Speaking only in my opinion, I think it has more to do with the culture of TV and game shows now vs. what it was in the \"daytime\" era. Back then, the studios were revolving doors of different shows taping all week. Your work day could have begun with setting the whole thing up - at the very least a rehearsal - and then tearing it down as soon as the shows were over. One half hour stopdown throws in half an hour of overtime for the stage crew on deck to strike the set, not to mention all the folks involved with taping the show. Plus, if you came out of the studio with 4 shows instead of 5 because you had that big of a technical error, there wasn\'t another taping the next day where you could just tack an extra show on. Classic Concentration needed the space tomorrow. So you decide to just go on with the show, rather than stop to fix a busted light. Nowadays, a show gets its order, they build the set, leave it up for a few weeks while they tape, then tear it down the night you stop shooting or the day after.
Couple that with the fact there are more avenues competing for viewer attention and each show is more important. Putting a game show on for 13 weeks was just part of a network\'s operating budget. Now, it\'s a bigger financial decision for, say, a small cable network to buy 8 weeks of a show. Each episode is going to be that series\' handshake with the audience. One person\'s \"aw that\'s a fun mistake, leave it in\" could be another person\'s \"if the viewers see this, they\'re going to give up on the show\" or \"we can\'t have a mistake when we only have 8 shows.\" The whole schedule is accelerated. Whereas you had a pilot and could develop and fine-tune your rhythm on the air in the 70s, you sometimes have a few weeks in the office to develop it now before you go into the studio. So if anybody up and down the chain had a problem with host language, for example, there\'s no choice but to ADR it. That\'s why you might overshoot to get one episode.
That doesn\'t excuse or explain all issues where people fall back on editing when they don\'t have to, but that\'s some of my opinion.
-Jason
