The Peacock has been using the gimmick of super-sized episodes for the past few years…running extended episodes of various series. This tactic has focused mainly on their Thursday night comedy series. Today, the news comes that NBC will do away with that, for the most part, next season. Zap2It reports:

“It was a good idea when we started it. It was very novel. But it’s just not a good idea to have shows starting at 9:23 p.m.,” Manze tells TV Week. “I don’t think anyone here thinks, at this point, super-sizing often is good for the shows. We’re going to do our best to not have to do it next year.”

Now, this could very well have been an issue in years past, when viewers were slaves to the networks’ schedules. But, as more and more viewers begin to use DVRs, I see it becoming less of a problem. Manze cites the use of DVRs as a prevalent reason for the change, going so far as to say, “We’re not only fooling people, we’re fooling TiVos.” But, from what I’ve seen, so long as the DVR has enough notice of the change, there’s never a problem with the 9:23 versus 9:30 battle.

The problem I’ve run into, and ran into a lot this season, and especially on NBC, was shows getting clipped (most noticeably, the “Five Years Gone” episode of ‘Heroes’…my DVR cut off just as Sylar and Peter were about to show down, very aggravating). And this is something that I’ve heard several people complain about. I know that Tivo offers a bit of clipping protection, but a large part of the market doesn’t have that option. I would say that the main problem that NBC needs to focus on is the clipping issue, and then worry about confusing people with super-sized episodes.