Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
We’ve all noticed how cable channels will cut content and play a film’s end credits at warp speed in order to sneak in an extra commercial here or there, but broadcasters have come up with a new trick that you may not have noticed – but some eagle-eyed viewers have.
Cutting corners
According to Gizmodo, compression technology allows networks such as TBS to speed up the actual TV shows and movies, trimming the broadcast’s run time without cutting any jokes or action scenes in the process. The result? They have more time to show ads and make money.
The website notes that one YouTube user, who had recorded every episode of Seinfeld during its initial broadcast run, compared those episodes to versions that aired more recently in syndication and found that TBS managed to cram a 25 minute episode of the sitcom into just 22 minutes.
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As that user posted on AVS Forum, he ran the two versions side by side and found that after 202 seconds of playback, the TBS version was a full 15 seconds ahead of the original recording. That would equate to approximately two minutes over the course of a full episode, he added. The time could be used to air as many as six additional commercials, according to Gizmodo.
See it for yourself (careful, the audio might drive you crazy):
Others have made similar observations. Stephen Cox, author of several books (including one on The Wizard of Oz) was watching the 1939 classic on TBS last November, and observed that the voices of the singing Munchkins weren’t quite right. As he told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), they had been “raised a notch,” and once again, compression technology was the culprit.
Not the only culprit
TBS is not the only network that capitalizes on this subtle tactic, the newspaper said. Its sister network TNT has also reportedly sped up shows, and Viacom-owned TV Land has been found doing so to Friends reruns. The change isn’t all that noticeable, Cox explained, “but you can tell by the voices” that the shows have been tampered with.
A Nielsen analysis conducted in December 2014 revealed that the amount of commercials aired during prime time broadcast hours is rising. For example, the A&E Network showed an average of 18 minutes and 39 seconds of commercial time per-hour in prime time, an increase of nearly three minutes from December 2013.
While cable networks are using the compression technique to make up for dropping ratings and what the WSJ calls “a stagnant cable ad market,” the practice is “rubbing advertisers, content owners and Hollywood’s creative community the wrong way.” Several fear that their ads will be less effective, while others worry that they will drive viewers further way from cable and toward commercial-free online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.
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“It has gotten completely out of control,” the distribution head of one major television studio told the newspaper. Omnicom Media Group’s president of national broadcasting, Chris Geraci, added that the practice of increasing commercial run-time and density to make up for sagging ratings was “trying to deal with a problem in a way that is making the problem bigger.”
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