Editing Night Gallery (section)

==Syndication==
Shortly after ''Night Gallery'' was cancelled, the 60-minute episodes from the first two seasons were re-edited for a 30-minute time slot. This was in order to increase the number of episodes that were available for syndication. Many segments were severely cut, and others extended by inserting "new" scenes of recycled, previously discarded, or stock footage to fill up the time. For example, the segment "The Different Ones" was extended from 15 minutes to 24 minutes, which made it long enough to air as its own stand-alone episode. This was achieved using stock footage from ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'', ''[[Silent Running]]'' and the [[Apollo program|Apollo]] space missions.<ref name="tour"/> One of the most heavily cut segments was "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar", which was edited down from 41 minutes to 24 minutes.<ref name="tour"/> For time reasons, some of the segments were paired with segments that they didn't originally air alongside. The three segments from the 1969 TV movie pilot were not included as part of the syndication package, because they had already entered syndication as a stand-alone movie.<ref name="synd"/>

The syndication edits for ''Night Gallery'' were overseen by Harry Tatelman of Universal. In their book ''Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour'', authors Scott Skelton and Jim Benson identify 39 of the 98 individual segments that were produced for ''Night Gallery'' as being "severely altered" in syndication. Segments such as "Green Fingers" and "Lindemann's Catch" had new music inserted, which leaned towards more of a typical horror sound.<ref name="tour"/> The music was changed in an attempt to heighten the tension, and it was also a by-product of having to either cut down segments or pad them out. Richard Bracken, one of Harry Tatelman's editors on ''Night Gallery'', later said "Harry was given the assignment by the studio and it was a job he knew that he could do one way or the other, and he did. I don't know if there was any particular glee in changing the style and content of the show, as much as getting the job done."<ref name="tour"/>

25 episodes of an unrelated, short-lived supernatural series from 1972, ''[[The Sixth Sense (American TV series)|The Sixth Sense]]'', were also incorporated into the syndicated version of the series. Serling was paid 100,000 dollars to film introductions for the episodes from ''The Sixth Sense'', with new paintings also being commissioned for them.<ref name="synd"/> Serling's introductions for ''The Sixth Sense'' were written by an unknown member of Harry Tatelman's staff. As ''The Sixth Sense'' was originally a one-hour show, these episodes were all severely edited to fit into the half-hour timeslot. In order to have more commercials, some television stations required a few extra minutes be cut from episodes, in addition to the edits that had already been made by Tatelman. These edits were done by people working at their respective stations, and are described as having less care put into them when compared to Tatelman's edits.<ref name="tour"/> In later years, stations would simply speed up the episodes instead of creating their own edits, which would lead to a higher pitch in the voice of the actors.<ref name="tour"/>

Rod Serling and Jack Laird were both said to be "livid" with the syndication edits.<ref name="tour"/> Some directors were allowed input before their segments were edited for syndication, including Jeannot Szwarc. When asked what he thought about the show's syndicated version, Szwarc said in 1998, "what they've done to it is absolutely criminal. But they don't give a shit. That has always been the disease of Hollywood. They don't care about the past, all they care about is making a lot of money ''now''."<ref name="tour"/> Szwarc additionally said that he had stopped watching the show, since the syndicated version was still being heavily used on television at that point.<ref name="tour"/>

The original, uncut and un-edited hour-long  version of the series (and without the additional ''Sixth Sense'' episodes) has been shown on [[STARZ!]]’s [[Encore (TV network)|Encore Mystery]] premium movie cable network.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} The show has aired in the 30-minute syndicated format in several markets through the [[Retro Television Network]] in the past.

[[MeTV]] had broadcast rights for ''Night Gallery'' and aired the show in its syndicated, 30-minute format, including the edited ''The Sixth Sense'' episodes.

From May 21 to May 23, 2016, [[Decades (TV network)|Decades]] aired a marathon of the series.<ref>{{cite web|title=Decades TV Network|url=http://www.decades.com/view/2016-05-21#today-heading-top|access-date=21 May 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160521232341/http://www.decades.com/view/2016-05-21#today-heading-top|archive-date=21 May 2016}}</ref>

On December 6, 2018, [[Syfy]] announced that it had plans to revive the ''Night Gallery'' series.

On April 6, 2020, [[Comet TV]] began airing the syndicated version of the show.