In the early 1960's, an hour-long TV show was interrupted by approximately 9 total minutes of commercials.
Today that number has doubled to 18 minutes.  A half-hour show had 4 minutes, versus 8 minutes today.

There are three editing techniques being used to fit old TV reruns into smaller spots.  One is to remove portions
of the script ( we've all seen that ), one is to delete the epilogue ( we've seen that too ).  The third is to literally
"speed up" the video.

Tonight was an obvious example of "speeding up" when TVLand rebroadcast Episode 26: The Inspector.
The dialogue and movement were moving unnaturally fast.  I compared it with my DVD.

Weird, man.

Phil Sunkel wrote on Mar 17^th, 2008 at 12:30am:

In the early 1960's, an hour-long TV show was interrupted by approximately 9 total minutes of commercials. Today that number has doubled to 18 minutes.  A half-hour show had 4 minutes, versus 8 minutes today. There are three editing techniques being used to fit old TV reruns into smaller spots.  One is to remove portions of the script ( we've all seen that ), one is to delete the epilogue ( we've seen that too ).  The third is to literally "speed up" the video. Tonight was an obvious example of "speeding up" when TVLand rebroadcast Episode 26: The Inspector. The dialogue and movement were moving unnaturally fast.  I compared it with my DVD. Weird, man.

I noticed this too, Phil.  I figured it was just the editing of scenes to make room for commercials.  I never knew "they" did this.