system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: Why is 23.976 fps the standard on film?

Thanks for all of the great responses. I later saw that this question has kind of allready been answered. But this was really helpfull, thanks!
gpt
Film standard is actually 24.0 frames per second. The 23.976 is the framerate in digital cinema cameras. The reason it isn't pure 24 is pretty stupid. Basically, our video system in America is called NTSC. It set the standard for video signals back in the infancy of video. In black and white everything worked nicely at pure frame rates. However, when color was introduced to videoall of the broadcasters suddenly had to be transmitting color information in addition to greyscale information. Technology already in place couldn't handle this, so the engineers for NTSC devised a trick where video would now be at a slightly lower framerate, and the extra bandwidth in the signal freed up by this would be used for color information. 

Today, this is no longer necessary as technology has grown beyond the need for such a gimmick. However, thousands of studios across the NTSC world still have some if not all equipment that can only handle the old NTSC standard. It would be too costly to update every piece of equipment, so we're stuck with this standard for at least another decade or two.