>A TV show, with commercials, can be an hour long. And those
>are free! I mean minus what you paid for the TV. And those are
>just episodes, and not necessarily a full "story"

Story wise, you're paying for an ON-GOING story. That's why you can turn on a rerun of Family Guy at 3 in the morning and not have to spend the 30 minutes on character back story. You're paying for the ability to join a story already in progress and not be confused. Plus, when damn near every show follows the EXACT same setup, you're paying for a storyline/formula. And you're paying for SEVERAL of these.
Price wise, it's not free. It's the cost of the television and the cable/satellite service. They may not sound like a lot, but it actually is. There's a large minority of Americans whose television has more value than their cars. Which is telling in just how much folks will pay for the OPTION of optimum entertainment over transportation.
Most modest estimates show that "tv running time" is a better financial bargain than "movie running time". Meaning, the average American (who watches some absurd amount of tv a week, I forget how many hours), subtracting out commercials, gets more "show" for his dollar than s/he gets "movie" for his dollar.
NONE of this factors in the quality of television or movie you watch.

>Though I've sat through plenty of films that I *wished* had
>only been an hour long...

This is the bigger problem. It's not that so many movies get cut to smaller and smaller running times. It's the fact that the movies still aren't any better.

>I suppose if a movie is good it shouldn't really matter.

EXACTLY.




"Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which has been given for you to understand." Saul Williams