Hacker Cinema
The Sarah Silverman Program
2007 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Rob Schrab, Dan Harmon, Sarah Silverman
Sarah Silverman plays a character named Sarah Silverman, whose absurd daily life unfolds in scripted scenes and songs. With her sister and her gay neighbors by her side, Sarah always manages to fall into unique, unsettling and downright weird predicaments.
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2 comments on Hacker News
> 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).
She makes light of everything. The things that make you cringe are her favorite topics. You can get a sense from her movie, 'Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic', or Comedy Central TV series, 'The Sarah Silverman Program'.
If TED organizers didn't expect as much, their planning was performed in an intellectually-disabled manner. (Is that phrasing R-Word-campaign-approved?)