Television timeout
This allows commercial broadcasters to take an advertising break, or issue their required hourly station identification, without causing viewers to miss part of the action.
However, other live programs occasionally make use of timeouts for advertising purposes, such as the Academy Awards and the Eurovision Song Contest.
[1] The timeouts can be applied after field goal tries, conversion attempts for both one and two points following touchdowns, changes in possession either by punts or turnovers, and kickoffs (except for the ones that start each half, or are within the last five minutes).
The breaks are also called during stoppages due to injury, instant replay challenges, when either of the participating teams uses one of its set of timeouts, and if the network needs to catch up on its commercial advertisement schedule.
Association football (or soccer) has no formal television timeouts or commercial breaks, due to the continuous live action from opening kick throughout a half to the whistle at the conclusion of stoppage time.
After a goal has been scored, before the umpire bounces the ball in the center square to restart play, they go to commercial for 30 seconds on free-to-air television only.
Commercial breaks during PBA Tour telecasts usually occur when the bowler who starts the match second finishes the sixth frame.
[8] In cricket, television timeouts generally occur at the end of some overs as the field switches around, when a wicket falls, during drinks breaks and during intervals.
In the 2009 season of the Indian Premier League of Twenty20 cricket, the halfway point of each innings contained a seven-and-a-half-minute stoppage of play, two-thirds of which were devoted to advertising time.
The game generally resumes before the commercial break ends, so when the broadcast comes back on a few rocks will have already been thrown[citation needed] (in the US).
Due to these restrictions, it is possible that not all of the scheduled breaks are taken, in which case sometimes a network will take a timeout at the conclusion of the game to make up for it before signing off on the broadcast.
[13] During outdoor games, a hard TV timeout is called at the 10:00 mark of the third period, and play is immediately stopped (as they need to change ends of the ice to ensure fairness).
[citation needed] In volleyball games governed by FIVB, television timeouts are referred to as technical time-outs and occur during each non-tie-breaking set.
