OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Fairlight]

In the relative spacial/temporal region of
Wed, Aug 02, 2006 at 04:34:14PM -0400, Jay Ashworth achieved the spontaneous
generation of the following:
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 01:45:43PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> > It wasn't cost, it was practicality.  You have 44min of non-advertiser
> > space these days or 52 minutes in 1967 (time the DVD running time of any
> > TNG on forward as opposed to TOS, I have).
> 
> It's down to 42:30, now, according to Shonda Rhimes of Grey's Anatomy.

That's just sad.  "Lost in Space" running times were about 51 minutes.
This is about the same era as ST:TOS, some of which I believe were 52.
Let's just call it 51.5 minutes.

As late a B:TVS, Season 3 (first one I happen to have at hand), which would
havebeen filmed in 2000 for the episode I'm looking at, it was 43:51.
StarGate: Atlantis hovers about 43:41 minutes (older SG-1's were 44:xx).

If we just take the Grey's 42.5 time and the old 51.5 time, we find that
viewers are watching on average 17% less actual programme than they were 40
years ago when LiS started in 1965.  Granted, LiS is a bit of an anomaly
for the first two seasons of three, as they'd have a preview of the first
few minutes of the next episode at the end of the airing.  That vanished
and was replaced with same-epiosode content in season three.  ST:TOS was
always same-episode content, and ran just as long (if not a minute longer
or so--I seem to remember a 52min+ run time on several). 

We've lost damned near 20% of our programme time.  I find that
appalling.  Nobody needs to buy that much stuff.  I suspect there's far
more "stuff" than can be purchased--witness spiralling credit card debt
over the last several decades.

And sadly, it's NOT any better on cable-only stations!  Stargate SG-1
started on ShowTime, and it was always around 44:xx.  SciFi has continued
the trend.  Doesn't matter if it's a premium or basic channel, it seems.

Yes, I know.  There are more important things to be bothered with.  I still
find it irksome.  It's also depressing in that, combined with several
other social trends of the last decade or two, the simple conclusion one
can draw is that people on the whole will accept damned near anything
that shortchanges them, as long as nobody brings it to their attention
forcefully enough to send them into trauma, and they don't happen to notice
on their own.  It appears to extend from trivial TV airing lengths all the
way up to the serious but near-silent erosion of civil liberties seen under
this administration.

"We the sheeple..."

mark->