• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 6, 2016

Veteran TV producers, beware. Your valuable works of art -- TV -- are in danger of becoming part of a highlight reel: Think ESPN’s “SportsCenter” for a night of prime-time dramas, comedies and reality shows.

The trick comes from using new apps that can speed of time of a TV show by 1.5 to 2 times the normal speed. (And no, the actors don’t sound like chipmunks!)

One reason why apps like Chrome’s Video Speed Controller are growing in popularity -- some 100,000 downloads, so far, according to Jeff Guo, writing a Washington Post blog -- is because there is too much good television to get through, some 400-plus quality TV shows on the air right now.

Guo says speeding up TV shows is the right approach. And here’s where TV producers need to listen up. He says he doesn’t need to waste time with “filler plots” and “gratuitous violence” — and he likes to “jump around” when using this app, as well as slowing down really nice scenes.

Back to the ESPN analogy. TV Watch has pretty much stopped watching a regular season of baseball, basketball and football games. That takes too much time. And watching “SportsCenter”’s highlights don’t come fast enough. Better to fast-forward through highlights to get to the better highlights.

So what are we in danger of? Is this about content that is eternally short-clipped, catering to limited attention spans?  Mind you, people like Guo are well beyond advertising avoidance. Forget time-shifting and fast-forwarding of TV commercials. All this goes well beyond even ad-blocking.

Marketers may think native advertising, branded entertainment or content marketing is the answer for traditional TV commercial avoidance.

But there is a lot more to consider. Imagine if not 100,000, but perhaps 1 million or 5 million, consumers start speeding up content, as well as using ad-blocking or ad-avoidance technology. Talk about your media disruption.

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Correction: The TV Watch “How Far Will TV Networks Go With Their Sports Investments?” (July 5), incorrectly attributed the current ownership of two sports teams. Liberty Media owns the Atlanta Braves; a group led by billionaire Tony Ressler owns the Atlanta Hawks.