> One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.
I get my episodes of BBT from iTunes. You’re correct that BBT episodes are shorter than most other mainstream shows (at least in my own library). They are often only about 18-19m, other episodes reach 21-22m as well. I don’t see any below 18m in the past four seasons and stopped searching beyond that. Alternatively, most of the half-hour shows I watch are consistently about 20-21m, so BBT is definitely providing less content overall.
As for the assertion of 1m intros with BBT, that's 3x longer than reality. I scripted simple controls for controlling iTunes via my phone so that I wouldn’t need to reach for my kbd or trackpad. I set the FWD time to 30 seconds and the BACK time to 10 seconds. Jumping ahead by 30s is appropriate for most shows that I watch, whereas BBT requires me to also jump back by 10s (it has a 20s intro).
Few sitcoms still have 1m or longer intros. New Girl is about 5s, down from around 30s when it started. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia dropped from 1m to 30s. The Sarah Silverman Program dropped from 22s to 17s in 2010. I see the overall trend for typical broadcasts as gradually reducing intros (excluding shows on HBO, etc; those still have very long intros but also no commercials).
The Simpsons has some intros that push up to and sometimes over two minutes in length. Sure, they're often clever and do take time and money to create, but it's still time taken from the actual show.
Supernatural or Lost are good examples of how an intro should be. Literally just the name of the show on the screen for a few seconds, no theme music that gets annoying halfway through the season, no montage of the characters tromping around a fountain, just skip to the show.
Many people would consider the simpsons intros part of the show not a traditional intro. Seeing what Bart writes on the chalkboard was my favorite part of the show as a kid.
No intro to skip in Lost (it's just 5-10 seconds of the show title against a black screen).
That's been the trend for dramas basically ever since-- Lost was among the first to adopt the minimal intro that's popular now. Stargate even made a joke out of it in one of their later episodes.
Really? Weird. Usually if it skips the intro it plays the entire intro the first time you play it after not playing it for a while. It never does that for me.
At any rate... the Netflix skipped intro is how it should be done. Thank god for Netflix.
I get my episodes of BBT from iTunes. You’re correct that BBT episodes are shorter than most other mainstream shows (at least in my own library). They are often only about 18-19m, other episodes reach 21-22m as well. I don’t see any below 18m in the past four seasons and stopped searching beyond that. Alternatively, most of the half-hour shows I watch are consistently about 20-21m, so BBT is definitely providing less content overall.
As for the assertion of 1m intros with BBT, that's 3x longer than reality. I scripted simple controls for controlling iTunes via my phone so that I wouldn’t need to reach for my kbd or trackpad. I set the FWD time to 30 seconds and the BACK time to 10 seconds. Jumping ahead by 30s is appropriate for most shows that I watch, whereas BBT requires me to also jump back by 10s (it has a 20s intro).
Few sitcoms still have 1m or longer intros. New Girl is about 5s, down from around 30s when it started. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia dropped from 1m to 30s. The Sarah Silverman Program dropped from 22s to 17s in 2010. I see the overall trend for typical broadcasts as gradually reducing intros (excluding shows on HBO, etc; those still have very long intros but also no commercials).