure was the lowest for 15's, as they are known in the industry, since they began a meteoric rise in popularity in the mid-1980s. At one time, it seemed they might even supplant 30-second spots as the industry standard, in much the same way that 30's superceded 60-second commercials in the 1970s.
"The numbers are dramatic," Peter Chrisanthopoulos, president and chief executive at the NTA in New York, said last week. "A drop from 37.7 to 31.8 in just three seasons is significant."
Fifteen-second spots, which began appearing on network television during the 1983-84 season, were developed in response to the soaring cost of commercial air time. They are sold for about half the price of 30-second commercials, though sometimes premiums are charged.
At first, the networks sold them only in a "split-30" format, meaning an advertiser had to buy two 15-second spots that ran consecutively. Later, that stipulation was relaxed so that free-standing short spots - stand-alone 15's, in industry parlance - were also made available. Even so, the networks have placed limits on the frequency of 15-second spots, unlike their longer siblings.
Some advertisers have used the 15-second format creatively, producing so-called book-end spots or to-be-continued spots. Viewers, for example, watch a 15-second spot in which an actor, grimacing almost convincingly, complains about a headache and decides to take an Excedrin tablet.
That spot is followed by one or two 30-second spots for unrelated products. Then the actor returns in a second 15-second spot, proclaiming that Excedrin has vanquished his pain.
Speaking of pain relief, as 15-second commercials fade in popularity, viewers should be less bothered by separate commercial interruptions, a problem referred to as clutter.
The rise of 15's was a gamble. Advertisers hoped the savings achieved by paying for 15 seconds of air time, rather than 30, would offset whatever alienation might occur among viewers who felt beset by increasing clutter.
"No one knows at what point the clutter has a substantial negative impact on the medium," said David Marans, senior vice president of media research at J. Walter Thompson U.S.A. in New York.
"But a preponderance of evidence from many research studies over the years," he added, "has demonstrated there seems to be a definite relationship, and a negative one, between increased clutter and commercial effectiveness. Our concern is the effectiveness of the TV medium - to not kill the goose that laid the golden egg."
Chrisanthopoulos called the shift from 15-second commercials "good news" for advertisers because "if there are fewer of them, there's a more favorable environment created." He said the networks feared that the increase in 15's would hurt the medium, but were willing to offer them "to accommodate the demands of the marketplace."
That marketplace has, of course, changed substantially in recent years. The weakness in the economy softened the demand for commercial time. That, in turn, broke the 1980s pattern of commercial prices ratcheting ever higher, a primary reason that 15-second spots were spawned.
Chrisanthopoulos said he expected "the downward trend in 15's will continue somewhat, but I don't see them disappearing."
"They're here to stay," he added, "but they will not be the dominant format used by advertisers."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB