Yes the system is totally broken and is best summed up by the quotation (below)

 from the commercial innovation manager at Channel 4Lindsay Gibson, commercial innovation manager at Channel 4 said, “Broadcasters believe the traditional break must be reinvented.  Yes, this is a risk and there are at least four scenarios where things could go wrong, but the idea is to break out of the confines of a 30-second advert and create a must see event.”The sad fact is that within the advertising industry the old (bad) way is invariably the comfortable option for most advertising people.   New ideas have to be imposed or they will never be implemented.  Bottom-up reform is as plausible as bottom-up rain. The huge sums broadcasters pay to land programs and presenters are an indication of the weakness of the media.  For example Channel Five paid £300m over 10 years to land the Australian soap “Neighbors” and poached newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky from the BBC.  And the very source that funds such indiscriminate purchasing behavior is advertising.   And Customers are growing increasingly disenchanted with their overall television experience and dislike TV advertising more than anything else on the box, according to a recent survey.We live in a world where advertising and marketing constantly come up against an inconvenient truth, there is still to day no firm evidence that advertising works at all, especially television advertising.  It is this self-proclaimed consensus amongst advertising agencies and the media that it does work that has detached itself from the questioning rigors of hard research. Those of us who dare question the dogma "advertising works" are vilified as heretics or worse as deniers.There is a need for heretics because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on the bigotry of vested interests.The truth is that there are no facts that link television advertising to sales, even after all these years!Dealing with the future will require significant changes in the ad industry.   Media research- how advertisers measure what people watch and how they respond to ads-will have to get considerably savvier about gauging media consumption habits.    Creative ad teams will have to understand the communication process better and then make involving ads that people are actually interested in reading/watching.However the new form of “advertising” has been around for a number of years, rejected by the advertising industry because it was totally accountable and far more effective.All is revealed in my book “Television killed advertising” to be published at the end of this Summer (End September) you should try it, it gives chapter and verse as to the new form of marketing communication together with heaps of independent research.