function my_json_decode($s, $associative = false) {
$s = str_replace(array('"', "'", 'http://'), array('\"', '"', 'http//'), $s);
$s = preg_replace('/(\w+):/i', '"\1":', $s);
$s = str_replace('http//', 'http://', $s);
return json_decode($s, $associative);
}

$parsed = my_json_decode($the_value, true);

$duration = $parsed['duration'];