Re: TV commercial timing?

In article <49uud5-1un.ln1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 ebenZEROONE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Hactar) wrote:

> In article <bc8p04pmc3hjphcc7kp9ovp39dg32rv468@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Neal Eckhardt  <neckhardt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > I can watch a one hour show in 40 minutes on my DVR. So most shows are
> > about 1/3 commercials. 
> 
> My former DVR software (something branded by ATI) had a feature where it
> could speed up or slow down playback by a quarter or a third without
> affecting pitch.  I miss that.  But yeah, 1-hour shows take 44 minutes
or
> so.  They're shorter if you skip the opening sequence and/or credits.
> 0:40 is pretty short.  How do you do that?

When I was a closed-captioner, I dealt with a lot of shows in their 
commercial-free form.  Shows intended for a one-hour time slot in prime 
time ran somewhere between 42 and 44 minutes.  Shows intended for a 
one-hour time slot in the daytime (i.e., soap operas) ran between 39 and 
41 minutes.  That's including the regular opening intro and the closing 
credits, although both of those items tend to be fairly short these days.

I had that job from 1997 to 2005.  Shows were tending toward the long 
end of those ranges in 1997, and toward the short end in 2005.  I have 
no doubt that they've gotten a bit shorter than that in the intervening 
three years.

And one more data point:  at one point, we were captioning "Hill Street 
Blues," which had originally aired in the early to mid-1980s.  Those 
shows were 51 minutes long.

-- 
Jim Ellwanger <usenet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
<http://www.ellwanger.tv>
welcomes you daily.
"The days turn into nights; at night, you hear the trains."