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It's amazing how much commercials have crept in. If you watch an "hour long" show from the early 80s, it's roughly 48 minutes. If you watch a similar show from
by caseysoftware 6y ago
It's amazing how much commercials have crept in. If you watch an "hour long" show from the early 80s, it's roughly 48 minutes. If you watch a similar show from 10-15 years ago, it's closer to 44-45 and in the last few years, it's more like 42 minutes.
I assume it's only going to get worse as TV ad revenue drops faster with more alternatives.
- jandrese 6y agoWatch broadcast TV and you'll notice that hour long TV shows are in 1:15 timeslots because they need to pack in an extra 15 minutes of ads. Or the show will have bits cut out like half of the opening, the start and end of some scenes, etc...
- timcederman 6y agoDo you have a citation for this? It's been 42-44 minutes of content for at least the last 20 years in my experience.
- magicalhippo 6y agoChecked some episodes from some shows I had available, first seasons, DVD or Bluray source: Miami Vice (1984): 48m Homicide Life On The Streets (1993): 47m TekWar (1994): 45m Nowhere Man (1995): 45m Battlestar Galactica (2003): 44m Dark Matter (2015): 43m 12 Monkeys (2015): 43m Lucifer (2015): 43m There are exceptions though. Legion (2017) episodes are around 50m, and several of the newer "made for streaming" shows have 50-60m episodes.
- caseysoftware 6y agoThanks. The pattern isn't perfect but the trend is clear. These are Season 1, excluding pilots. A-Team (1983): 49m MacGyver (1985, original): 48m Quantum Leap (1989): 47-48m X-Files (1993): 43-44m Monk (2002): 44m Eureka (2006): 44m MacGyver (2016, remake): 42-43m
- johnbatch 6y agoBig Bang Theory - 18-20 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/the-big-bang-theory/seasons/10 https://trakt.tv/shows/the-big-bang-theory/seasons/10 Brooklyn Nine-Nine - 21 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/brooklyn-nine-nine/seasons/7 https://trakt.tv/shows/brooklyn-nine-nine/seasons/7 The Office - 22 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/the-office/seasons/9 https://trakt.tv/shows/the-office/seasons/9 M.A.S.H - 24 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/m-a-s-h/seasons/10 https://trakt.tv/shows/m-a-s-h/seasons/10 Golden Girls - 24 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/the-golden-girls/seasons/1 https://trakt.tv/shows/the-golden-girls/seasons/1 Cheers - 24 mins https://trakt.tv/shows/cheers/seasons/10 https://trakt.tv/shows/cheers/seasons/10
- onion2k 6y agoI don't find it amazing. 1980 was 40 years ago. For context, the first commercial TV broadcast in the US was in 1941, and it didn't really get going until the late 40s. For the format not to have found it's most profitable show length for an hour long slot 35 years after it started, and for it to still be evolving 40 years from that point with a huge amount of innovation in the tech isn't really surprising.
- ghayes 6y agoI would suppose OPs argument is that this is like how much sawdust can you add to food before people notice and choose alternative media consumption. There's presumably a lot of deadweight loss and collusion that play to these results.
- meh2frdf 6y agoIn the UK the amount of minutes is regulated for broadcast.
- pmlnr 6y agoYet it's still unwatchable with so many commercials.
- hawski 6y agoThat reminds me, that I would love for Netflix to have a common episode length filter. Or at least a category for around 20 minute shows.
- sgustard 6y agoAd revenue has also dropped with DVR use. It's amusing to think about adding 20% of ads to compensate for 20% of viewers skipping over the ads, since it's a race to 100% ads that nobody watches.