Channel 4 is to return to the era of live advertising breaks tomorrow night in an attempt to persuade viewers not to reach for the remote control.

At 8.10pm, the dinner party series Come Dine with Me will give way to a team of 19 skydivers, each holding a camera, poised in the air over Madrid.

They will have three minutes and ten seconds to spell out a Honda message to viewers before pulling their parachute cords.

Spanish health and safety officers have approved the £500,000 stunt, which will be performed by a team of world and European skydiving champions. Channel 4 said that the skydivers will not be risked tomorrow night if the weather is poor. Rehearsals have been filmed for use in case of an emergency.

A revival of “live” adverts, once a common feature of Fifties soap operas, is regarded as a weapon in the battle against viewer resistance to the hard sell.

The spread of personal video recording systems, such as Sky Plus, allows viewers to speed through advertising breaks. Younger viewers are watching programmes in a bite-size, advertising-free form on websites such as YouTube.

Lindsay 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.”

Last year Channel 4 posted its first operating loss since 1992, with a 5 per cent fall in adult “impacts” — the industry measure of the number of viewers watching each advert.

British advertisers are expected to spend around £3.6 billion on the internet this year, outstripping the £3.4 billion that is forecast to be spent on television advertising.

The US Fox network is considering replacing commercial breaks altogether, with advertiser logos appearing within a programme or in a ticker scrolling on the bottom of the screen.

Regulators are this year expected to approve a restricted form of product placement during shows, bringing British television in line with Hollywood and US broadcasters.

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