I remember them giving him a pretty long leash in terms of the episodes he produced and when he produced them. If memory recalls, he was only allowed one "fuck" season. They seem to have thrown that out the window with "Atlanta."

In terms of episode length, I know they basically let Kurt Sutter do whatever he wanted to do with SOA. So you got the hour and a half/hour and forty-five minutes broadcast times that helped sink the show.

The "no commercials" during an episode seems new. Closing thing that I've seen with that was during the "Ozymandias" episode of Breaking Bad when there were no commercials for the first half hour.