Running Time in the Title

"What the heck, I've got half an hour to spare!"

"That was a long, long teaser. Nine minutes, counting the "previously"s. Which, if you assume the episode is the standard forty-two minutes long, means the rest of the episode is... they're cute bastards, aren't they?"

— Television Without Pity recap for the Battlestar Galactica (2003) episode "33"

What could be easier than naming your television series, radio broadcast, hit song, or other creative work after its running time? It doesn't have to be correct to the second, just make it close. On commercial television, ad breaks are generally included as part of the calculation.

Similarly inspired approaches to titling include No Title and the Self-Titled Album.

Subtrope of Time Title. Related to Leaning on the Fourth Wall, as characters will sometimes hang a lampshade when events in certain forms of media unfold or turn out to have unfolded in real time.

---

Examples:

Comic Books

• 52 was a weekly comic book series that ran for a year. Thus, it had 52 issues. Originally, 52 was just a working title, but they couldn't think of a better one, so it stayed.

Films — Live-Action

• The 1 Second Film, a non-profit collaborative art project.

Literature

• Irving Wallace's novel The Seven Minutes (published 1969) is about the prosecution for obscenity of another (fictional) book called The Seven Minutes by one J J Jadway (— we are told that the name is written without periods.) Jadway's book is said to describe the thoughts going through a woman's mind during sexual intercourse lasting for that time, and if it existed it would belong on this page. Wallace's book strictly speaking does not belong here, because it describes the prosecution of Jadway's book as pornography and explores the various arguments advanced on both sides in the public controversy over the trial. Wallace's novel was adapted for a (not very successful) film by Russ Meyer released in 1971, and was the inspiration for the novel Eleven Minutes (Portugese, Onze Minutos) (2003) by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, describing on the experiences of a young prostitute.

Live-Action TV

• ½ Hour Comedy Hour, a stand-up comedy clip show on Comedy Central.
• The ½ Hour News Hour on Fox News, a failed attempt at a conservative answer to The Daily Show.
• The MTV music video show 120 Minutes.
• 24 has 24 episodes in a season, each of which runs for an hour with ads, adding up to 24 hours per season.
• Disney Channel had a game show that lasted only three minutes, appropriately titled Disney Channel's 3 Minute Game Show. It was revived in 2011 with the even shorter 60 Second Game Show.
• 31 Minutos, the famous Chilean show, ran around 28 to 33 minutes per episode. The title was a parody of 60 Minutos, a Pinochet-era newscast (no relation to 60 Minutes) which ran for an hour.
• In 1981, BBC2 had a 40 minute spare slot that needed filling. They did so with a catch-all documentary anthology that was called, naturally, 40 Minutes. It stayed on the air until 1994.
• 60 Minutes. Every episode ended with "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" until his 2011 retirement. There was also 30 Minutes, a "for kids" version which aired after CBS' Saturday-Morning Cartoon block from 1978-82.
• 60 Seconds was a news bulletin which ran between shows on BBC3 (and its predecessor BBC Choice) from 2001 to 2016 when BBC3 shut down.
• Al Murray's Happy Hour, a chat show which runs for an hour, including advertisements. It should be noted that not all shows named Happy Hour run for an hour as it can refer to a variable period of time when venues offer discounts on alcoholic drinks.
• Doctor Who has two episodes which refer to its running time: "42" (42 minutes, not counting titles and credits) and "The Eleventh Hour" (60 minutes).
• Hancock's Half Hour, a radio and subsequently TV show, starring Tony Hancock. One TV special was titled Hancock's Forty-Three Minutes. Toward the end of the run, the running time was cut to 25 minutes, but instead of keeping up the theme, they just renamed it Hancock. Spoilsports.
• The Hour, a BBC drama about a Prime Time News show (of the same name) in The '50s.
• The Hour (CBC). George Stroumboulopoulos' talk show on CBC.
• Jack Dee's Happy Hour. He would begin every episode with explaining that it was neither happy nor an hour, until the last episode when he gave up and said it was.
• Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour, a short-lived 1970 American series featuring comedian (and perennial Presidential candidate) Paulsen.
• The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, which was a three-round game of Match Game, however much Hollywood Squares could fill the middle portion, and finally a "Super Match" round with the panel of nine to select from.
• PBS' long-running hour-long news program is titled PBS NewsHour.
• The Ronnie Johns Half Hour which was about 40 minutes per episode, plus adverts.
• Sixty Minute Makeover, ITV home improvement show. Not only does it run 60 minutes (including adverts), it also takes place (allegedly) within an hour in real time. Harry Hill's TV Burp refers to the programme as "46 Minute Makeover" because that's how long it is when you take out the adverts.
• The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
• Stargate Atlantis: "38 Minutes". The title is a reference to one of the rules established in Stargate SG-1 — under normal circumstances, a Stargate's wormhole can be maintained for a maximum of thirty-eight minutes, a rule which factors into the plot when the Atlantis team is stuck in a Puddle Jumper halfway through the event horizon of an active Stargate. The time between the activation and de-activation of the Stargate onscreen is 38 minutes, most of the episode's runtime.
• This Hour Has 22 Minutes took its title from This Hour Has Seven Days, a famous and controversial Canadian news show which aired 1964-66, and swapped out the "seven days" with their running time minus adverts.
• Playhouse 90 was a CBS anthology series that ran from 1956 to 1960 in a 90-minute format which was rather unusual for network television at the time.
• The hour-long specials which succeeded I Love Lucy in 1957-60 were initially called The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show. When they were rerun by CBS as summer filler during the 1960s they acquired the now-familiar name of The The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which was kept for syndication.
• Several 1950s TV shows had a title along the lines of "The [sponsor] Hour". Most of these were dramatic anthologies (The U.S. Steel Hour, The Motorola Television Hour, etc.), though there were some exceptions (The Colgate Comedy Hour was a comedy-oriented variety series, The Bell Telephone Hour presented concerts of classical and Broadway music).
• 90 Bristol Court was the umbrella title of three half-hour sitcoms aired Monday nights on NBC in 1964-65: Karen (7:30 PM), Harris Against the World (8:00 PM) and Tom, Dick and Mary (8:30 PM). The title was a sly reference to both the total running time (90 minutes) and the network (Ninety Bristol Court), but more obviously referred to the apartment block the three show's casts shared (though the only continuity between the shows was an handyman character who often made short cameos in all three programs). ^note (Karen, whose theme song was performed by The Beach Boys, lasted only one full season, while the other two shows were cancelled mid-season, leading to the discontinuation of the 90 Bristol Court branding and the disappearance of the handyman from the remaining episodes of Karen.)
• There's an episode of Full House entitled "Breaking Up is Hard to Do (in 22 Minutes)", the rough run time of a half hour sitcom minus commercials ^note  though considering this is the kind of show that is cut down in order to make time for even more commercials nowadays, the amount of runtime allotted for sitcoms since around at least 2009 is probably less .
• When Alfred Hitchcock Presents expanded from 30 minutes to an hour in 1962, it was retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
• In Al Derecho y al Derbez there is a Parody of 60 Minutes called "40 Minutes, plus 20 for advertisement".
• Walker, Texas Ranger: Season 9's "6 Hours", where Walker and his companions Race Against the Clock (the episode's title speaks for itself) to rescue a billionaire's daughter from her traitorous bodyguard before she is murdered on live TV.

Music

• The Touhou – ZUN's Music Collection CD entitled Retrospective 53 minutes.
• The album version of Madonna's song "Four Minutes" runs 4 minutes 4 seconds.
• John Cage's 4'33", which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of the musician(s) not playing their instrument(s) divided into three movements.
• From the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop The Movie is a song called "7 Minutes", which runs 6 minutes 48 seconds.
• The song "21 Seconds" by So Solid Crew consists of several 21-second segments which add up to 5 minutes. The title of the song was chosen because twenty-one seconds is the maximum amount of time any one member of the group was allowed to have behind the mic, assuming a democratic distribution of time (needless to say, the group had a LOT of members).
• The "Minute Waltz" by Chopin averts it, as "minute" refers to its smallness and the waltz runs about 1:30 to 2:00 at normal tempo (though some, as a joke or as a challenge, play it as fast as possible to bring it under a minute). The English title was actually given by its publisher; Chopin called it "Valse du petit chien" ("Little Dog Waltz").
• Played for Laughs in Les Luthiers "Vals del Segundo" ("The Second Waltz"), which is actually the first one ("second" as in 1/60th of a minute, not as in "after a first one").
• The Bad Religion song "52 Seconds" from New Maps of Hell runs around 52 or 53 seconds, though it starts with some silence making it 58 seconds.
• From the BEMANI games, "The least 100 sec." and "100sec. Kitchen Battle!!" both run 1 minute 40 seconds, or 100 seconds. The former has a long version, "The least 333 sec.", which runs for 5 minutes 33 seconds, or 333 seconds, while the latter is a longer version of "One Minutes Kitchen Battle!!", which runs for exactly 60 seconds.
• "4:12" by Switchfoot, off the album Oh! Gravity. The title refers both to the running time and to the clock time, as the first verse states: "You've been waking up at 4:12".
• "Three Minute Positive Not Too Country Uptempo Love Song" by Alan Jackson.
• "Pi" by Hard 'n Phirm runs for 3 minutes and 14 seconds, though there is some Unit Confusion going on, as 3.14 minutes would actually be 3 minutes 8.4 seconds.
• On the F-Zero GX soundtrack is a track called 2sec. Its running length is 6 seconds (of which 4 are silence).
• The 2008 version of The World Ends with You's soundtrack has two versions of Three Minutes Clappin (one of which is live), with time length of 3 minutes, 12 seconds (studio) and 3 minutes, 19 seconds (live). At least 15 seconds of the song do not include clapping.
• Played with by Relient K: "Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care" is a song that runs exactly ten seconds. The lyrics: "I just wasted ten seconds of your life."
• Averted by Coldplay in the B-Side "1.36", which actually runs 2:06 but some people have reported that it was originally 1:36 long.
• "Song 2" by Blur. Two minutes of song (plus about a second and a half of echoes and leading into the next track, making it 2:02). And it's track 2 on the album as well. And it was the second single released from the album, ending up at #2 on the UK charts.
• Shel Silverstein's "26 Second Song". The entire lyrics: "All the DJs keep complainin' tunes run much too long, so I've gone and wrote myself [a] 26 second song."
• Somewhat subverted by LCD Soundsystem's 45:33. The actual running time is only slightly longer (45:58 according to The Other Wiki), but the name is taken from the traditional record speeds of 45 and 33 1/3 RPM.
• In the early 1960s, Polish composer Krzystof Penderecki subverted this when he produced a composition for string orchestra consisting of about eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds of various nonpitched sounds and clusters as an experiment, referring to it as 8'37'' (similar to the 4'33'' example above). Upon first hearing it, he was reportedly struck by its emotional effect (although there are other theories) and changed the title to dedicate it to the victims of nuclear war; hence, the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima we all know and love.
• "747" by Swedish band Kent is 7 minutes and 47 seconds long.
• "Sex noll två" ("Six Zero Two") by Swedish punk band KSMB is 6.33, but was named for the 6.02 running time of the original demo.
• British Post-Punk band The Pop Group did a Shout-Out to John Cage's 4'33'' with their first B-Side, 3'38".
• Ray Stevens' first album was titled 1,837 Seconds of Humor. It ran for 30 minutes 37 seconds, which is indeed 1,837 seconds.
• The final track of Rosanne Cash's album Black Cadillac is titled "0:71." It's seventy-one seconds of silence, as a tribute to her parents (Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto), who had each died at the age of 71 in the few years before the album's release.
• Roger Waters' "Four Minutes" lasts exactly that.
• The Cardigans have an accidental example (or possibly a Double-Meaning Title) with "03.45: No Sleep". It is three minutes and forty-five seconds long, but the title is actually meant to be read as "A Quarter to Four: No Sleep".
• Global Communication's ambient electronic album 76:14 is, in fact, 1 hour, 16 minutes, and 14 seconds long. In addition, all of the individual tracks are named after their length as well. The musicians explained in the liner notes that they wanted every listener to draw their own conclusions about what the songs meant, without a title influencing them.
• Yo La Tengo's "86-Second Blowout" is 1:26.
• Kasabian's album 48:13 has a total run time of 48:13. The songs on the album all have regular titles, but the album's cover toys with this trope further by just showing the running time of each of the songs on it.
• In the 1960s, performing rights organization SESAC had their own record label on which they released albums of library music for use by radio stations. Several of them were released under the title Just a Minute! and featured songs that lasted around a minute for use as themes or to plug up short holes in programming.
• Del Shannon's 1965 album One Thousand Six Hundred Sixty One Seconds with Del Shannon is 27:41 long, which works back to 1,661 seconds.
• "It's a Fast-Driving Rave-up with the Dandy Warhols Sixteen Minutes" Time and artist in the title! (Linked version is 16:05. Close enough).
• The original version of "20 Minutes" by Carbon Based Lifeforms is a aversion, being only 7 minutes and 45 seconds long. Then played straight when CBL later released an extended version of the track that is actually 20 minutes long.
• Tim Minchin's "Three Minute Song" is a song that lasts three minutes long. As explained in its own lyrics, this is a song Minchin pulls out whenever he's invited to perform live on a show whose broadcast standards make it tricky to perform his usual oeuvre, which tends to go past five minutes long per song. Performances are also accompanied by a live countdown clock to ensure it finishes right on the 3:00 mark.

Radio

• BBC Radio for many years had Thirty Minute Theatre.
• BBC Radio also had the 15 Minute Musical, telling parody stories about politicians and celebrities in the form of a musical.
• Somewhat bizarre aversion: Guy Garvey's Finest Hour is actually two hours (no adverts, as it's on BBC 6 Music).
• Another aversion is Just a Minute, which is meant to refer to the time of each round (the program itself is half an hour), but since there are interruptions, most rounds take longer than a minute of airing time.
• Another aversion is Billy Graham's Hour of Decision, which lasts half of the suggested time.
• Cult Polish comedy series: 60 minutes per hour.
• Also on BBC Radio 4 is Women's Hour, which as it has a 15-minute play at the end, and starts after three minutes of news at the beginning, is more Women's 42 minutes - even with it being transmitted on a station with no advert breaks.

Theatre

• "24-hour play" is a the name of a format (officially from the 24 Hour Plays organisation, though the term is partially genericised) - though the 24 hours refers to the time in which plays conceived, written and produced in 24 hours, not how long a single performance lasts.

Video Games

• The goal of Five Minutes To Kill Yourself is to make your character commit suicide with a variety of acts and items under a timer of 5 minutes.
• 10 Second Run and 10 Second Run Returns have stages that run exactly 10 seconds. Completing all 50 trials in 10SR unlocks a 1 Second Run mode, with even shorter levels.
• 60 Seconds!: The amount of time the player has in the game's scavenging phase is exactly 60 seconds, though the Little Boy (Easy) and Fat Man (Normal) difficulty levels have an additional time period of up to 30 seconds wherein they look around the items in the house.
• Half-Minute Hero runs roughly 30 seconds per stage, though you can turn back the clock on some of the longer stages. After beating the first four modes, you get the "Hero 300" and "Hero 3" modes, which give you exactly that much time to complete the stages. The latter is truly Harder Than Hard.
• Lemmings has "Just a Minute..." and "Just a Minute (Part Two)".
• Subverted with Twelve Minutes, which involves a "Groundhog Day" Loop that seems to only last ten minutes. Double subverted when the missing two minutes come up in a flashback.

Web Animation

• The Homestar Runner short "79 Seconds Left" officially runs 79 seconds, but it's actually closer to 85 seconds. There's also the in-universe "Half-Hour Death Metal Dungeon Hour", which is presumably 30 minutes long.
• 1 Minute Melee — "Two fighters! No research! Sixty seconds! MELEE!"
• Sonic In X Minutes, with each video having its running time right there in the title. Some later episodes play with this by listing an absurd number of minutes ("Sonic Adventure in 5 million minutes" is actually 22 minutes long), listing the number of seconds as well as the minutes, or just not listing the minutes at all. Others (such as "Sonic 3 and Knuckles in 10 minutes") only reach the stated length due to some blatant filler added onto the end.

Web Videos

• Brandon Hardesty has "The 30 seconds video," "The 60 seconds video" and "The 90 seconds video."
• ProJared's series "One Minute Review"^* Ready, go! where Jared would give an abbreviated review of a game that from beginning to end lasted around one minute.
• Five Second Films — "Wasting your time, but not very much."
• The Spiffing Brit: "5 hours of Piano Music For Timelapses - The Spiffing Brit," actually 5 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds, so, closer to 6 hours.

Western Animation

• The All-New Popeye Hour (later "Show"), part of which was comprised of Dinky Dog.
• The Pink Panther Laugh and a Half Hour and a Half Show
• The Looney Tunes anthology The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour that ran from 1968 to 1973, then from 1975 to 1978, when "Hour" was replaced by "Show" due to the addition of another half-hour.
• There's an episode of Arthur entitled "Around the World in 11 Minutes"; you can probably guess the subject matter.
• From 1989, The Gummi Bears/Winnie the Pooh Hour, accounting for the fifth and second seasons of these shows, respectively.
• The Simpsons:
  • The third segment in "The Simpsons Spin Off Showcase" is "The Simpson Family Smile Time Variety Hour", which of course only runs for a third of the episode, totaling roughly eight minutes. Of course, by the time those eight minutes are up, you're probably pretty glad that there aren't another fifty-two behind it.
  • Played straight with "24 Minutes", which doubled as a spoof of 24 (see above).
• The Flintstone Comedy Hour, an Animated Anthology based on the Flintstone family in the 1972-1973 season.
• And three years earlier we saw The Archie Comedy Hour, an expansion of the Archie show from the season before on CBS.
• The Godzilla Power Hour was produced by Hanna-Barbera in 1978, and featured thirty minutes of Mighty Glacier Godzilla and Reckless Sidekick Godzooky, followed by thirty minutes of Nubile Savage Jana of the Jungle. It aired during that period when cartoons ruled Saturday morning airwaves.

Real Life

• The convenience store chain 7-Eleven got its name from its operating hours of 7am to 11pm, which at the time was a long time for a store to be open. Nowadays they're mostly 24-hour stores.

---