That's a good point. I guess they could be!
40-min meetings might be a little awkward because usually the first 5-10 minutes of a meeting are social / chit-chat, so it might feel a little weird to immediately start a 2nd meeting exactly where you left off on the first meeting. Also, most of the time a 40-min meeting still takes up a full 1-hr time-slot since most people schedule meetings on the hour.