I'm told there's a big fight leading up to the premiere over, of all things, ads. AMC has told the show's producers to make allowances for another commercial break each hour -- so that'll be two minutes less of actual programming.
read the rest at Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily
that’s kind of ironic…
Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
Does this mean that the avg. run-time for an episode will be 39 minutes? Two minutes is a lot of a show when added up amongst 13 episodes, meaning they’ll pretty much cut out a half of an episode in total.
I understand that it’s harder to incorporate revenue into a period piece drama (product placement and name recognition is hard to do with extinct products). I wonder if this will be for Mad Men only or if it will be extended to other shows?
Mad Men is usually 47 minutes, so new episodes will likely be 45 minutes.
hog has the key part down. This isn’t a coup. The show already runs five minutes heavy compared to standard hourlong dramas. Why shouldn’t AMC be allowed to have their biggest moneymaker be only a little longer than writers normally get instead of a lot longer. Fox is cutting the eight minute extension out of Dollhouse and Fringe and nobody appears ready to scream about that. Plus, if they are hoping that the show will someday be syndicated, the artistic integrity depends upon it not being butchered to fit time, and it’s possible this is just a necessary evil to accomplish that end.
Two minutes less of whiny WASPs? Good! The show’s pacing is comatose at best, so it’s not like much plot will be missed!
“Why shouldn’t AMC be allowed to have their biggest moneymaker be only a little longer than writers normally get instead of a lot longer.”
The ratings suck. They only keep the show on the air because of the awards.
They should go the product placement route instead. Give Don a Blackberry.
Looks like they’re going the ABC route of having the show run over:
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/mad-men-amc-resolve-2-minute-dispute/