Tech Dirt - The latest example of cable industry tone deafness? With cable and broadcast ratings continuing to fall, more and more people have been complaining that the industry increasingly likes to speed up programs notably so more ads can be stuffed into every hour. By speeding up Seinfeld by about 7.5%, for example, the industry can manage to deliver an extra two minutes of ad time during the program:
This has been going on for a while, and as complaints in this Reddit thread attest, another favorite tactic has been to heavily edit some programs for the same purpose. Fans of particularly popular programs tend to be the first to notice that their favorite content is now edited or accelerated, which may drive them to look elsewhere for a better quality version of that product (piracy, Netflix).
1 comment:
It's an old broadcast trick, radio stations have been notorious for doing it for decades. It was more or less easy to pull off with music by speeding up tape or turn tables. Of course, doing this with analog systems meant there'd be slight changes in pitch, but unless a listener possessed trained or sensitive ears the process is hardly noticeable. Now, with digitized media those alterations in pitch cease being a factor, therefore making it possible to time crunch dialog and not have it sound like Alvin and pals.
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