Many years ago, to the amazement of film buffs everywhere, the folks at Castle Films used to take 90 minute (or longer) feature motion pictures and abridge them down to four minutes to be sold as 8mm movies. It was astounding that they even attempted this and even more astounding that, once in a while, the films were reasonably coherent at that length.
Well, let's see if Sony Pictures can cut episodes of Charlie's Angels, T.J. Hooker and Starsky & Hutch down to between three and a half minutes and five. According to this article in The New York Times, that's on its way. Just another point of contention to add to the coming Writers Guild strike talks.
Cutting a Charlie's Angels down to length should be a breeze. Just keep the bikini scenes and throw the rest away. That's all anyone cared about in those shows. But on T.J. Hooker, William Shatner used to take eight minutes just to wonder about the murderer's soul. That may present problems.