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Streaming TV Shows--You're Not Getting the Full Story
Old 04-12-2022, 10:00 AM   #1
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Streaming TV Shows--You're Not Getting the Full Story

I've noticed something a bit concerning lately regarding the length of TV shows I watch on some streaming services. It seems that many of these shows are heavily edited, sometimes having 10 minutes or more of content cut out of the program, depending on the show.

I noticed this last night after watching an episode of "New Tricks" (S06E02) on the IMDB TV app. After watching a TV show I will sometimes browse to imdb.com and check out the cast to see if I recognize any of the actors from other series' I've seen. Last night I was looking at the cast of this particular episode and was shocked to see Glynis Barber listed in the credits as an actress in the show. I remember Ms. Barber (swoon!) from a British cop show I used to watch back in the 80's called "Dempsey and Makepeace." I surely would have recognized her in "New Tricks" even though it was produced 25 years later. But she was not to be seen in this episode of "New Tricks", as presented on IMDB TV.

So I googled "New Tricks" and "Glynis Barber" and found a 4 min 44 second clip on YouTube of her appearance on the show. Her appearance consisted of three separate scenes. This content was definitely not in the episode I just viewed on IMDB TV. (BTW, she still looks great! Even in 360p resolution on my phone.)

Digging a bit deeper I see via imdb.com that this particular episode of New Tricks has a running time of 59 minutes. But when I started replaying the episode on the IMDB TV app it shows a running time of only 50 minutes, 5 seconds. There are four 1 minute commercial breaks in the IMDB TV timestream, meaning the IMDB TV editing in the commercials has added 4 minutes to the run time. But the overall length of the program is only 50 minutes, 5 seconds. Adding this all up, this means that about 13 minutes of the original content has gone missing!

I had noticed this discrepancy between the listed running time and actual run time on other programs, but this is by far the most egregious example I've yet encountered.

Has anyone else noticed this?
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Old 04-12-2022, 10:19 AM   #2
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I read some places have been speeding up shows by a few percent to fit more commercials.
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Old 04-12-2022, 10:23 AM   #3
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DW is a fan of several of the Discovery family of channels, and I've noticed some of the streaming videos can be a minute or two less than the original broadcast (non-streamed). In a few cases, the order of some of the scenes had been changed. So, nothing to the extreme of your example above.

That fact that Glynis Barber has been completely removed from this episode, in three separate scenes, is rather curious. Maybe there are legal reasons why her scenes needed to be removed, and in doing so, they edited the episode further to remove any additional references to her scenes. Just guessing here.
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Old 04-12-2022, 10:34 AM   #4
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I read some places have been speeding up shows by a few percent to fit more commercials.
Yes, I have definitely noticed this while watching the old half-hour black-and-white episodes of "Gunsmoke" on Inspiration Network. They can't push this too much though, because the voices on the audio track would rise in pitch. But they can speed up the show and/or take out frames here and there in non-audio scenes. You can tell because of the herky-jerky motion of characters as they walk or run across the screen.

There are three commercial breaks in these half-hour episodes of "Gunsmoke" and they are 3 minutes in length. That's 9 minutes of commercials in a half-hour show. That was never the situation in the original broadcasts. There is no way there was 9 minutes of commercials in a 30 minute episode of Gunsmoke back in 1956.

The typical half hour show back in the day had the opening scene with theme song, then went to a 1 minute commercial. About 10 minutes into the show there was a 1 minute commercial break. About 20 minutes into the show another 1 minute break. After the closing scene of the episode there was either a one minute or a two minute commercial, then back to the ending credits. Basically, there were 5 minutes of commercials in the 30 minute span of the show.

I've noticed that Inspiration Network has the ending credits superimposed in small font at the bottom of the screen during the final 30 seconds of "Gunsmoke."

So somehow, between speeding up the motion of the show, editing out content, and placing the credits over the action, they wring an additional four minutes of commercial time.
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Old 04-12-2022, 10:39 AM   #5
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That fact that Glynis Barber has been completely removed from this episode, in three separate scenes, is rather curious. Maybe there are legal reasons why her scenes needed to be removed, and in doing so, they edited the episode further to remove any additional references to her scenes. Just guessing here.
Could be. Perhaps she's not to get paid residuals for having her image used? Or maybe she doesn't want to appear on TV anymore?

That 80's British cop show I mentioned? "Dempsey and Makepeace"? Ms. Barber was one of the stars in that show and the other lead was Michael Brandon. They are married in real life. Michael Brandon was also an actor in the episode of New Tricks I watched last night. So it's odd that he would be shown, but she wouldn't be shown. I'm guessing IMDB TV edited out her part because it was expedient to do in order to lessen the running time and/or add commercial time.
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Old 04-12-2022, 10:57 AM   #6
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BritBox shows all the episodes of season 6 having 49 to 50 minutes, and IMDB shows them to have 58 to 59 minutes, so it’s not specific to that one episode. A quick glance at season 2 shows the same thing. BritBox is owned by BBC, who (I think) sponsors this show.

It looks like this is the way the show is being released into the US. BritBox is ad free so it’s not about freeing time for ads. It’s not easy to cut 9 minutes from a show. Very curious.
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Old 04-12-2022, 11:17 AM   #7
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I know I saw that scene so I checked Hulu and it was not there and I can't remember where I originally watched it. It's the very beginning of the episode and you can see it here.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3bdmuh
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Old 04-12-2022, 11:41 AM   #8
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I watched an old favorite movie a while back. Two of the funniest scenes are when the the adult children of this divorced middle aged woman find out she has started dating, and later when they surprise her with a Sunday morning visit and find her with a strange man, both in their bath robes. Both those scenes were missing from the streaming version of the movie. Not so good.
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Old 04-12-2022, 11:45 AM   #9
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Yes, I have definitely noticed this while watching the old half-hour black-and-white episodes of "Gunsmoke" on Inspiration Network. They can't push this too much though, because the voices on the audio track would rise in pitch.
My Tivo has the ability to play recorded shows back 20% faster than normal. It also modifies the voices so they don't sound live Alvin and his chipmunk friends. They do talk rather fast, though.

I use this feature with the grands when I promise they can finish their show and then go to bed.
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Old 04-12-2022, 11:54 AM   #10
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I don’t know if this is what happened, however…
Some shows have different edits that are released to different streaming services.
Typically I see this done for the content/ratings rather than length.

In the case of StarGate SG-1 pilot, some scenes with brief nudity were cut for one service, fuzzed out for a second and left in for a third.
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Old 04-12-2022, 11:58 AM   #11
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Regular TV does this as well, which is why I love watching shows on Netflix.

I like to see the entire show and not have the regular tv cut out 10->15 minutes of an hour show. And not waste my time watching commercials.

I have the cheap hulu 99 cents per month, that includes some commercials, about 6 minutes per hour of show, so guess I'll miss some shows on those.
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Old 04-12-2022, 12:11 PM   #12
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I dunno. This is not a "streaming" thing, it is specific to the service or franchise.

Tubi and PlutoTV show free movies and most are uncut, swearing, nudity and all. Don't let the teenagers know.

Peacock shows episodes of The Office that are cut in a lot of places.

And so on.
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Old 04-12-2022, 01:09 PM   #13
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I dunno. This is not a "streaming" thing, it is specific to the service or franchise.

Tubi and PlutoTV show free movies and most are uncut, swearing, nudity and all. Don't let the teenagers know.

Peacock shows episodes of The Office that are cut in a lot of places.

And so on.
I wouldn't make a Federal Case out of it, but I do think if a service is offering less than 100% they should briefly say that at the start. Here, I am thinking of movies on an passenger plane. Or movies that are reformatted for the ratios of modern TVs viewing devices .
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Old 04-12-2022, 01:10 PM   #14
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I know I saw that scene so I checked Hulu and it was not there and I can't remember where I originally watched it. It's the very beginning of the episode and you can see it here.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3bdmuh
There is also a scene starting at 28:45 and going to 30:10 with Glynis Barber that was cut from the IMDB TV version of the show.
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Old 04-12-2022, 01:20 PM   #15
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I don’t know if this is what happened, however…
Some shows have different edits that are released to different streaming services.
Typically I see this done for the content/ratings rather than length.

In the case of StarGate SG-1 pilot, some scenes with brief nudity were cut for one service, fuzzed out for a second and left in for a third.
In addition to the edits you mentioned, which were done for releasing the show into syndication, the pilot was reworked and re-released on DVD with some different scenes after the show was off the air. This was done to "fix" a bunch of production problems, spruce up the FX, fix the nudity problem, which was more than brief nudity, it was full frontal female nudity. Stargate SG1 was originally produced for Showtime which allowed nudity. However, despite airing on Showtime for the first several seasons, the pilot episode was the only episode that had nudity in it.
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Old 04-12-2022, 01:22 PM   #16
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BritBox shows all the episodes of season 6 having 49 to 50 minutes, and IMDB shows them to have 58 to 59 minutes, so it’s not specific to that one episode. A quick glance at season 2 shows the same thing. BritBox is owned by BBC, who (I think) sponsors this show.

It looks like this is the way the show is being released into the US. BritBox is ad free so it’s not about freeing time for ads. It’s not easy to cut 9 minutes from a show. Very curious.
Yes, thinking back to other episodes I've seen of New Tricks I have noticed actors in the imdb.com episode summaries that I did not see in the actual program. Must be other instances of cutting the running time.
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Old 04-12-2022, 01:25 PM   #17
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My Tivo has the ability to play recorded shows back 20% faster than normal. It also modifies the voices so they don't sound live Alvin and his chipmunk friends. They do talk rather fast, though.

I use this feature with the grands when I promise they can finish their show and then go to bed.
I watch most things on YouTube in this fashion. Click on the Settings and set the speed to 1.25X. Really a time saver, especially when you have slow-talkers.
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Old 04-12-2022, 02:36 PM   #18
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I've noticed something a bit concerning lately regarding the length of TV shows I watch on some streaming services. It seems that many of these shows are heavily edited, sometimes having 10 minutes or more of content cut out of the program, depending on the show.
[...]
Has anyone else noticed this?
Yes, I've noticed this on both streaming and regular/traditional TV channels, although not quite to the degree you described. On any channel or service that is ad-supported, cutting 2-3 minutes (for half-hour shows) or 4-6 minutes (for hour-long shows) is pretty much the standard these days. They seem to be doing everything they possibly can to stuff more soul-sucking advertisements into the shows.

I've realized for many years now that the only way to see the uncut, original versions of classic shows is to purchase (or rent) the DVDs or Blu-rays. I've done this with several of my all-time favorites, and it is astonishing to see how many scenes are cut out by cable channels and replaced by commercials nowadays.
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Old 04-12-2022, 03:18 PM   #19
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Yes, I've noticed this on both streaming and regular/traditional TV channels, although not quite to the degree you described. On any channel or service that is ad-supported, cutting 2-3 minutes (for half-hour shows) or 4-6 minutes (for hour-long shows) is pretty much the standard these days. They seem to be doing everything they possibly can to stuff more soul-sucking advertisements into the shows.
The thing is there is no reason to do it on streaming platforms, especially for on-demand viewing, is there? I mean, you're going to watch the program you select and there is no subsequent programming coming on after the show you are watching. There's no schedule being followed. So what if it runs 34 minutes including the added 4 minutes of commercials? They don't have to cut 4 minutes of the program to "fit in" the 4 minutes of commercials, and have it work out to 30 minutes elapsed time.

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I've realized for many years now that the only way to see the uncut, original versions of classic shows is to purchase (or rent) the DVDs or Blu-rays. I've done this with several of my all-time favorites, and it is astonishing to see how many scenes are cut out by cable channels and replaced by commercials nowadays.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

To be fair, the cut scenes in this episode of New Tricks were not crucial to the plot, but it did add a sub layer to the mystery. And anybody that cuts beautiful Glynis Barber out of a TV show should be punished.
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Old 04-12-2022, 03:19 PM   #20
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I've realized for many years now that the only way to see the uncut, original versions of classic shows is to purchase (or rent) the DVDs or Blu-rays. I've done this with several of my all-time favorites, and it is astonishing to see how many scenes are cut out by cable channels and replaced by commercials nowadays.
+1

Suposedly, one of the advantages of streaming is supposed to be that network time limits no longer mattered. If Episode 3 of a show requires 63 minutes to do it right, then you get 63 minutes. There are no network time schedules that one must bow down before. If Episode 7 can be done in 42 minutes, that's all you need to offer. No need to fill up the remaining time with stupid stuff from exhausted writers.

I don't understand the entertainment industry.
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