Taped Talk Shows and Commercials

Factual Questions
1

Lately I have been taping many talk shows, such as * The Price is Right, The Daily Show, The Tonight Show, and Conan O’Brian*. Each of these tv shows’ hosts always says something like, “We’ll be right back after these commercials.” The band plays, and we go to commercial. However, since these shows are taped, I am unsure as to whether the show actually pauses for the duration of the commercial, or they just go right into the “welcome back” part. I have observed two conflicting exhibits:

  1. The band often is playing the same song before and after the commercial. This is more obvious to me since I can fast foreward through the commercials, and the song is still fresh in my mind. However, the band could just have started up again where they left off.

  2. The host of the show will often mention something that he and the guest were talking about “during the [commercial] break.” The host will say something like, “Now, tell us what you told me during the break.” This supports the theory that the show pauses during commercials. However, this seems ridiculous considering that the commercials could just be edited in.

Thank you in advance, this has been troubling me for some time now.

2

The taping of an hour long talk show takes an hour.
So they actually do pause for commercial breaks.
Ever watch the sitcom Sports Night? Or the Larry Sanders show? They take a 60 or 90 second break.

In other words, if they start taping at 5pm, they end at 6pm.

Hope that helps.

3

I have never seen the Larry Sanders show, but I thought that Sports Night was supposed to be a live show (i.e. up to the second sports scores). If it is true that are not live pause for commercials, why? This makes very little sense to me. It keeps the guests there longer than they need to be, and is unnecessary. Unless they need time to talk and review their discussion topics. Thank you though, I have a feeling that you are right.

4

I think you’re assuming that the hosts could do their thing for 48 minutes straight if they wanted, without pausing for makeup, hair touch-ups, a drink of water, etc. But they do need time for that kind of stuff, and the commercial break is a convenient place to do it.

5

In shows like Dave Letterman the audience in the theater is major part of the show so they have warm up before the show and music and stuff during the breaks.