DVDizzy Forum

With this week being Premiere Week on most of the television networks, I was looking forward to seeing some new and different shows just to find something different than what I usually watch.

Don't know how many of you are aware that the FCC has approved as much as 21 minutes in commerical time for most new shows this week. That means shows like "Bionic Woman", "Dirty Sexy Money" and "K*Ville" premiered with episodes of 39 minutes each. If this is going to be the norm for this new season I think I will become more and more disenchanted with commercial television networks and only watch Premium Channels and TCM and the good old standbys that I always watch, even though I am sure that they will be hit with the new abbreviations as the new season wears on.

"Bones" on Fox premiered with a season three episode that ran 40:35 as opposed to last season shows which averaged 42:35. For all of us "Desperate Housewives" fans the episodes have been coming down in 30 second intervals over the past three seasons and it will be interesting to see if they even make the 40 minute mark. Last week's new Re-cap episode minus commercials ran an even 40 minutes.

I think a letter writing campaign is in order. We need to get some of our time back. What is the use of scheduling a show for one hour if almost half of it is going to be commercials?

I noticed something funny, especially during Dirty Sexy Money. It seemed that they cut to commercials, more often. It really seemed to hurt the flow of the show.

This news really makes me mad. I don't care to watch more commercials. That's not why I watch television. If they keep this up, I'll just skip the network airings. Maybe if people did write letters, that would make a difference. However, if people just stopped watching, I am sure that would make a difference. I agree, we need to let the networks know that we won't stand for this, and if they don't do something about it, we just won't watch.

Of course, that would suck, because then we'd either have to watch online, or wait until the DVD's are released.

I downloaded the DH recap ep "Secrets and Lies" on iTunes ... and it ran for 43 minutes and 04 seconds ...

I will say that while I was watching television this week ... particularly during Dirty Sexy Money and Big Shots ... I noticed the commercial breaks were unusually long ...

I actually think the reason why they have so many commecial breaks is the fact that TVonDVD sells amazingly well. Better than anyone would have ever thought. If you watch these new shows (like DH, or Grey's...) on DVD you can see they're really intended for this format, it's sometimes really hard to cut in, so during network airings you get the feeling that the show is just dragging on doesn't flow.
The producers and the networks know however that it doesn't matter, since they can count on the DVDs to sell well.
It's really sad and annoying!

I almost never watch network TV, but are these shows getting more and more expensive to produce? Maybe the increase in commercials is helping to pay for more expensive production costs?