running time

This has not been a great time for those of us who would like to see longer running times and fewer commercials in TV programming. (This isn’t just about the boredom of commercial breaks, which after all can increasingly be skipped; it’s about the limitations on storytelling that are imposed by the ever-shrinking running times.) The failure of Fox’s “Remote Free TV,” even after it proved that audiences are more likely to watch the commercials in short breaks, seemed to demonstrate that the networks probably won’t return to selling 10 minutes of commercial time per hour, as opposed to 20.

Robert Lepage’s new work is nine hours long and it’s not unique. Here comes ‘slow theatre.’