I think the answer is E.

I am just starting out so pardon my ignorance about English language as it is not my first language.

prachich1987 wrote:The network determined that seventeen commercials should be shown during a half-hour sitcom, while a one-hou drama can be expected to contain twenty-nine

A) seventeen commercials should be shown during a half-hour sitcom
B) in a half-hour sitcom seventeen commercials will be shown
C) in a half-hour sitcom, seventeen commercials should be shown
D) seventeen commercials should be shown in a half-hour sitcom
E) seventeen commercials will be shown by a half-hour sitcom

Source : Kaplan 800
OA : after some time

Split : Should / will : since something is already determined we can't use should. So A,C,D out.
Between B and E , E changes meaning by changing during ..x hrs to by ..x hrs. So B is the winner.

whats the OA??

prachich1987 wrote:The network determined that seventeen commercials should be shown during a half-hour sitcom, while a one-hou drama can be expected to contain twenty-nine

A) seventeen commercials should be shown during a half-hour sitcom
B) in a half-hour sitcom seventeen commercials will be shown
C) in a half-hour sitcom, seventeen commercials should be shown
D) seventeen commercials should be shown in a half-hour sitcom
E) seventeen commercials will be shown by a half-hour sitcom

Source : Kaplan 800
OA : after some time

E here too .... the words arranged in B is not right

The OA is B

The issue here is parallelism again. Unfortunately it seems to be the ant that is popping up everywhere. In this case the question is not a traditional parallelism question. However, even in a sentence where a comparison is being made, parallelism still must be maintained. In order to seek guidance we must look at the second half of the sentence.

"while a one-hou drama can be expected to contain twenty-nine."

The # of hours of drama is been associated with the # of commercials. Because the sentence is comparing the same idea we must go to the answer choices that is written with the same parallelism. Namingly hours of drama to number of commercials.

A quick glance shows B and C. ADE does not maintain the parallel structure and thus should be eliminated.

Answer "C) in a half-hour sitcom, seventeen commercials should be shown" unecessarily breaks up the sentence thus destroying parallelism and uses "should be shown" instead of the correct phrase "will be shown."

Hence B

Hope it helped!