Old shows slower paced or is it because back then they had considerably less commercials interrupting the program and could develop the story line and characters better?

Back awhile ago, I did a little survey and found that in an hour program today due to additional commercials they have approximately nine minutes less in an hour to work with then they did back in the sixties. I would imagine they have to speed up the pace just to fit it all in the allotted time.

Dean. I agree with you on Clash of Titans. The sad thing is that this is very rich source material that could make for a really amazing movie. Disappointing really.

Casey. You are right about the time available for program material. I notice the erosion starting in the 70s already. Amazingly you occasionally get shows that take the time to develop characters and story lines, but then they take multiple episodes to do so.

I don't know, the airwaves were still pretty new back in 66 and life was slower, you didn't have to cram in a bumch of action or extra whatever to keep everyone hooked for an hour like today. We have too many other things to do other than watch TV, ie. Internet, video games, etc.

I'd have to agree with that.

Scott

I think it's wrong to give a slower pace credit for better character development. I think well-written characters are going to resonate regardless of the pace. Pacing is just pacing.

I agree Fred. With “Clash of the Titans” you really need to do a mini-series to do a story like that justice.

One of the reason I liked the early seasons of “The West Wing” was because of the character and story development but like you said it happened over many episodes. IMO that an example of a show that at least early on wasn’t to rushed but managed to cram in lots of content by not wasting time. I like “Burn Notice” for the same reason. Even though they use time in transitions scenes the narration keep the flow going.

I also think that besides just having less time in each episode, writes have gotten lazy and substitute “action” scenes. Add in that I think in general people’s attention spans have decreased. Sort of what Jay is talking about

I watched Hot Tub Time Machine last night. I think I'm growing weary of all of these R-rated comedies that start to blur together. You'd think the hot tub time machine aspect of Hot Tub Time Machine would set it apart, but the time travel aspect isn't utilized in an interesting way at all, and the fact that the time travel occurs in a hot tub is incidental at best. This would all be fine if there was something else, anything else, to latch onto. I'm sounding harsher than I really mean to. I guess I just wanted more.

It's on the top of my netflix queue after being highly recommended by somebody else. Guess I'll try to lower my expectation and hopefully I'll be better entertained than you were.

It's number 228 in my Netflix queue. Right now, I'm watching season 3 of 24.

I watched it again last night with my brother in law and laughed just as hard, at one point he actually spit wine all over himself from laughing too hard. I guess it relates more to us older folks who spent some of our glory years in the 70's and 80's.