There have been hour long television programs for a very long time. But the actual length of the content in those programs have changed since the 1960’s. Last night I watched the the first episode of original 1960’s TV show, “The Prisioner” on DVD. I truly enjoyed the program and I’m going to watch the entire series. But I noticed that I almost felt mentally fatigued about 40 minutes into the show. I thought about that fact and I double checked the time left for the episode. The bar showed that there was more than ten minutes left for the program. So I watched the entire episode and noticed that the show was about 51 minutes long, including credits and the intro. This felt odd to me, so I double checked another intense show that is currently on the air called, “The Event.”
The Event’s most recent episode called, “Face Off” was only 42 minutes and 40 seconds in length. And I love the show, The Event and it is an excellent program. But quite literally, it is eight minutes shorter than the first episode of “The Prisioner.”
So the obvious argument is that in an hour program, producers and network executives have decided to limit the amount of actual content in the programs in order to make more room for advertisements. That’s a given and it isn’t the point of this article. Everybody knows that with the advent of more competition for the gaze of the viewer via the internet and forms of self-entertainment, TV decision-makers have had to cope by basically ‘raising their prices.’
What I mean by raising their prices is that, network TV is free. But it is paid for by the advertisements, which people sit through in order to watch their show. So it really isn’t free. You pay with your time. But as the cost of business, and the desire for greater profits, and reactions to alternative media increases, so has the amount of time spent on commercials to counteract these inherent costs.
But what I’m most interested in, is what happened in those eight minutes. What was lost in that chunk of time. The first thing that comes to mind is nuance and milieu. The setting and how the main character, number 6, in The Prisoner is integrated. I’m only one episode into the series, and I’ve already established a deep-rooted connection to the environment of “Your Village.”
-Tyler