The Time Machine is an increasingly popular device that lets TV stations trim time off of a show or commercial to make room for more commercials. Lovely! "Buy some time. Then re-sell it at a profit," says Prime Image, the company that makes the machine. Here's how it works. In TV land, each second of a show has 30 frames of video. Often, those frames are identical, for effect--a lingering shot of some depressed guy staring at a computer screen, for example. The Time Machine automatically takes out those identical frames, saving fractions of a second. Over time, 30 seconds or more can be saved, enough time to throw in another commercial. Of course, TV stations, still hurting over the drop in ad sales since September 11 and our recession, love the idea of more commercials. According to Prime Image, 120 local TV stations now have the $93,000 device. Here in Seattle, only Q13 owns one. "We use it to fit in more promos and speed up movies," says a producer I know.
The ad industry hates the thing. For one, the machine can squeeze not just movies, but commercials as well, which is unacceptable to corporate clients. "We would like to go on record that if we order 10-, 15-, 30-, or 60-second spots, we expect to get the full amount of time for which our clients are paying," the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Kathy Crawford wrote in a letter to CBS President Frederick G. Reynolds a few months ago. Second, according to a recent ad industry report, there are currently too many commercials between TV shows. The media landscape is "cluttered." The more commercial clutter, the less people remember products. And that would be awful, wouldn't it?
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