ITV to trim programmes

Reports today suggest that ITV is trimming 30 seconds off an episode of Emmerdale & Corrie and up to a 1min 30 sec from an episode of The Bill in mid-October.

This is not to fit in more adverts but in order for them to run to time, so programmes like News at Ten can always start at the right time. The extra advert slots at primetime were introduced a few years ago and the network has never run to time since, so it's to put that right. ITV say this will bring them into line with Channel 4 & Five, but mean slightly shorter running times for the soaps.

So what do we think ? Is it better that the programmes run to time as scheduled and not 3 minutes late, or are you more unhappy about losing 30 seconds from Emmerdale, Corrie and the like ?

(And yes I'm quite aware for some of you, you'd be happier if they trimmed the programmes for 30 minutes, thought I'd get that in first)

Instead of trimming programs, why do they not use the technique used by some US stations of speeding up the playout of the program?

If they did this to all of their shows they would be able to fit in more commercials which is what
people want to watch on ITV-1 nowadays since they are more entertaining than the programs.

A radio station I used to work for used to speed up the songs. The speed change was so slight you didnt really notice it, but it would shave about 20 seconds off the song to allow for sponsorship tags, ads etc.

Grrrr!

About time. How ITV1 get away with consistantly running five minutes late I don't understand. Sunday nights Weekend News at 11pm actually started after the next programme was due to air (11.05pm). News at Ten and the late news are generally five minutes late, while Saturday's edition of The Premiership only starts minutes before 10.40pm - usually running 7 or 8 minutes late.

As suggested elsewhere on this forum, the ITC should bring in rules where channels running late for no valid reason (i.e. extended news/sport coverage) are forced to ditch ads and trailers until they run on time.

Thank God. News programmes should start exactly on time, not 2 minutes later.

Radio stations do not speed up songs for timing purposes - they speed them up so that their station sounds faster paced, bouncier and livlier than others. People won't notice that the song has been speeded up, but if they get used to that version and then hear it on another station unmodified they will think it's too slow.

I notice it, and I think it sounds vile. I never listen to any of the E-Crap radio stations because of it

I've been waiting so long for this news... Excellent!!

Didn't Atlantic 252 (before it turned into SportsTalk and later vanished altogether) use to play songs at a faster speed? I'm sure it did.

I liked this quote best:

But a soap insider said: "A hell of a lot can happen in 30 seconds, especially in the Street and on
Emmerdale. Fans will feel cheated."

So the extra 5th episode has been forgotten about then?

But 30 seconds can be crucial in soapland. In Corrie, fans could have missed Curly proposing to Raquel, Maxine's murder by Tricky Dicky, Bet Gilroy waving goodbye - or Tracy Barlow bedding Roy Cropper.

I sometimes wonder why these journalists are in a job, so they are going to cut the show off 30 secs before the end then?!!

LOL, yes these journo's don't really understand telly do they ? The 30 seconds is no big deal to be honest, I'd sooner they stuck to the schedule times.

If it causes that many problems, why not just shorten the opening titles of the programmes, the titles in and out of the breaks and credits at the end. I know it would probably mean redoing the theme tunes, but surely that's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Well ITV running to time will be good and I doubt I'll miss the thirty seconds of Coronation Street. Things won't appear rushed - they'll just have to cut out a joke and put it in the next episode. No big problem there.

If they really wanted to speed things up though, I would suggest speeding up the ending credits.

The problem with the news is that if it's at 9 it's awkwardly in the middle of primetime and if it's at 10, there's usually a film or drama on which must be interrupted for half an hour. I'm not really sure how you could solve this problem.