Reruns edited for more commercial time?

Tonight @ 6:30 in NY, they played The Simpsons episode "A Tale of Two Springfields". (The one where another area code is added and The Who make an appearance.)

It seemed that some of the shots were cut by a second or two, when the original versions of the visual jokes lingered a bit longer.

For example, when Homer shows his stomach was cut up by the badger, the original version, I recalled, had the shot lingering a bit more. At first, because that shot is actually visually grotesque, it appeared that the scene was edited for content. But then as the episode moved on, there seemed to be other shots that were also trimmed. There was a different feel to the timing.

If 30 seconds, (a second here - a second there), were clipped from an episode -that would 30 more seconds for an extra commercial.

The episode also seemed compressed/slightly sped up - but this point I am not sure of. I know that in some radio broadcasts, (i.e. talk radio), the lags in time are digitally compressed to make room for more commercial time.

Anyone know if this is being done with Simpsons reruns or other shows?

All syndication reruns (of Simpsons and other shows) are shortened, both through compression and cuts (also notice that the main theme is typically shorter in syndication). The Simpsons Archive (snpp.com) has a guide to all the cuts, compression, etc for every episode.

[email] (888eight888) wrote in message news:...

Not to sound rude, but you are just noticing this NOW? They have been doing this for years to just about every show that is second run syndication.

The Simpsons repeats are missing whole scenes at times. It's REALLY bad on older shows. For example, I have all of the Columbia House tapes for Hill Street Blues, and each episode runs about 48-49 minutes on those, when they aired on Bravo just last year, they were only 42 minutes without commercials (even less if you consider that the credits are smashed so much with ads that are not really even there). Thats a huge loss in content, some episodes cut out whole characters and plots. Same thing with St. Elsewhere. Before I started getting the Columbia House tapes for All In The Family (I know, they are on DVD but this was a few years ago) I had never seen the episodes uncut and I got about 4 extra minutes in CH tapes that I had never seen on TVland or whatnot.

Just about any "hour long" show before the early 90's was about 48 minutes of content, 12 minutes of commercials and "half hour" shows were about 26-27 minutes of content. Now an "hour long" show is (hopefully) 44 minutes of content, and a "half hour" show is 22 minutes but that seems to be shrinking as well (Birds Of Prey and Karen Sisco for example averaged about only 38 minutes of content per episode).

We have discussed this endlessly, when we weren't discussing Rob Wade, Smither's sexual orientation and racial makeup, junk emails that offer to enlarge our sex organs or make us millionaires, etc., etc., etc.

BTW, my favorite syndication cut is Skinner standing in front of the school, talking to the kids when they go in the front door:

"There's Ralph, he knows the score!" Upon hearing that, I eagerly awaited his "Hey, Jimbo, how's the hat?", but it was CUT OUT. A VICTIM OF SYNDICATION! I was disappointed.

Space Mvsevm

"Aaron Hirshberg" wrote in message news:[email]...

In other news, the chick from "The Crying Game" is really a man.

[email] (Aaron Hirshberg) wrote in message news:...

Yeah, what a lot of people lament, because its the typical thing to cut, is any scene where Maggie emotes silently, sucks, furrows her brows, etc. People miss them the first time around, and *poof* gotta get the DVD to see them again.