The original post: /r/television by /u/Large-Investment-381 on 2025-03-11 06:31:38.
Yep. I’ve always wondered about how television scheduling works and as time gone on I’ve felt more and more that I’m missing the very obvious and should be shamed for my thoughts.
So, if we think about broadcast TV shows, the ones that run 30, 60, or even 90 and 200 minutes, there are the shows and then there are the commercials.
Commercials, I’m guessing, are cut to the millisecond - 30 seconds, or at most 30.01 seconds or something. Very specific.
But TV shows like sitcoms - they didn’t all run the same number of minutes, right? Some Brady Bunch episodes were 24.01 minutes, some 23.35 minutes … so how do you work around that as a programmer?
Where did they make up that extra time or how did they take away time?
Broadcast TV shows nowadays must be very tight and end at just the right second, right? And, commercials? And, station breaks?
Please don’t tell me I’m insane for thinking there was a lot going on to keep things moving without delay.