huzefa

Why does it have to be in 1 hour or 30 minute increments? Is it an FCC rule? I mean we would watch (or not watch) the commercial regardless of when they came on.

McHawkson

I don't think FCC requires TV to show commericals, the commerical pays TV shows. "24" on October 28th will be without commerical.

Rypro 525

but it's being sponsored by ford. Also to help pay for ads, they will also place products for shows.

freedexter

It's really 22 minutes and 44 minutes. If you think about it, that's a lot of commerical interupption.

It's not set in stone. If you recall, the WB and UPN has played around with it. Examples: both the series premiere of "Everwood" and the "Once More with Feeling" episode of "Buffy" ran around 70 minutes or so. Of course, in reruns, they were cut to fit into an hour, but that's what DVD releases are for.

Jackskeleton

Not many shows can actually fill a full two hours and continue to keep the audiance coming back for more. NBC's extra ten minutes on friends and others was around last season. Survivors first episode this season was an hour and a half. it's not set in stone. but it's the amount of content you have on your channel. I doubt any network wants to commit to a full two hours on one program because then you narrow down your audiance a great deal eventually narrowing down your advertise rates you can charge for that specific night and time. atleast with blocks of different shows you get different audiance and different adverstisers wanting to pay for air time.

McHawkson

Yes, that's right.

Y2K Falcon

And E.R. is 61* minutes.

<small>* an obvious homage to Roger Maris</small>

Red Dog

Who says its limited. Damn NBC is always screwing up people with their super-size schedules.

marty888

The networks/stations can do anything they want as far as time allotment for a show. Besides NBC's stupid supersizing, there have been several examples over the years where a decision was made to ignore the regular time restraint. The oiriginal mini-series V ran beyond the regular time period for one of its evenings.

I think the real restraint is that programmers assume that most viewers are too stupid to find a show that doesn't start at a tidy time.

Groucho

It's not stupidity, it's uniformity and common sense. If I watch a show that ends at 8pm, I'm more likely to switch to a show that starts at 8pm rather than one that started at 7:45pm and I've already missed the first 15 minutes.

Patman

Does TBS still start their shows 5 minutes past the hour?

Morf

Yep. Why would a network want its show to air from 7pm to 9:37pm? They would be competing against EVERY show during that time: shows that start at 7, 7:30, 8, 8:30, 9, and 9:30 (and all times inbetween).

Rypro 525

I think they stopped doing this a few years ago.