When did editing reruns to make room for more commercials begin? It seems like it was in the mid to late 1970s.
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When did editing reruns start?
- Thread starter skippercollector
- Start date
Seems I remember there were some restrictions on how many ads could be placed in the syndicated reruns depending on either market size or daypart. When a Fort Wayne station carried MASH reruns at 11:35pm , they seemed to have more of the episode chopped than when I saw them in Dayton at 5:30 in the late 70s/early 80s
Mash reruns are certainly chopped up. Sometimes Sometimes they cut a joke and that joke shows up again but makes no sense. I’ve seen various edits of Mash shows. With all that editing I wonder why they keep the opening untouched. TV Land will run the ending credits on the lower 1/3 of the screen during the last scene, but the opening is always in-tact. Why is that? anyone know?
Some opening sequences were edited for syndication. I remember that the 'Thank You For Being A Friend' song that opened The Golden Girls was missing a verse in syndication...it probably only saved about 10 seconds, but possibly allowed them to cut a little less content.
At least TV shows produced for commercial broadcast TV are designed for commercials. What was worse - was the way broadcast TV used to butcher theatrical films, especially for local broadcast. Stuffing a 2 hour movie into a 90 minute afternoon time slot, like The Early Show on CBS affiliates, then adding commercials meant that as much as 50% of the film often had to be cut.
I have heard that those retro-rerun channels also often speed the shows up - though I have mostly given up old reruns...there are so many better new scripted shows to watch these days.
2 different comments
Regarding the cutting of a theme song: "Love and Marriage" was cut to one verse when Married With Children went into syndication.
I am a diehard Flintstones fan and have been watching it for decades. I never realized that over the years the show had been "sped up." When I got the series DVDs with restored episodes, I was shocked when I heard the voices! Everyone's voices were not only slower, but deeper. It was especially noticeable with Wilma/Jean Vanderpyl.
Regarding the cutting of a theme song: "Love and Marriage" was cut to one verse when Married With Children went into syndication.
I am a diehard Flintstones fan and have been watching it for decades. I never realized that over the years the show had been "sped up." When I got the series DVDs with restored episodes, I was shocked when I heard the voices! Everyone's voices were not only slower, but deeper. It was especially noticeable with Wilma/Jean Vanderpyl.
Editing of reruns to make room for extra commercials certainly goes back further than the mid to late 1970s.
Network daytime reruns of former primetime shows were probably being edited to make room for extra commercials pretty much back to when "I Love Lucy" reruns showed up on CBS daytime.
Syndicated reruns on local stations were a different matter -- for many years it was up to stations to do any editing if they wanted to add commercials. Some stations hacked away pretty mercilessly, while others were a little more reserved on the amount of editing that they did. Some, perhaps, did no editing because they couldn't afford to pay someone to be a film editor.
At some point, syndicators started distributing versions of shows that had already been edited for extra commercials. As an exactly, the 16-mm film prints for "MASH" syndication starting in 1979 were edited to allow room for six minutes of advertising in the half hour (an extra one two two minutes versus the original network versions, depending on the season). Some stations did additional editing to add more commercials. "MASH" in syndication was later re-edited to allow eight minutes of advertising when syndication moved away from film in favor of video tape and/or satellite syndication.
As the practice of distributing syndication edits became more common, the role of the film editor at local stations eventually faded away. Where a syndication edit exists, the stations will air that edit. Where no syndication edit exists, the local stations eventually just ran the shows uncut (I saw this with "McHale's Navy" in Dallas around 15 years ago). All of the diginets that I've watched do seem to run edited versions of programs, whether they get those edits from the syndicator or make the edits themselves.
Network daytime reruns of former primetime shows were probably being edited to make room for extra commercials pretty much back to when "I Love Lucy" reruns showed up on CBS daytime.
Syndicated reruns on local stations were a different matter -- for many years it was up to stations to do any editing if they wanted to add commercials. Some stations hacked away pretty mercilessly, while others were a little more reserved on the amount of editing that they did. Some, perhaps, did no editing because they couldn't afford to pay someone to be a film editor.
At some point, syndicators started distributing versions of shows that had already been edited for extra commercials. As an exactly, the 16-mm film prints for "MASH" syndication starting in 1979 were edited to allow room for six minutes of advertising in the half hour (an extra one two two minutes versus the original network versions, depending on the season). Some stations did additional editing to add more commercials. "MASH" in syndication was later re-edited to allow eight minutes of advertising when syndication moved away from film in favor of video tape and/or satellite syndication.
As the practice of distributing syndication edits became more common, the role of the film editor at local stations eventually faded away. Where a syndication edit exists, the stations will air that edit. Where no syndication edit exists, the local stations eventually just ran the shows uncut (I saw this with "McHale's Navy" in Dallas around 15 years ago). All of the diginets that I've watched do seem to run edited versions of programs, whether they get those edits from the syndicator or make the edits themselves.
Thats true, but another reason for that difference in voices was that in the early seasons, they were doing a more obvious imitation of 'The Honeymooners', so Alan Reed did Fred's lines in a Gleason-esque 'growl', and Vander Pyl made Wilma sound a lot more like Audrey Meadows. And let's not even go into the variations in Barney's voice.
The Fox duopoly here in Los Angeles still airs I Love Lucy (weekdays on KCOP, weekends on KTTV), but for the last 15-20 years or so, they've aired the uncut episodes that previously aired on Nick @ Nite and TV Land. I assume that Hallmark Channel is also running those same prints.
That surprises me, as there is a standard definition syndication edit available for "I Love Lucy" -- although if they are airing "I Love Lucy" in high definition, it is possible that a syndication edit does not exist in HD.
Some of the early editing was to remove commercials (Philip Morris for "I Love Lucy" being the best example). The reason new opens were produced for Lucy was to eliminate sponsor mentions. Same thing for "The Honeymooners". The original open featured all 4 cast members riding a bus through NYC, and showed a shiny new '56 Buick driving by as the VO mentioned the show was sponsored by Buick. Also, the closing credits for shows like Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke originally included a sponsor logo at the bottom of the screen, replaced by the trees and the headshot of Dick, respectively. Also, not too long ago Me-TV showed a season 1 Perry Mason with the sponsor logo in the closing credits instead of the law books.
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