By Dee-Dum
Edited by shrrshrr

Last weekend I watched DVDs of TV shows from three distinct television eras. I saw episodes of the classic Kolchack: The Night Stalker from 1974, Northern Exposure from 1991, and West Wing season 4. What interested me was not the quality of the drama, but the quantity.

The Kolchack episodes ran just over 51 minutes. The Northern Exposure episodes ran 46 minutes, and West Wing episodes clocked in at 41 minutes. TV dramas are now a full ten minutes shorter than 30 years ago.

Is it any wonder that TV dramas these days seem less substantial, even when the talent and resources going into them is much higher than at any previous time? Nearly one third of an hour-long drama is commercial interruptions! And that doesn't count the distracting inserts on almost every show promoting something else on the network's schedule.

How can dramas sustain any sort of flow with so many interruptions? How can they hold our attention? It's no wonder that reality TV shows like Fear Factor are popular -subtle forms of entertainment won't work when they have to stop every twelve minutes for four minutes of commercials.

Rod Serling once said, "How do you put on a meaningful drama or documentary that is adult, incisive, probing when every fifteen minutes the proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?" The problem now is far worse than it was during the heyday of The Twilight Zone 40 years ago.

Fortunately, time and technology seem to be on the side of the viewer. Thanks to people time shifting their viewing to accommodate their busy schedules, some folks can fast forward through the commercials. TiVo also makes it easy to skip the commercials and just enjoy the show. And watching shows on DVD means you pay only for the content and not for the sponsors’ messages.

Reality shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition rely on corporate sponsorship and overt product placement to bring in revenue. Other shows have used “subtle” product placement as well (Alias went through a phase where Sydney Bristow was constantly chasing bad guys in a Ford Focus, which was about as credible as James Bond hopping into a Mini-Cooper). Some shows have experimented with digitally adding products onto a set after filming.

Will viewers ever get those ten minutes back? Probably not. And I’ll probably never be able to watch an episode of Smallville without the WB “reminding” me to watch Supernatural on Tuesday nights. But at least we’ll never get to the point where the average TV drama will be 20 minutes of program and 40 minutes of interruptions (except of course during PBS pledge drives).