rockmanac wrote:- Most spots are "allowed" a few frames of slop time, usually. It's not uncommon for syndicated programs to have 2:32 breaks to account for this. And most times networks pause before rejoin...or at least they did. Back in Rockford, we were told to do, though, as you said. 30 meant 30. Of course, then people started asking questions why shows were timing out light and IDs were being added to compensate for the slop time that was allowed for in shows.
Maybe at your station. When I was a MCO, commercials were strictly kept at 30:00. If they went 30:02, the two frames got edited out. It still is the policy. Clients aren't buying 30 seconds +/- a few frames. They are buying 30 seconds. While 2 frames may not be much, if every commercial in the break went 2 frames over, the whole break would be over. The reason why local breaks were "2:32" from the syndicators was to allow for 2:30 of commercial material and :02 for a legal ID. (2 seconds of visual was the old rule on that). It wasn't for "slop time". Most traffic departments won't schedule that however, and just let the 2 seconds of black ride (which I think looks sloppy. Anything more than 10 frames of black is too much black, imho).
