In a thirty-minute TV show on the major networks, how many minutes are taken up by commercials?
Between 9 and 11.
If you grab a TV show DVD and you’ll see that the episode itself only runs about 22 minutes. (!)
More interesting is comparing the running time of something old (“The Dick Van Dyke Show” for example) vs. something new (latest episodes of anything from last season).
They’re putting in a few seconds more (of commercials) each year, it seems.
Yeah, I agree with 22 minutes. That’s the average length of an episode on my cable company’s On Demand service, which shows programs with very limited commercial interruption (maybe 60 - 90 seconds in total).
When I’ve recorded a show on FOX I can hit the button that skips ahead five minutes at the start of a commercial break and not miss anything. On other networks I typically miss the establishing shot of the outside of the hospital or courthouse (but not enough to rewind).
The non-program time of a half-hour show is 8-9 minutes. Some of that time is for network promotion. That may or may not be what the OP meant by commercials. If only paid advertising is included the number is probably 6-7 minutes.
Netflix could double their prices and I’d still pay. I haven’t seen a television commercial in sooooo long.
I didn’t even know Mad Men had commercials until I read comments about them on the Dope. I watched the first two seasons on DVD and I purchased the last two seasons on Itunes. I can’t imagine having the flow of that show interrupted with commercials.
Or any show, any more.
One of the things I suspect (but haven’t actually timed out) is that the breaks are not of equal length. The 8-minute non-program time is split with as few as 60 seconds to as much as 4 minutes. It’s those long breaks that assault your patience and make the whole 8 minutes seem like longer.
We’ve had a 5-minute max delay for “pause” shut off during commercials more than a few times in an hour long show. That’s really annoying!
And the worst aspect of it all is when you get 2 minutes of “break” followed by one minute of show and then another 2 minutes of break. It’s like the network is saying, “You’re a fool to be watching our shit.”
Totally. I also love how I can watch 3 episodes of 30-minute sitcoms in just over an hour.
I was vegging out on the couch the other day and put on Dr. Phil (courtesy of my digital converter box and antenna) and I had to turn it off. Not because Dr. Phil is awful (he is!) but the commercials - the political ads - were so utterly awful. It was scary!
I swear I saw somewhere that 22:30 per half hour is the standard runtime for commercial television in the US, due to the way commercial packages are sold. My memory is fuzzy on that though, that might only apply to syndicated shows (which would explain why sitcoms often lose a minute or two between first run and syndication).
If 22:30 was ever true for first run shows, it hasn’t been true for a long time. It’s definitely not the case for syndicated programs.
I watch all my TV online, both on network sites and Netflix, so I can see exactly how long it is, every single episode. It’s 44-45:30 for an hour show and 22 minutes for a 1/2-hour show.
Over the years the adverage ad time has shrunk from 60 seconds to 15 seconds and local stations often air ten seconds ads.
Another thing that became obvious since the early 90s is that writers now actually WRITE for syndication cuts. Instead of writing a 22 minute show, they write and 18 minute show and then go back and fill up the other 4 minutes so that in the future if something needs to be cut, it won’t interfere with the flow of the main plot.
In Chicago, we have a station called ME-TV (WWME-CA) that airs old sitcoms. I am amazed as they don’t cut them (or cut different parts) I have seen new things on these old sitcoms I’ve never seen before. Two days ago I watched 2 minutes of Mary Tyler Moore I’d never seen before and it really made the episode make a lot more sense.
The networks have also been squeezing in advertising during the actual programming itself, you know, those little sidbar ads they fit in at the beginning of episodes. Sometimes they even have a little PIP action to go with it.
Sports broadcasting is now shameless with their fitting in ads between plays.