I Dream of Jeannie copyright years (1 Viewer)

Vahan_Nisanain · Apr 7, 2014

Notice how in all the seasons from 2 to 5, it always said MCMLXVI for 1966. Surely, the year changed during the original airings.

Tooncy · Apr 7, 2014

I think it's just laziness. They used the same opening titles on the entire run (except the first season, obviously).

Joel Arndt · Apr 7, 2014

This is true of Bewitched, also. Both series had animated opening titles and the years shown reflect when an update/revision was made. In 1966 I Dream of Jeannie switched from B & W the previous season and as far as I know utilized the same opening titles for its four remaining seasons in color. Bewitched switched to color broadcasting in the same season (1966-67) and the 1966 date remained the same until Dick Sargent replaced Dick York in the 1969-70 season, so the three remaining seasons of Bewitched show an opening title date of 1969. The first two B & W seasons of Bewitched (1964-66) utilize the 1966 titles in syndication and home video release, also. The reason for this is that the first two seasons were sponsored by Chevrolet and the opening titles were tied in with the product being advertised. You can view an example of this on Youtube-

JohnMor · Apr 7, 2014

In the original network run openings for both series, the copyright dates changed each year. When they first went into syndication in the early 70's, each season had a new syndicated opening retaining that season's particular version of the theme song (which changed a bit every year) and which also retained the proper copyright year changes. It was only in the late 80's when they went to video and a new syndication packaged was put together that Sony stuck the current openings on utilizing just the 1966 and 1969 dates.

Vahan_Nisanain · Apr 7, 2014

JohnMor said:
In the original network run openings for both series, the copyright dates changed each year. When they first went into syndication in the early 70's, each season had a new syndicated opening retaining that season's particular version of the theme song (which changed a bit every year) and which also retained the proper copyright year changes. It was only in the late 80's when they went to video and a new syndication packaged was put together that Sony stuck the current openings on utilizing just the 1966 and 1969 dates.

Thanks John. Exactly the information I was looking for.

oldtvshowbuff · Apr 7, 2014

Thanks John. Exactly the information I was looking for.

Dennis The Menace beat both Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie to the punch by keeping the same copyright date of MCMLIX (1959 in Roman numerals) by Dariell Productions (Screen Gems) for all of seasons 1-2 and most of season 3 until Joseph Kearns' death, so they had to change the opening credits out of necessity when they hired Gale Gordon to replace Kearns, so the 1962 copyright would stay with DTM to the end of season four (62-63).

UniversalPhan · Apr 7, 2014

Has nothing to do with "copyright". Many television shows back then used the 'roman numeral' indicator for the release year for some odd reason. Some of the more popular beliefs were that studios wanted to make it impossible for viewers to determine what year a movie was produced. Back during the 60's and 70's, this was a popular notion since movies and TV shows weren't released to home video.

Another popular idea was that movies and television shows were produced on film and that film degrades over time, making it harder to read numeric values rather than the alphabetic roman numeral writing on film. The BBC has a different explanation, suggesting that studios wanted to deceive viewers so they wouldn't be able to tell what year a film or TV series was made, making the production more palpatable to viewers.

The point is, the method of displaying the copyright year has absolutely nothing to do with copyright, but rather to divert the viewers attention away from when the film or TV series was made.

Ron1973 · Apr 8, 2014

UniversalPhan said:
Has nothing to do with "copyright". Many television shows back then used the 'roman numeral' indicator for the release year for some odd reason. Some of the more popular beliefs were that studios wanted to make it impossible for viewers to determine what year a movie was produced. Back during the 60's and 70's, this was a popular notion since movies and TV shows weren't released to home video.

Another popular idea was that movies and television shows were produced on film and that film degrades over time, making it harder to read numeric values rather than the alphabetic roman numeral writing on film. The BBC has a different explanation, suggesting that studios wanted to deceive viewers so they wouldn't be able to tell what year a film or TV series was made, making the production more palpatable to viewers.

The point is, the method of displaying the copyright year has absolutely nothing to do with copyright, but rather to divert the viewers attention away from when the film or TV series was made.

Lol!!! I remember watching The Beverly Hillbillies as a kid and I was quite able to figure out what year the Roman numerals represented.....if the studios can't fool a kid, there are issues!

oldtvshowbuff · Apr 8, 2014

In classic TV circles, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Shamley/Revue) had actual numbers pertaining to the years 1955-56 in their copyrights for season 1 episodes, then switched over to roman numerals for the remainder of the series. Four Star had both roman numerals and regular ol' numerals in their copyrights for their shows, TCFTV, I believe, always used numbers instead of RN in the copyrights for their shows. So that's my history lesson to you,

UniversalPhan · Apr 8, 2014

Most don't know how to read those Roman numeral dates. But, it's one of the common beliefs as to why studios use that format.

Rob_Ray · Apr 8, 2014

I learned how to read Roman Numerals from watching old movies and TV shows. They were a great learning tool!

Ron1973 · Apr 8, 2014

You don't have to know the whole Roman Numeral system anyway. I learned the basics in school and had watched enough re-runs of old shows to know they went color in 1965 on most of them. When I saw a "V" at the end, I knew it was copyrighted for 1965....no need to figure out all the other numbers!

Ron1973 · Apr 8, 2014

I uploaded a little ditty that describes the whole Roman Numeral thing to a tee:

moviebuff75 · Apr 9, 2014

They messed up the copyright date for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the Roman Numerals read 1,064!

Joel Arndt · Apr 9, 2014

Rob_Ray said:
I learned how to read Roman Numerals from watching old movies and TV shows. They were a great learning tool!

Same here Rob. I remember asking what they were and how to read them at a very young age.

CraigF · Apr 9, 2014

I don't believe that for a second. Back then, kids learned Roman numerals in primary school, any ten y.o. would know how to decode the date (I went to American/British/Canadian schools then, can't speak for others). Maybe it's (much) older and younger people who wouldn't know them, but my (English-speaking) generation sure should. And we were watching these programs when they were new.

Rob_Ray · Apr 9, 2014

CraigF said:
I don't believe that for a second. Back then, kids learned Roman numerals in primary school, any ten y.o. would know how to decode the date (I went to American/British/Canadian schools then, can't speak for others). Maybe it's (much) older and younger people who wouldn't know them, but my (English-speaking) generation sure should. And we were watching these programs when they were new.

Oh, we learned Roman numerals in school too. But thanks to my love for old movies (favorite era being MCMXXV to MCMLX) and old and new TV shows(MCMXLVII to MCMLXXVIII) I had already mastered them years earlier.

oldtvshowbuff · Apr 9, 2014

Several early episodes of My Favorite Martian in S1 have an MCMXLIII copyright, which would translate into 1943, OOPS!!!

MishaLauenstein · Apr 9, 2014

I assume one reason for using the same opening for several seasons is so the studio doesn't have to pay to transfer and re-master multiple versions of the same footage .

All of the colour Adventures of Superman DVDs use the 1957-dated opening. The annoying thing is they appear to have used the most scratched-up version of the credits in existence, and did nothing to clean them up.

Tooncy · Apr 10, 2014

And the Season Two DVDs of Petticoat Junction all use the same opening titles that are out of sync.

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I Dream of Jeannie copyright years (1 Viewer)

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