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Answerman - Will Streaming Companies Free Anime From TV Format Limits?


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nubguy



Joined: 27 Feb 2016
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:15 pm Reply with quote
I would like to point out that House of Cards episodes are actually 60 minutes long.
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FenixFiesta



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 2581
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:16 pm Reply with quote
The mini web episode format is an intriguing release in the opposite direction, this works out great for gag comedies so the studio doesn't have to produce misc fluff to fill out the usual single episode length.
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DuelGundam2099



Joined: 07 Dec 2014
Posts: 533
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:17 pm Reply with quote
It seems like the person asking the question is wondering if streaming companies will allow series to be made that don't have to be a specific length for every episode and if that is true I'm not sure why someone would want inconsistent run times for series; OVAs can get away with that, but that is mostly because they have short episode amounts (if they even have more than one). I've seen TV series that don't and it rarely works and when it fails.... Yeah.
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Nonaka Machine Gun B



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 819
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:29 pm Reply with quote
Bob Odenkirk has stated that he loves Netlfix because they allowed With Bob and David whatever running time they needed to tell a joke or let a sketch breathe; something HBO or Showtime would not allow because they need their shows to fit in that 30/60-minute time frame. Also, every episode of Orange is the New Black is around 60 minutes; usually no shorter than 56 minutes, plus the finales tend to be longer. The most recent OITNB finale was an hour and 17 minutes.

I would love for anime to embrace that structure, but the industry so geared towards monetization I don't think it will come easy or soon. Even with a Netflix deal, production companies would probably still eye a TV deal in the future, and would want to structure episodes around that.

Here's hoping that Prod. IG show coming to Netflix are full 30-minute episodes, and not 20-22 minutes.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:49 pm Reply with quote
Nonaka Machine Gun B wrote:

I would love for anime to embrace that structure, but the industry so geared towards monetization I don't think it will come easy or soon. Even with a Netflix deal, production companies would probably still eye a TV deal in the future, and would want to structure episodes around that.

Here's hoping that Prod. IG show coming to Netflix are full 30-minute episodes, and not 20-22 minutes.


That's the thing. None of these anime marketed as "Netflix originals" so far are actually Netflix original productions. Same goes for Amazon Video. They're just exclusive streaming licenses. The fact that all of them are licensed separately for home video in the US by the actual production committee/licensors in Japan means that they're still shopping the anime around in different markets and different mediums within the same markets so they will still produce them with the traditional TV time structure, except for the home video episodes or extended episodes that Netflix/Amazon/Crunchyroll, etc do not get.
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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:54 pm Reply with quote
A different aspect of structure is how a show with an ongoing plot manages it. I found both seasons of Bojack Horseman make the most sense as 13-part units rather than series of 13 connected shorter stories. They're structured more like novels. I bet they would not have been structured this way if they knew it would be aired once a week for a quarter year instead of available all at once on Netflix.
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Utsuro no Hako



Joined: 18 May 2012
Posts: 1032
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:58 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
HBO and Showtime don't air commercials, but nearly all of their original programming is made to be padded out with commercials and fit neatly into 30-minute scheduling blocks,


That's simply not true. HBO doesn't care how long an episode is as long as it clocks in between 45 and 60 minutes, with 50-55 being typical for most series. Of course most HBO series are unsaleable to broadcast networks without heavy editing.
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Buzz201



Joined: 21 Jun 2015
Posts: 266
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 1:05 pm Reply with quote
Utsuro no Hako wrote:
That's simply not true. HBO doesn't care how long an episode is as long as it clocks in between 45 and 60 minutes, with 50-55 being typical for most series. Of course most HBO series are unsaleable to broadcast networks without heavy editing.


Maybe in the US, but Game of Thrones airs with commercials in the UK. Generally in a 70-80 minute slot, rather than a round hour though.
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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 2:11 pm Reply with quote
So basically Terry wants every anime to have a broadcast time of Re:Zero Episode 1 and some Pokemon Specials. Isn't that a bit greedy in regards to timeslots? I'm saying this because anime is made-for-TV first in Japan. The streaming services come later. Also, think of the further chaos studio production would ensue.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 2:30 pm Reply with quote
configspace wrote:
That's the thing. None of these anime marketed as "Netflix originals" so far are actually Netflix original productions. Same goes for Amazon Video. They're just exclusive streaming licenses. The fact that all of them are licensed separately for home video in the US by the actual production committee/licensors in Japan means that they're still shopping the anime around in different markets and different mediums within the same markets so they will still produce them with the traditional TV time structure, except for the home video episodes or extended episodes that Netflix/Amazon/Crunchyroll, etc do not get.


True: Netflix doesn't have an anime studio that made "Seven Deadly Sins", they weren't Studio.C and didn't license the manga from Kodansha, they didn't do the dubbing (BangZoom did), and they don't have the license to sell the US disks.
All they did was make a backroom deal with (Marvin the Martian voice) A-ni-plex in order to put money into the production, in return for having exclusive airing rights that Hulu, Funi and Crunchyroll didn't have, promoting it as an Exclusive Original Series, and putting their "ka-booong!" on the opening credits.

Whether disk or streaming, fifteen years after they became a major company, we still have the "Netflix Santa Claus" fallacy that Netflix somehow makes everything they stream for distribution, in the backrooms of their workshop at the North Pole. When, in fact, they'd rather be dentists.
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WingKing



Joined: 27 Apr 2015
Posts: 617
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 2:43 pm Reply with quote
"I know no made-for-TV shows are 50 minutes, because of the commercial breaks."

It is interesting, though, to consider how "commercial creep" has expanded over time. When Star Trek premiered 50 years ago on NBC, the episodes were 51 minutes long and aired in their entirety. When I was watching it in syndication in the 1980s, I think they were typically about 47-48 minutes with some modest cuts, and the last time I saw an episode on TV a few years ago (before I got the whole series on DVD) it was about 41-42 minutes and chopped to ribbons. Somewhere around 2010 or so, there was a cable station (probably SyFy) that used to air "Star Trek Uncut" on weekend mornings, which were the original episodes restored to their full 51-minute length, and to fit it all in, each episode had a really unusual non-rounded broadcast window - it was something like 1 hour and 17 minutes to show each episode. Put another way, that's about 25 minutes worth of commercials needed to broadcast an episode that only needed 9 minutes of commercials back in the 60s.

(This is also why for the annual TV broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas nowadays, ABC always pairs it with a much shorter special and runs them together in a one-hour block, so that they can still air ACBC in full instead of being forced to cut it to make it fit in a modern 30-minute window).

Interestingly, anime itself has so far been relatively unaffected by commercial creep, even outside of late-night. Full-length episodes of modern daytime or weekend shows like Aikatsu, Mahoutsukai Precure, or Twin Star Exorcists are all basically a uniform 24 minutes per episode, which is only about a minute less than old episodes of Kimba ran 50 years ago.
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Stuart Smith



Joined: 13 Jan 2013
Posts: 1298
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 3:55 pm Reply with quote
Is there any real difference between a series that has 6 hour-long episodes instead of 13 half hour episodes? Or 13 hour-long episides instead 26 half hour episodes? It's the same length overall.

-Stuart Smith
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 349
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 4:23 pm Reply with quote
WingKing wrote:
Interestingly, anime itself has so far been relatively unaffected by commercial creep, even outside of late-night. Full-length episodes of modern daytime or weekend shows like Aikatsu, Mahoutsukai Precure, or Twin Star Exorcists are all basically a uniform 24 minutes per episode, which is only about a minute less than old episodes of Kimba ran 50 years ago.

That goes for Japan, however a lots of anime had to be time shortened for North American TV airings, usually by cutting off next episode preview and shortening openings and endings to necessary minimum (or making their own, much shorter dub versions), but sometimes there are some other time cuts and I rather not talk about censorship cuts, also often needed for TV airings in USA and Canada.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 4:50 pm Reply with quote
Screwing with the length can mess with the pacing. Most anime are paced to twenty-odd minutes; you'd have to come up with as much as ten minutes in some cases to make it "round"(not a good thing when many anime have issues with having to draw out episodes already).
Stuart Smith wrote:
Is there any real difference between a series that has 6 hour-long episodes instead of 13 half hour episodes? Or 13 hour-long episides instead 26 half hour episodes? It's the same length overall.
Yes. The ending of an episode has been used to add weight to scenes since forever; cutting count in favor of length denies use of this in a lot of cases. It also reduces flexibility somewhat: it's not that easy to switch between main plots in an hour long episode, but two thirty minute ones can carry very different themes without issue. If you've seen Love Live! Sunshine, its addiction to Hallmark Channel moments makes it a perfect case study of both.
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MoonPhase1



Joined: 29 Nov 2007
Posts: 492
PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:37 pm Reply with quote
Kind of reminds me with Hellsing Ultimate on Toonami. Some just filled 61-62 minutes with commercials but others were 91 minutes for the longer length of the episodes which meant a show that came on after it had to miss out on that week.
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