Running Time in the Title



""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 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.

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

Note: "Exactly what it says on the tin" is reserved for programs with only the running time in the name.

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.

Film

 * The 1 Second Film, a non-profit collaborative art project (website here).

Literature

 * The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

Live-Action TV

 * 24. An action/crime drama.
 * 24 episodes in a season, one hour each. Season running time: Twenty four hours!
 * Of course, it doesn't work, due to ad breaks meaning each episode is only 40 or so minutes.
 * Except that the commercial breaks actually tend to happen in real time, with the action picking back up after the same length of time taken up by the commercial break has passed, so... yeah.
 * 60 Minutes. News investigation.
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * CBS also had 30 Minutes, a 60 Minutes For Kids which aired after the Saturday Morning Cartoon block from 1978-82.
 * The Hour. George Stroumboulopoulos' talk show on CBC.
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * This Hour Has 22 Minutes. A satire/news show.
 * Running time: Half an hour minus commercials. Twenty-two minutes.
 * The 1/2 Hour News Hour on FOX News.
 * Running time: 30 minutes.
 * 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour. Stand-up comedy clip show on Comedy Central.
 * Running time: 30 minutes.
 * The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
 * Running time: One hour.
 * Hancock's Half Hour, a radio show, and later a TV show starring Tony Hancock. There was also a TV special called Hancock's Forty-Three Minutes.
 * Running time: 30 minutes and 43 minutes, respectively.
 * 40 Minutes. BBC 2 TV in the 80s had a 40-minute spare slot which they filled with a catch-all documentary anthology.
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * 60 Seconds is a news bulletin on BBC 3.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * Al Murray's Happy Hour, a chat show (should be noted that due to its other meaning, not all shows named Happy Hour run for an hour).
 * Running time: One hour, including advertisements.
 * Also, 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.
 * "42", an episode of Doctor Who.
 * Running time: 44 minutes. Approximately 42 minutes, not including titles and credits.
 * The Ronnie Johns Half Hour which was about 40 minutes per episode, plus adverts.
 * Sixty Minute Makeover, ITV home improvement show.
 * Running time: 60 minutes, including adverts. It also takes place (allegedly) in an hour realtime.
 * Harry Hills TV Burp refers to the programme as "46 Minute Makeover" because that's how long it is when you take out the adverts.
 * The Hour, BBC drama about a Prime Time News show (of the same name) in The Fifties.
 * Running time: one hour.

Music

 * ZUN's supplementary Music CD, entitled Retrospective 53 Minutes.
 * The album version of Madonna's song "Four Minutes" runs more or less four minutes.
 * Running time: 4 minutes, 4 seconds.
 * John Cage's 4'33", according to The Other Wiki, "was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece."
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * Or not - there's no indication to use any sort of time measurement, only to approximate four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and divide into three movements.
 * From the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop The Movie is a song called "7 Minutes."
 * Running time : 6 minutes, 48 seconds.
 * The song "21 Seconds" by So Solid Crew
 * Running time: Several 21-second segments 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.
 * Running Time: Usually somewhere between 1:30-2:00. It's suggested that "minute" is supposed to refer to smallness.
 * Actually, yes. The "Minute Waltz" is just the popular name for the first waltz of Chopin's work "Trois Valses" (three waltzes), from 1847. So this was originally a No Title. In any case, it's much better of a name than its dull referential title: "Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1".
 * 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 52 Seconds from New Maps of Hell
 * Running time: The song starts with some silence making the length 58 seconds, however the song itself is around 52 or 53 seconds.
 * From the Bemani games: The least 100 sec. and 100sec. Kitchen Battle!!.
 * Running Time: 1 minute, 40 seconds. The former has a long version, titled The least 333 sec., which runs for 5 minutes, 33 seconds.
 * "4:12" by Switchfoot, off the album Oh! Gravity. (Interestingly, the title also refers to the clock time, as the first verse states: "You've been waking up at 4:12".)
 * Running Time: 4 minutes, 12 seconds.
 * "Three Minute Positive Not Too Country Uptempo Love Song" by Alan Jackson.
 * Running time: 3 minutes, 2 seconds.
 * "Pi" by Hard 'n Phirm
 * Running time: 3 minutes and 14.168163 seconds, according to Audacity.
 * Unit Confusion: 3 minutes 14 seconds is not the same as 3.14 minutes.
 * Global Communication's 76:14, and all of its tracks.
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * 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 is actually longer but some people hearing that it was originally 1:36 long.
 * Running time: 2:06.
 * "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."
 * 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.
 * Averted (I think): In the early 1960s, Polish composer Krzystof Penderecki produced a composition for string orchestra consisting of about eight minutes and fifty-one seconds of various nonpitched sounds and clusters as an experiment, referring to it as 8'51 (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.
 * And "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"''.
 * Running time: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
 * Ray Stevens' first album was titled 1,837 Seconds of Humor.
 * Running time: 30:37. And yes, that's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

Radio

 * BBC Radio for many years had Thirty Minute Theatre.
 * Running time: 30 minutes.
 * Somewhat bizarre aversion: Guy Garvey's Finest Hour.
 * Running time: two hours. (It's on BBC 6 Music, so there aren't even adverts.)
 * Aversion: Just a Minute.
 * Running time: 30 minutes. (The title refers to the time of each round, but since there are interruptions, most rounds take longer than a minute of airing time.)
 * Another aversion is Billy Graham's Hour of Decision.
 * It lasts for half of the suggested time.
 * Cult Polish comedy series: 60 minutes per hour.

Theater

 * 24 Hour Plays are plays conceived, written and produced in 24 hours.

Video Games

 * Half Minute Hero
 * Running Time (per stage): roughly 30 seconds, though you can turn back the clock on some of the longer stages.
 * From the same game, there are the and  modes after beating the first four, which give you exactly that much time to complete the stage. The latter is truly Harder Than Hard.
 * Lemmings has "Just a Minute..." and "Just a Minute (Part Two)".
 * Running Time: Exactly one minute for both, not including any pauses.

Web Original

 * The Homestar Runner short "79 Seconds Left"
 * Running time: Officially 79 seconds. Actually closer to 85 seconds.
 * Also the in-universe "Half-Hour Death Metal Dungeon Hour." Presumably 30 minutes long.
 * Brandon Hardesty has "The 30 seconds video", "The 60 seconds video" and "The 90 seconds Video".
 * Five Second Films -- "Wasting your time, but not very much."

Western Animation

 * The Pink Panther Laugh and a Half Hour and a Half Show
 * Averted in a Simpsons clip show - "The Simpson Family Smile Time Variety Hour" segment runs for a third of the clip show, 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)

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 open 24 hours, seven days a week