Are we Spoiled? (1 Viewer)

[Gary OS]

Yes, that is the one argument you can make even for new shows. It's amazing that even the major networks are throwing pop up ads onto their first run series. Talk about sick. That would make it impossible for me to record a newer show - if there were any I cared about.

Gary "dvds really are pretty much the only option at this point" O.

 

[Jeff Willis]

Be careful what you ask for, Rick I guess you all know me pretty well by now.

As for the 6M$M (& BW), that's why I went "Region-Free" back in '05. I'm fortunate that the PAL "speed-up" thing doesn't bother me although I can hear the speed difference when listening to the opening & closing themes of the shows but not during the episodes themselves (background soundtracks & dialog's all sound the same as R1/NTSC to me). I own several PAL TV/DVD sets and it's the same with those as well.

If they ever see an R1 release, I'll double-dip for these shows. There's no telling when/if that will happen. I'm fortunate that the BW R2/4 xfrs are very good and the episodes are un-cut with 3-5 minutes/episode of "SciFi Channel" edited out scenes restored.

Bert, great post. It's beyond me, given the digital satt/cable age, why we haven't seen a national "all-classic" series channel appear on DirecTV or one of the other major carriers by now. I can only guess that the "suits" that make the decisions are too removed (age) from the classic TV eras or they've done the demographic research and concluded that there's not enough of an audience for a classic-TV channel.

As you guys have mentioned here, the decades of the "A&E & Nick/Nite" complete series runs are over.

Jeff "Thanks again, Gary for your words. Check VP's Fugitive S1V2 Thread for a question when you get a chance" W.

 

[Hank Dearborn]

I was just having this conversation with a friend last night. Look at what TV Land has become. New shows, theatrical movies, etc. That's their idea of protecting our tv heritage? If the argument is that no network wants programming that appeals to anything outside of 18-35, then how does Turner Classic Movies succeed? How does a network that predominantly shows movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s stay on the air but you couldn't get a network to show television from the 50s, 60s and 70s? I don't understand it. And they are complete and commercial free. Is it because people are accustomed to seeing movies in a theater uninterrupted and tv at home with ads? I'm just curious why no one has tried to do the same thing with tv shows and put together a classic network, commercial-free, on a subscriber basis. If it had been tried and failed I could understand but no one has ever even attempted it. And I'm not talking about all of the usual common shows, the ones that are pretty much all out on DVD anyway. I mean, yeah, you would have to show some of them. It couldn't be all obscure rarities, but still, there are so many series that have not been seen in 2,3,4 decades that deserve to be shown.

 

[JoshuaB.]

I've never understood why there isn't a channel like that in the USA either--with a population of 300 million, you'd think there'd be a demand for a channel that played vintage TV. In Canada, with a population of 32 million, we have three retro TV stations (Of varying quality) on digital cable/satellite:

TV Land Canada still airs a few older programs (Happy Days, Love, American Style, Dallas), but it also airs pre-90s Canadian TV that very few Canadians would want to see (Smith and Smith by that Red Green chap, King of Kensington and Adderly).

Deja View, another Canadian retro TV satellite channel, airs older shows from the 60s-80s, but a lot of the shows (Three's Company, Hogan's Heroes, Miami Vice) are already out on DVD. It's recycled a lot of shows and now seems content to air a lot of 80s sitcoms like Roseanne and the Wonder Years.

Teletoon Retro airs vintage animation like the Flintstones, Super Friends and Rocket Robin Hood--my animation buddy in Calgary loves this channel.


Another practice I find irritating is when all the American and Canadian network affiliates in a particular area (i.e. Vancouver, Calgary or Toronto) all buy reruns of an immensely popular sitcom--i.e. Friends--and strip it to death. The same thing has happened to a lot of other contemporary shows: Everybody Loves Raymond, Will and Grace, That 70s Show, Two and a Half Men, etc. Instead of buying vintage shows that would appeal to all ages, these affiliates air popular shows that are still airing new episodes and are plentiful to buy on DVD.

EDIT: Canada's Book Television, a fantastic channel if you're a literary academician, airs daily episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the 60s Batman (I'm recording Batman to DVD until a legitimate set materializes)--it's a rarity to see these older programs in the multitude of Canadian satellite channels.

 

[Gary OS]

Color me confused about this too, Hank. It just amazes me that we don't have even one truly vintage TV network similar to TCM (the only station that I still watch with any regularity). Heck, even if we didn't get the shows commercial free and had to deal with the small, once every thirty minutes, non-intrusive bug like TCM's I'd be very happy. As long as the shows were uncut I could even handle one or two commercial interruptions even though my preference would of course be no commercials during the show. My biggest issues - beyond the cut episodes - are the pop-up ads, the color bugs against b&w shows, the split screens during ending credits, and the voice overs during ending credits. If those things could be eliminated I'd be overjoyed.

I also agree that such a station would need to carry some of the avowed classics, but it'd need to also carry shows we haven't seen in some time in order to be a true "classics" network.

Gary "and don't get me started on TVLand - what an utter joke that channel has become" O.

 

[george kaplan]

Could one of you "spoiled" folks, with multiple recorded copies of every sitcom ever made, send me complete and unedited copies of WKRP in Cincinnati, CPO Sharkey, Ozzie & Harriet, season 1 of Mary Tyler Moore and Kung Fu, as well as the unreleased seasons of The Bob Newhart Show and Mary Tyler Moore? Thanks.

 

[Mark Y]

Several people have made excellent points so far in this thread.

To younger people who grew up with DVD, so to speak, it probably does seem like a show comes on, then six months later the first season comes out on DVD...then the second and so forth. It's quite a change from the 1980s, when the home video industry equaled MOVIES (which meant recent Hollywood blockbuster movies) and that was pretty much it. You were lucky if a studio would release one or maybe two volumes of selected episodes of a TV show, unless it was "Star Trek." And those were released first two episodes to a tape, and then later one...what did those sell for, $19.99 each? "The Honeymooners" (Classic 39) eventually came out, two shows to a tape, as did Monty Python. I just hope the industry can sustain all this TV on DVD long enough for a lot more stuff to come out.

I too cannot stomach the cut, sped-up, logo-bug-graffitied reruns (first on cable, now even on the networks). You would think DVD would be our salvation...you're paying for it, right? Sometimes yes and sometimes no.

As far as tape trading back in the day...what floored me at first, when I first went that route to find certain things I couldn't otherwise get, was: I'm trading stuff because I'm trying to collect and archive certain shows. Whenever I recorded stuff back in the 80s or 90s, I made it a point to use good tape, to get the whole show (not join it in progress, miss the beginning, or cut the commercials out with my eyes shut, losing half a minute of the show along with them). And in my naivete, I assumed anyone else collecting this stuff felt the same way I did, and they'd take care (even just for their own personal reasons, for their own collection) to get the best recording they could with the technology available at the time...but then I ended up trading with someone, or maybe even paying someone, and what I'd get back would be some lousy hacked-up multi-generation dupes made from Grade Z masters recorded in EP speed, with the opening theme joined in progress, and two or three generations of tape tracking issues. Sometimes there would be on-screen tape counter numbers in the corner for the entire length of a show. (This wasn't limited to super-rare not-shown-in-years material; sometimes it would be some channel I couldn't get at the time, which had run something a few months or a year ago. And sometimes--but certainly not always--maybe a year later, a pristine version of the same show would come on and I could record it myself, properly.) Eventually I just didn't bother any more. it wasn't worth it. I mean, there were people who apparently COLLECTED this stuff and to them, it was just fine!

That's the part I don't get. Especially today.

 

[RickER]

Thanks George, i needed a good laugh!

 

[Hank Dearborn]

And what would you offer in exchange, other than a smiley? Or would that mythical person, if they existed, desire to just give them to you out of the goodness of their heart and damn the time, money and effort that would have been put forth to get such a collection.

 

[Elena S]

Could we all pool our resources and start a classic TV channel? I can't believe there's not ONE person in this entire universe who hasn't thought of airing an all-classic TV channel. Especially with all the crap that goes over the airwaves these days.

 

[RickER]

Huh, you know someone that has CPO Sharkey on tape? Thats a show i have not seen at all in 30 years!
But i was sure he was joking, cause i laughed.

 

[troy evans]

post deleted.

 

[Hank Dearborn]

Yes. The NBC run was kind of early so I only have a handful that are from the network run but HA reran it in the early 90s and later Comedy Central after it merged with HA.

 

[Hank Dearborn]

The closest we have ever come was in the 80s with CBN and TNT. Unfortunately CBN cut stuff badly to 22 and 44 minutes. But look at some of the stuff that ran:

CBN: Wagon Train, Laramie, Empire, Wackiest Ship in the Army, Young Rebels, Iron Horse, Farmer's Daughter, Ben Casey, My Little Margie, Love That Bob, Wendy and Me, Bill Dana Show, Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, The Monroes and I'm sure dozens more I can't recall at the moment.

TNT: Mr. Novak, National Velvet, The Lieutenant, Cain's Hundred, Logan's Run, Shaft, Maya, How the West Was Won, Hondo, Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Bronk, Then Came Bronson, Man from UNCLE, Girl from UNCLE, Beyond Westworld, Man Called Shenendoah, The Rounders, Dr. Kildare, Chicago Story, McClain's Law, Daktari, Mayberry RFD, Jericho, Northwest Passage, etc. Unfortunately they didn't have enough faith in the vintage material to run it at a decent hour and much of it, like Mr. Novak, was used as filler in the middle of the night. Now, although they own this vast television library from when Turner bought MGM in the mid 80s, they do nothing with it while the network devoted to the films acquired in the purchase is still going strong.

 

[george kaplan]

Well if I wasn't afraid that it might violate forum rules, I'd offer cash in exchange for it (especially WKRP and CPO Sharkey). As it was, I put it forth as a joke because a) I didn't want to run the risk of violating forum rules and b) I don't believe anyone is likely to actually have all that. If you'd like to talk though, you can always pm me. Seriously.

 

[Gary OS]

Hank, do you happen to know if CBN ran the Christmas episode of "Wackiest Ship in the Army" back in the day? I know that often times stations will pick up these shows and not run the Christmas-themed episode during the loop because it sticks out too much. Sometimes they will save that episode and show it at Christmas time, but sometimes they just take it out and never show it at all. Do you know if "I'm Dreaming of a Wide Isthmus" was run by CBN? If it was it would give me hope that someone might actually have a copy.

Gary "I agree that CBN, TNT and the early Nick@Nite stuff was the best - and that was all run during my college years/early marriage and I had no shot at any of it" O.

 

[Hank Dearborn]

I don't know but I will check my sources and get back to you on it Gary. The title sounds familiar.

 

[Statskeeper]

Long time lurker - this is my 1st post. My take on why I didn't tape things back in the day (besides tape cost and lack of VCR before 1983) is these shows were always on, up till the advent of Fox and later UPN/WB/CW. For example I was born in 1966. I grew up outside of Boston, and got the Providence and southern New Hampshire stations over-the-air in addition to Boston stations. I came home from school in the 70s and the UHF stations ran The Flintstones, Get Smart, Batman, The Monkees, Bewitched, etc. Fox came on in the late 80s - there went 2 stations that had to run what Fox had for children's programming. Then came WB/UPN, taking 3 stations out of the loop for the network blocks. A few more independents went Spanish. And then came the rush of judge and talk shows. So there's no outlet to rerun the older shows and no one was thinking this would happen.

 

[troy evans]

Don't forget all those crap-ass infomercials that take up precious time in the wee hours of the morning. Some great shows used to populate those timeslots as well.

 

[troy evans]

I'm not sure if anyone here gets this station, but, ION shows classic tv in the late night hours. I've been catching episodes of "I Married Joan" on that station as well as others which escape me. "I Married Joan" is a great show. I'm 34 and completely love this show. That just goes to show that great tv is timeless.