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Most hour shows are 45 minutes, plus 15 for commercials. (check the play-length on DVD). The half hour you'd have left for actual content with this wouldn't allow a very complex plot. |
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"Commit"? To a television show? The world is wide, and much of it quite interesting. Even some of the people, though not as good-looking as actors, are quite pleasant, and/or full of plot twists. I'm not going to fishbone this idea, because if you got dis-heartened you might just slump further down the couch, but it's a close call. |
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45 mins refers to the scheduled not actual length. |
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So the idea is to standardise TV and film run-times? Or more accurately, to change the already defined standards? |
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Sorry, but is this really a new invention? I bet there are some TV programmes out there with a running/scheduling time of 45 minutes - and if there's not, then with clever redistribution of adverts, I bet you could easily engineer one. |
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Which sets up a question. If the TV company uses programming as bait to intice people to watch adverts, then presumably, there must be an optimal programme to advert ratio. Too long - and you don't squeeze the most money out of your investment, too short - and you start losing viewers as they succumb to advert saturation and opportunistic flippage. I wonder how the TV Scientists determine that optimal ratio - presumably there is an attention-boredom bell-curve for different viewing populations - and making sure you cater for at least one standard deviation would ensure you don't loose too many viewers - but that would be based on the programme to advert ratios of other TV channels available - this would be fine if all the channels were operated by independent companies - the competition would ensure a tight maintenance of the "market-price" in terms of which ratios the population will stand - but, if lots of the channels are operated by big media groups, and are able to form a cartel, "fixing" the ratio at a higher level than the public might otherwise accept, you end up with a lot more advertising for the same amount of programming. I don't know how the channels break down in terms of control, but presumably there's some degree of cross-company control. It would be interesting to see what effect this has in different countries. |
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I suspect that it's the same psychology as that employed in premium telephone 'helplines'. The companies have information about how long the average person is willing to stay on hold. |
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I'm not sure I understand where the extra 11 minutes is coming from... |
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Yeah, I figure 10-11 more minutes of actual show time if a half hour show changed format. |
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When American programmes are shown on the BBC,
because we have no commercial breaks, they're
usually forty-five or something like twenty-two
minutes long. I also get the impression that the way
commercial breaks work on commercial channels in
the UK differs too, but i don't know how. Do you not
have more but shorter ones over in the States?
What's it like in Canada and Australasia? |
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American TV advertising is a *nightmare* (from my UKian point of view). The ad breaks are relentless and timed right on that threshold of annoyance. |
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[miggavin] That was my point, with only about 30 minutes of actual program Dramas are going to have a very hard time getting across a complex plot. |
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Advertisements are much like herpes simplex. Once they're there, they stay. You can pay all you want (buy cable, satellite, etc.) but advertisements just keep coming back. Damn viral marketing. |
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I refuse to watch TV with commercials, so we pay extra for *movie channels*. After watching 6 - 30 second adverts, I have forgotten what the heck I was watching! Even movie channels advertise the next movie in the time you are waiting for the next one to begin... |
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