• by Wayne Friedman , July 22, 2016

It's go time. Big cable network groups -- Time Warner, Viacom, and A+E Networks -- cut commercial time in the second quarter.

A&E Networks made the biggest cuts during the period -- trimming back 10% during the second quarter to 415 hours, according to Bernstein Research, in its analysis of TiVo Research & Analytics data. Its H2 network, now Viceland, cut a big 73% of its commercial time, contributing much to the group’s overall results.

AMC Networks lost 7.4% commercial time to 132.1 hours, with the AMC Network itself losing 13% of its commercial hours to 62 hours.

Time Warner -- for TBS, TNT, truTV, and Adult Swim -- cut 5% to 286.6 hours. Turner advertising executives have previously said it would be cutting back on network commercial time for a number of networks.

During the quarter, TBS was down 6%; truTV, cutting 9%. Only TNT kept commercial levels pretty much the same, trimming back just 1%.

Viacom, which has said it would be cutting back commercial time, was down 3% to 888.5 hours overall. Its biggest cuts were Nick-At-Nite, 24%, Spike, 9%, and MTV, 7%. Viacom’s BET added 12% to 93.8 hours.

Scripps Networks Interactive trimmed 1% to 360.5 hours for all its channels.

Cable network groups adding commercial time were NBCUniversal, 3% to 567.1 commercial hours (excluding sports and news network programming); Discovery Communications’ networks, up 2% to 391.0 hours; and Fox cable networks -- FX and NatGeo were up 5% to 127 hours.