See this is what I don't get...with modern post-production editing capabilities, one would hardly need to trim down WWTBAM by instituting time limits.
Under the old ways they gave players as much time as they wanted to think, which meant the player could think all of their options through very carefully. We at home got to see this, and in the latter questions it always added to the suspense. The first five questions, according to producer Michal Davies, weren't meant to be trivia questions as much as they were meant to make a contestant laugh and relax so they wouldn't be so tense going into the second tier; they were meant to be quickies anyway, as evidenced by the fact that a single cue plays for the entire first five questions, so I don't see why time would be necessary there either. (Then again I can remember times when people would get caught on question #3 and walk away emptyhanded, or worse yet would use a lifeline during the first five--talk about a musical mismatch, the lighthearted first-five-questions music switching over to the suspenseful Ask the Audience or ominous Phone-a-Friend theme, but I digress).
I suppose though that the flip side is that the editors wouldn't always side with the best viewing practices when making their choices for edit points; I can think of times when a player's thinking-out-loud would seem to drag on forever, which for those with lesser attention spans might cause them to tune out--and I can't see ABC being too thrilled at that prospect. WWTBAM's already tanked once under Regis, so I can see how its status as a once-popular primetime show relegated to daytime syndication might prompt them to be proactive in keeping it fresh.
