TV stations will do incredible things to fit more ads in to their programming. It was bad enough when they started airing the next show in a smaller box while the previous show’s credits would run. And let’s not forget the ads that have become commonplace on the bottoms of our screens. I swear, those things take up almost 25% of the viewing area sometimes. Now, one Redditor has found proof of a network sinking to a new low. TBS is actually speeding up their Seinfeld reruns by 7.5% to make room for more commercials. The Redditor even posted a side by side video to show what they are doing. I’m not sure if this makes TBS evil bastards or evil geniuses… probably a little of both.
Upper-right is a live feed from my tuner card from tonight’s Seinfeld rerun. Lower-right is a digital recording from Fox Chicago about 10 years ago on the same hardware. TBS’s broadcast gained 15 seconds in 3:22. This amounts to almost 2 full minutes for the entire episode.