I've read plenty of complaints about episodes being butchered in syndication due to commercials on Hallmark, A&E, etc., but I've never witnessed it myself until today. I have the entire DVD collection, and for years I watched those. But when Netflix picked it up, I got lazy and enjoyed not having to rummage through the DVD cases to find an episode.

Now it's gone from Netflix (100% full-length episodes of course) but we have Peacock network free on US Xfinity cable, so I'm watching episodes there, owing to same laziness. Or I WAS..., until I noticed that By Dawn's Early Light was butchered. So I'm sure other episodes suffer the same destruction.

They cut out all scenes and mention of the "mud on the floor." Given there was no real evidence or witnesses, and it was 100% circumstantial (based on the cider-viewing timeline), the muddy floor was a pretty major clue.

Shame on Peacock Network and NBC! When viewing shows "On Demand", there is no reason to butcher them up.

Is it possible you are thinking of the episode “Grand Deceptions”, another military-themed episode? There was mud on the floor in that episode, but I don’t remember it in “By Dawn’s Early Light”?

Yes...it has to be Grand Deceptions

Ah crap, you're right!

There's mud on the floor from being out planting the bomb.

My bad!

Every episode is on the Internet Archive and can be watched uninterrupted.

In the era of COLUMBO a two-hour episode of a first-run show had EIGHTEEN minutes of commercials.
In our time it has THIRTY minutes of commercials.
Syndicated programs cut out SEVERAL more minutes of wax show to stick in even more commercials.

Do the math.
I would never watch COLUMBO on any commercial outlet.

Correction: two hour eps had TWENTY FOUR minutes of commercials.

One more time( what happened to EDIT YOUR POST).

0riginal COLUMBO first run two hour episode: 24 minutes of commercials
Second run two hour episode: 30 minutes of commercials.

If COLUMBO were on today: FORTY minutes of commercials.

So, an original episode will have at least SIXTEEN MINUTES cut!
Second run AT LEAST ten minutes cut.

Skip it.

[Edit Post] should be available for the 1st hour after submission only. The actual button is [Make Changes].

I'm not sure why it's only available for an hour, but I guess it gets confusing when people start responding, and then the Original Post starts changing.

Nope, you're right. Once you SUBMIT your posting, you cannot EDIT.

We used to have sixty minutes to go back and edit😥