That older programs are heavily cut in syndication or on cable is hardly a secret, but it might as well be for all the coverage it gets: TV critics routinely announce the latest acquisition by Nick at Nite or the Sci-Fi Network without bothering to mention, or even check, how heavily it will be edited. Older shows that ran three to six minutes longer than today's shows suffer the most; a 25-minute episode of "Mary Tyler Moore" is usually cut to 21 or 22 minutes in reruns.

Such cuts are bad enough when shows appear in local syndication, but at least there is a legitimate -- if irritating -- reason for such cuts: Local broadcasters depend entirely on advertising for revenue so they need to squeeze in as many commercials as possible. Cable stations, on the other hand, have no such excuse; a good part of their revenue comes directly out of the viewers' pockets in the form of cable fees. So why can't a cable service like TV Land –- which calls itself "a network created by TV fans for TV fans" -– take shorter commercial breaks and show classic programs as they were meant to be seen?

"The economics of television have changed," says Paul Ward, senior vice president of communications for Nick at Nite and TV Land. "In the old days, a show could have a title sponsor ... and the show could run 28 or 29 minutes, without any commercials."

Ward's explanation fails to account for why Nick at Nite cuts some sitcoms to 20 minutes. Or why Comedy Central cuts "Sports Night," which only ran about 22 minutes per episode in the first place. The way stations work makes it look as if they'll cut anything in syndication no matter how long or short the episodes. In a 1994 Newsday article, a programming executive for TNT summed it up by saying: "Time's gotta come out. That's the key."

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As for Nick at Nite and TV Land, every show on their regular schedules is edited in some fashion. There has been one notable exception: Until 1995, Nick at Nite showed "I Love Lucy" in its uncut, 25-minute version. Why did the station start running an edited version? "I can't remember the particulars as to why," Ward says.

Cable networks don't seem to make fewer cuts than local stations that syndicate. Ward says that he hasn't compared the length of programs on cable to programs in syndication, but a quick comparison suggests that cable stations might cut even more. When "WKRP in Cincinnati" ran on Nick at Nite and later on another Viacom-owned network, TNN, viewer complaints mainly focused on the disfiguring music changes –- not mentioned by a single newspaper TV critic -– but those money-saving changes were made by the distributor and not the broadcasters.

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