Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race have had it… officially!
After years of
VH1 airing a two-hour block of Drag Race content that included
90-minute standard episodes plus half-hour Untucked segments,
the move to MTV has come with a change in the programming in order to launch a
brand-new series for the network. New episodes of Drag Race season
15 will air for one hour (not 90 minutes), which will be followed by The Real Friends of WeHo, which will then be followed
by Untucked.
Diehard Drag
Race fans are absolutely not pleased with these shorter Drag Race episodes, claiming that
queens have worked too hard to settle for so much less airtime. Viewers are
also complaining that they’d have to watch (or wait) for The Real
Friends of WeHo to conclude in order to watch Untucked live
on TV.
A Change.org petition has been created by fans with the
title, “Bring back 90-minute episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race and
not air The Real Friends of WeHo.” As of this writing, the petition
is very close to gathering 20,000 signatures and moving at a quick pace.
This
Change.org petition for the length of Drag Race episodes
reads:
“I know this
is probably petty, but MTV and WOW Presents, we would like RuPaul’s
Drag Race to return to 90-minute episodes. The 90-minute format was
unique to any other reality competition show where we actually have context for
the content of episodes. Also, we really don’t want The Real Friends of
WeHo to air. Given Todrick Hall’s problematic behavior last year
on Celebrity Big Brother, it’s irresponsible to give him a platform
he doesn’t deserve, and he refuses to take accountability. So we ask politely
and aggressively to allow Drag Race to have the 90 minutes
fans deserve.
VH1 started to
air 90-minute episodes of Drag Race during season
10. Though the episodes themselves were one hour long, they aired as 90
minutes of content when including the commercial breaks.
With the move
to MTV for Drag Race season 15, though, episodes have reverted
back to being a round one-hour block of television. This means that episodes
are about 40 minutes long, plus commercial breaks.
For one, it is
likely that the entire 15th season of Drag Race has already been fully edited to fit the one-hour
block of programming, so this petition might be a little too late. Secondly, it
is very unlikely that MTV will change its programming strategy based on a
petition of this kind. Last but not least, the one-hour block of Drag
Race will probably hit its sweet spot once this cast of 16 queens is
narrowed down to just a few. It seems like a lot of this frustration comes from
having such a large cast with less time to showcase them all individually – but
the cast will keep getting smaller week by week.
We shall see
how this turns out!
RuPaul’s Drag
Race season 15 airs Fridays on MTV.
SOURCE: OUT DOT COM
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