Do you notice these days even with the invention of DVR that reality shows love to show a quick preview of what will happen later in the episode before each commercial break? Do you also notice that sit-coms and dramas with real actors do not and never have shown previews before the commercial breaks? Why do reality shows do this? Even if you do not have the luxury of DVR to fast-forward through the commercials to see how the episode continues, waiting 2-3 minutes to see what will happen in the episode is completely tolerable and what TV watchers always experienced until the stupid 'coming up next on...' was invented.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a few reality shows out there, such as Shark Tank, anything Kardashians, Project Runway, but let's face it, we want more of the episode and less of the preview of what will happen in 2-3 minutes after the next commercial break. Let's do the math (BTW I am terrible at math, so hopefully this makes sense): a 60 minute reality TV show has like five commercial breaks, maybe? Each commercial break varies, so let's say total commercial minutes is 15 minutes. Now the actual episode is really only 45 minutes. Now lets continue deducting minutes from our beloved reality shows to include the many wasted seconds of 'commercial break previews' and let's add 'last week, this happened' and the always necessary, 'preview for next week's episode'. Okay, so we said 15 minutes for each commercial which means there are 5 previews before each commercial. Let's say each preview is 15 seconds times 5 = 75 seconds which is really 1 minute 15 seconds, but we can round up, so one minute off. So now the episode is really 44 minutes. Now let's add the 'last time on...' and 'next time on...' which we can guesstimate each is around 45 seconds each which is 1:30 minutes. Now we subtract from 44 minutes which now is 42:30 minutes.

Now that I have done the math for the first time assuming it is close to reality (pun intended), we really are only losing like 2:30 minutes. I guess that isn't so long after all. Maybe it is more so that it bother's me that those precious 2:30 are used for something we will inevitably see anyways, so what is the point? WHY do they bother? That's all. Man, that felt good to get off my chest ;)