Some math on the BBC America broadcast and advertising time and speed

[eve11]

So here is my evidence that BBC America sped up the broadcast of "Heaven Sent" to fit more ads in. The math was done via me checking DVR times on my broadcast, and checking that against some spot-checked points in the UK broadcast that I got from someone with access to that feed.

The spot-checks:

UK broadcast total length from start to end of episode content: 53:00
UK broadcast length from start of content to start of opening credits: ~2:17

BBC America broadcast total length (including commercials) from start of content to end of episode content: ~59:10
BBC America broadcast length from start of content to start of opening credits: ~2:11
BBC America commercial break total time: 8:32 (2:21, 2:05, 2:01, 2:05)

I admit 8:32 of ads for an hourlong spot is actually pretty short time for commercials for the US: generally it's more like 12 minutes or more. But there is still some discrepancy.

The BBCA broadcast including commercials is ~6:10 longer than the UK content. There are 4 commercial breaks that total 8:32 minutes. So where are the extra 2 minutes 22 seconds? The timing of the opening scene to the first strain of music for the opening credits is 6 seconds faster for the US broadcast. If you extrapolate it out, that is an approximate 5% speed-up for the episode -- for every 60 seconds of the UK broadcast, the US broadcast is 57 seconds. If that rate is applied to the whole 53 minutes of content, then BBCA can play that 53 minutes in 50:21, leaving an extra 2 minutes and 39 seconds for ads. Since we are only 2:22 missing time (approximately 50:38 for the BBCA content run-time), either they didn't speed it up at that 5% rate the whole time, or my estimation error is adding up. But it's definitely sped up.

ETA: D also says that the frame rates for NTSC (north american) and PAL (europe) broadcasts are different; NTSC has more frames per second. But those frame rates if used natively (29.97 fps for NTSC vs 25 fps for PAL) would play a 53 minute PAL video in 44 minutes on the NTSC frame rate. So BBCA has definitely slowed down the video from the native north american frame rate since it played in about 50:38 all told. Which means they can control this and probably chose to speed it up purposefully.

Comments

[nonelvis]

Thank you for doing the math on this. It's genuinely irritating to know that BBCA is mucking with the episode to fit an arbitrary time slot.

[eve11]

God forbid they start the series finale of "The Last Kingdom" a little bit late... *sighs*.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is nuts. All so they can have ads and make the scheduling all nice with hour blocks for every show. Space, the channel in Canada that airs Doctor Who, just overran, so the episode started at 9:00 EST and ended at 10:15 EST. Granted, Space doesn't show a lot of first run shows so it doesn't have to worry about making sure everything airs on time, but maybe that's a good thing. They just aired a movie afterwards to get the schedule back on track.

This is why I prefer the UK feed. No commercials to worry about.

[eve11]

Yeah, the UK feed is the best one, if you can get it. I'd been relying on BBCA for a lot this series; I told my DVR to just record all Doctor Who. I'll have to work on getting the DVDs.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

The really frustrating thing is that BBCA used to allow extra-long Doctor Who episodes to just overrun. But apparently they don't want to do that anymore, or else this episode wasn't quite long enough? It's like they saw it was possible to fit it into the time slot, and took on the challenge!

I have started always watching Doctor Who with the closed captioning on, because the faster speed really does make it harder to understand the dialogue.

[eve11]

I had been thinking something was just slightly off about some of the series 8 episodes I watched on BBCA. Might be the speed-up thing. And I had a tough time with the dialogue for sure.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

This...is why I always aim for the original BBCOne. PBS and BBCA have a bad habit of cutting, trimming episodes to make them 'fit' into their timeslots. Meh.

*HUGS*

[eve11]

Yeah, and if they can't cut or trim, well they will just speed them up. :(

[skurtchasor.livejournal.com]

Intriguing. I wonder if it would be possible to do some further comparative analysis (certainly computer-assisted) of the raw A/V feeds and see what comes up. If you don't object, I'll inform our resident Whovian, who happens to be the one working on our image-processing stuff.

[eve11]

Please do! D has suggested a Fourier analysis of the audio feeds from the different sources to see where the peaks show up.

If you do a Google search, you will find some articles on how cable networks have discovered this tactic and use it for syndicated reruns. I saw an example side by side of seinfeld, comparing original broadcast to a 7% speed-up.