[BC] Are 3 minute TV spot breaks now standard ??

[Broadcast List USER]

When I was in college, I was offered a job editing film for a TV  
station.  It was mostly because I already knew how to edit film.

The job required finding a scene or two to cut from a rerun to shorten  
the show by three minutes so they could RUN MORE SPOTS.  I could have  
spent my Summer watching old "Gilligan's Island" reruns.

Sadly, my father nixed me taking the job.  He wanted me to finish my  
EE degree, and then go to work for him, in a food distributorship, so  
my Summer job had to be working for him.  Some plan, an EE loading  
trucks at 4 AM!  The next Summer I was offered a job at an acoustical  
engineering consulting firm.  I ran like crazy to that job, and never  
looked back at slinging 100 pound boxes of fresh chicken covered in ice.

It AMAZES me the number of spots run on some networks, especially the  
cable networks.  It also amazes me that they have cut up shows like  
"ER" and "Law & Order" to MOVE the breaks.

It doesn't matter to me as I use Elgoto Eye TV, I have three of them  
on a Mac.  I also have a Comcast DVR.  I generally watch recorded  
programs and just zip through the spot breaks.  On the Eye TV, I can  
zip-zip-zip, as they have a one minute jump and a five second jump  
button.  The Comcast DVR takes some skill to zip through commercials.

OH, and "Two And A Half Men" on the CW is REALLY loaded with spots.  I  
do wonder how that show doesn't end up with fines to stations.

--chip

On Apr 3, 2010, at 10:00 PM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 22
> From: Jerry Mathis <thebeaver32 at gmail.com>
>
> Yeah. Although they carry a lot of old programs I like to watch, I  
> just about abandoned WGN, because their spots breaks ran FOREVER  : 
> (    I once timed one at 9 minutes.
>
> --
> Jerry Mathis