Retro TV episodes edited?
Just got a station that carries Retro TV. I was wondering if their Doctor Who reruns are edited for time to put in commercials.
shareThe classic Who episodes are typically about 25 minutes long. The Retro TV schedule has the episodes in a 30 minute timeslot. Therefore if there's any more than about 5 minutes of ads it would seem that the episodes have been altered. This may be by cutting bits out or by speeding the episodes up.
Horror channel in the UK was showing old episodes (Hooray) but they've stopped now (Boo). They were also running in a 30 minute timeslot and had one set of ads (about 4 minutes long) around the middle. I don't think anything was cut out, but I can't be absolutely sure.
"The classic Who episodes are typically about 25 minutes long."
Many are as short as 22 or 23 minutes long. A few were just 18 or 19 minutes in length and I think one was actually a full 30 minutes...
ant-mac
Let's see. Retro TV episodes end at, usually, 4 minutes before the start of the half hour. So, that's about 4 minutes of commercials there. And there 2 other commercial breaks. One about 5 minutes after the start of the episode and one about 15 minutes into the half hour. This seems to indicate they might be trimmed down slightly, but as was later pointed out, some episodes run only 22 minutes.
shareIt is best to see them when they are shown on stations run by UKTV, they tend to use a 40 minute time slot to avoid cutting them.
Let Zygons Be Zygons.
Unfortunately, it's no longer my concern. My local Retro TV station has stopped broadcasting in my area. Or it's broadcasting at a power level I can no longer receive over the air.
I realize it's not popular, but I always liked the omnibus format that my PBS station aired the Tom Baker episodes as. The same format on the early VHS releases. It's a logistical nightmare to program the stories in because of their different lengths, but at least you get an entire story in one sitting. Well, some stories, like The War Games, were in 2 parts.