I'm watching as we speak, and for this B&W portion of programming, it appears like they are putting in very extended ad breaks in between the vintage advertisements to account for the run time. Each of the B&W shows runs for approximately 40 minutes with both original and current commercials.
That too is a throwback to the earliest days of GSN, at least the idea of 40-minute program blocks. GSN didn't run the original ads, of course, but they did play the episodes intact otherwise, and added their own interstitial programming (mostly their interactive game Decades) so that each episode lasted about 40 minutes. Even their own promos said things like
I've Got a Secret would be seen at 8:40-ish.
Leaving in the classic commercials is a nice treat for those of us who feel like we've seen the old shows plenty of times, but it does mean that they're almost certainly going to skip the ones sponsored by cigarettes. BTW, it might surprise some of you to know that in some cases, even the 70s master tapes had at least some commercials on them. I was fortunate enough to get a week of Cullen
Tattletales direct from the GSN masters, and while I was excited for the better picture quality, I was delighted when I found out there were ads too.
Also, thumbs-up to whomever changed the title of this thread.
