Could ROOTS be a syndication print? (1 Viewer)

[ScottR]

I have a bad feeling that ROOTS is presented on dvd in a cut, syndication version. Here is why....

1. The ABC NOVEL FOR TELEVISION titles have been removed and replaced with a generic title.

2. Some of the end credits have been combined, and at least one of them has names for people not in that episode...looks like a cut and paste job.

3. The episodes run a bit short for a 1976/77 presentation.

4. I read in a 1978 book on the making of ROOTS that the circumcision scene in Episode One was longer, with Kunta being led inside a hut by four men and his father waiting outside.

...I'm bringing this up because, if true, this would be a damned shame and possibly the worst case of a botched tv release yet seen. No one can calculate the effect of this television milestone.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I think another thread on this forum has already detailed the different cuts of Roots. Yes, the print on this DVD (and the previous release) is the one that was sold into syndication, where all of the "parts" were combined to be two hours each.

On the original ABC airings, some episodes ran two hours, some only an hour. Besides extra opening/ending credits, scenes that had on-screen cast credits on the original "uncombined" one-hour installments were taken out for syndication (I guess they didn't have clean, title-free footage to work with).

I also thought I read, though, that the syndication version also adds some scenes that weren't in the original, besides taking some out, and yes, the "ABC Novel for Television" titles were deleted.

 

[ScottR]

Would they have gone through all of the trouble of combining credits, changing them, and scoring an opening not seen originally (along with having to reconfigure the title screen to eliminate ABC) just for syndication? Or could this have been the final cut done right before they got the word on which nights the film would have been run for one hour and which for two?

 

[AndyMcKinney]

No, this is a syndication version. For more information, use the SEARCH function in this forum and DVDTalk. I don't remember which of these two places it was, but there was a rather lengthy discussion on the differences in the ABC version and the syndication/home video version of ROOTS last year in one of those two forums.