TBS Speeds Up “Seinfeld” Reruns By 7.5%

Someone on Reddit recently pointed out that TBS is speeding up "Seinfeld" reruns by 7.5% to sneak in two more minutes of commercials. TBS hasn't commented, but they're probably doing it because the standard length for sitcoms is shorter than it was 20 years ago and now, there's more ad-time.

Back in the '90s, it was common for sitcoms to take up 24 minutes per half hour, but these days, the standard length is around 22 minutes, with eight minutes set aside for commercials.

So, rather than cut stuff out of the episode, or lose their precious ad time, apparently they just opted to speed it up a little to make up the difference. This probably happens to more shows, on many networks.

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.

Of course, it's not just old sitcoms that get heavily edited for television. R-Rated movies need their dialogue changed to be TV ready, take a look at some of our favorites.

WARNING: NSFW Language Ahead