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Syndicated shows, when cutting started? - Page 2

post #31 of 45
3/8/09 at 12:47pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin L McCorry
I had 2 episodes sent to me by someone who'd taped them off of WPIX. "The Metamorph" and "Space Warp" as I recall. The scene removal was staggering. And the commercial breaks were included in full. 3 minutes of commercials in every break. Crazy!

I'd love to see those. I don't know where my recording of "War Games" went.
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post #32 of 45
3/8/09 at 4:32pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

You can always wait for DeeDees or The Big River to have one of their sales. Last year I got the Space 1999 Megaset for less than 30 Bucks during one of DeeDee's BOGO Sales!
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post #33 of 45
3/8/09 at 7:29pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Regulus
You can always wait for DeeDees or The Big River to have one of their sales. Last year I got the Space 1999 Megaset for less than 30 Bucks during one of DeeDee's BOGO Sales!

Thanks Rugulus, but you misunderstand. I got all the Space:1999 DVD sets as they came out.

The reason why I would love to have seen those Kevin's two recordings is because they are old WPIX broadcasts where I could see the old commercials and look back at how we used to have to see reruns of older shows.
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post #34 of 45
3/9/09 at 4:30am

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Rogers
Thanks Rugulus, but you misunderstand. I got all the Space:1999 DVD sets as they came out.

The reason why I would love to have seen those Kevin's two recordings is because they are old WPIX broadcasts where I could see the old commercials and look back at how we used to have to see reruns of older shows.

"The Metamorph"- Mentor says, "Prepare the Alphan pilots." And then a cut to Koenig & Carter at the controls of Eagle 4 and Koenig notifying Mentor they're at rendezvous point. We miss Dr. Russell talking with Annette Fraser in Medical, the Eagle 4 crew embarking the Eagle, the Eagle lifting off and heading for Psychon, Mentor and Maya observing the Eagle on their screen. And then in Act II, there's a cut from Torens' mind being drained to the Eagle 4 crew finding the creatures in the caves. Scene on Alpha with Tony, Sahn, and Annette cut. In Act 3, the whole scene of Annette protesting Directive Four was gone. Anouska Hempel should sue WPIX for removing almost all her scenes! And then in Act 4, after the commercials, Maya is scanning the robot Eagle. The solemn countdown scene is gone. ... Most of the commercials were for New York businesses. I only remember one. In fey voice a pair of men go: "Who's J. Antonio? We're J. Antonio. Our accessories are... stunningggggggggg. Because we always have women on our mind."

"Space Warp" was missing a vast chunk of material at start of Act 2. We don't see Security looking for Maya, Vincent finding Helena on the floor in Medical, or Alan changing his shoot-to-kill order. And the debate at start of Act 3 over whether to operate on Maya was gone. As was Alan and Helena leaving airlock in the Moonbuggy in Act 4.
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post #35 of 45
3/9/09 at 8:44pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

As stringent as copyright laws are, how is it that the practice of butchering shows has never been outlawed? Isn't the original work preserved in some way? If I had participated in a program that was later hacked to bits I would be livid. I am really surprised that producers, directors and writers haven't been able to get some law passed to put an end to the travesty.
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post #36 of 45
3/10/09 at 6:11am

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elena S
As stringent as copyright laws are, how is it that the practice of butchering shows has never been outlawed? Isn't the original work preserved in some way? If I had participated in a program that was later hacked to bits I would be livid. I am really surprised that producers, directors and writers haven't been able to get some law passed to put an end to the travesty.

Usually, when producers or actors own part of a show, they get profit participation, but not controlling interest, so they get their part of the money (hopefully), but the studio makes the decisions about it. For example, Universal licensed all its shows to CBS in the 70s for the CBS Late Movie. The shows were cut by literally 30-40%. The producers were upset, but they only owned small percentages of the shows, so Universal could decide what the conditions of the licensing were.

Norman Lear, who did own the shows in his case, tried to take a stand by saying the local stations could just calculate the money they would lose by not cutting three minutes out of each All in the Family, and then paying him that much less for the shows. The unions, however, erupted because the residuals would also be that much less and they said Lear had no right to negotiate away other people's money along with his own.
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post #37 of 45
3/10/09 at 6:15am

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elena S
As stringent as copyright laws are, how is it that the practice of butchering shows has never been outlawed? Isn't the original work preserved in some way? If I had participated in a program that was later hacked to bits I would be livid. I am really surprised that producers, directors and writers haven't been able to get some law passed to put an end to the travesty.

Most of the time the uncut versions do exist...in the studio vault. It is only now that the studios have seen anything resembling incentive to make them available to the public that way. The very concept of the masses owning copies of episodes of TV shows is less than 10 years old (yes, I know about, and own some of, Columbia House's releases and furtive releases of shows on VHS and Laserdisc, but those were niche at best).

As much as I would like to put a stop to the cutting in any medium, a law would be unenforceable. It would also prevent director's cuts of movies, and not just things like George Lucas redoing Star Wars films on a whim, but those who were robbed of control of the project by the studios and saw their work butchered who would have the chance to rectify the situation after the fact.

The copyright owners legally have a right to do what they want with these works. In the legal sense there's nothing stopping them from destroying these shows.

From a ratings standpoint, no one would stop watching reruns of, say, The Andy Griffith Show if TV Land were to start showing uncut versions. But those who refuse to watch cut versions might tune into uncut ones, if it was made clear in promotion that they were. Except that they can already do that on DVD.
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post #38 of 45
3/10/09 at 4:23pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by smithb
So I've read in reviews about some of the TV shows being released on DVD from cut up syndicated releases. I've experienced it personally with the "Little House in the Prairie" sets.

That's odd, because no TV show entitled "Little House in the Prairie" ever existed.
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post #39 of 45
3/10/09 at 5:56pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

I hope I'm never so desperate for attention, and have such low self-esteem, that I have to resort to (repeatedly) correcting others' typos to make me feel like I'm somebody.
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post #40 of 45
3/10/09 at 6:05pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carabimero
I hope I'm never so desperate for attention, and have such low self-esteem, that I have to resort to (repeatedly) correcting others' typos to make me feel like I'm somebody.

I thought I was on ignore.
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post #41 of 45
3/10/09 at 6:10pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

You are on The Fugitive Board, but here, for some reason, you are showing up.

You should be able to get a well-paying job somewhere as a cutting-edge smartass and make some money from your flaming insecurities. Quit wasting your measure of "talent" on message boards.
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post #42 of 45
3/15/09 at 7:40am

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Like some of you I loved Little House on The Prairie. There is just over 2 minutes and some odd seconds cut from each episode. Have any of you watched it lately??? It's up to 6 minutes now. OUCH!! Here's an odd one. In the 70's, I believe on Tuesday nights, Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley ran back to back. Yet on dvd Happy Days has a longer running time. I guess the Fonze wouldn't take to cuts.

Fact of the matter is, it has to be cheaper to put a smaller number in minutes with more episodes on each dvd. Uses less discs that way. And it's cheaper for the prodution company to mass copy. , Did you know that in 1955 Dragnet starring Jack Webb, ran for almost 28 minutes. Compare that to todays 22.20 seconds. Welcome to commerical time. By the way Jack Webb was the only civilian to my knowlege to receive a full police funeral after his death.
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post #43 of 45
3/15/09 at 2:05pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Since starting this thread, I've been watching Branded. It also has some pretty bad cuts in some of the episodes. It is bad enough to have abrupt stops and starts on commercial breaks. But when you see credits that include actors that didn't even appear in the episode that is pretty bad.
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post #44 of 45
3/15/09 at 2:10pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

I'm not saying trimming shows to get more episodes on a disc has never happened, but it seems unlikely given the Little House discs and the space on DVDs. Usually episodes are cut because that's the shape the print they use for transferring is in.
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post #45 of 45
3/15/09 at 3:41pm

Re: Syndicated shows, when cutting started?

Quote:
Originally Posted by smithb
So the question is, when did they start cutting up or speeding up syndicated shows? How rampant was? Was it certain networks and not others (e.g., local stations more then large cable channels)?

To tell the truth, Little House on the Prairie is the only one I can ever think of where I saw this done.

Shows were edited for syndication, on local channels, when I was a kid in the early 60s. Standard length for a typical network primetime commercial break was 60 seconds at the time. Once a show moved into syndication, each spot would normally consist of at least two minutes of ads, and shows would be edited accordingly--frequently, very poorly, by folks at the local station who were cutting/splicing the 16mm prints that they were receiving.

I first noticed digital time compression showing up on a couple of local stations in the mid 1980s...I hated it from the beginning.
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