Episodes of Classic TV Shows Out Of Syndication

Frank the reason is that programmers thought that no one would want to watch black and white episodes. And it's possible that the color episodes outrated the B&W episodes. But, really they were cutting their nose off to spite their face. With the black and white episodes you have 98 Gilligan's Island in the package. Without them, you only have 62. It had to have hurt the ratings in the long run to be repeating episodes so often.

 

I can say that in my experience, watching reruns of THE WILD WILD WEST in syndication in different markets (Boston area in the 1970s, Waterbury CT area in the 1980s, on TNT in the 1990s) that the b&w first season was always part of the package. I didn't see THE FUGITIVE until A&E ran it in the early 1990s, but I think that all four seasons remained together, though maybe it wasn't syndicated as much in the 1970s/80s, as it was predominately a b&w drama. If I remember correctly, all four seasons of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA ran on local Hartford, CT television in the mid-1980s, and certainly all were present when The Sci-Fi Channel picked it up in the 1990s. LOST IN SPACE was also completely intact, b&w and color episodes together, when I saw it locally in Boston in the 1970s, and on USA Network and Sci-Fi in the 1980s and 1990s.

Come to think of it, the filmed, post-Honor Blackman AVENGERS episodes, the b&w Emma Peel, color Emma Peel, and the subsequent Tara King episodes, ran locally on WABC Channel 7 in NYC in the early 1980s, on A&E in the early 1990s and on Encore-Mystery in the 1990s and 2000s. Perhaps only the color episodes ran on the CBS Late Night Movie in the late 1970s, but I'm not sure on that point.

One anomaly I saw was with reruns of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; I think all the episodes ran on USA Network in the late 1980s, and in syndication before that. However, when Encore-Mystery picked it up in the late-1990s/early-2000s, several key episodes ("An Unlocked Window", "Where the Woodbine Twineth", "The Magic Shop", "Lonely Place", etc) were missing from the package, ditto when Hallmark and TV Land briefly picked it up afterward. But when Chiller channel ran it, all the episodes were back. Perhaps there were literary rights involved with certain episodes, that needed to be ironed out, I dunno.

 

[QUOTE="Jack P, post: 4201351, member: 329179"[Love, American Style] was stalled because CBS can't find the masters of the original hour long version for S2 onward. Why should they license it out to Shout or any other label just to release compromised half-hour syndicated cut episodes?[/QUOTE]

It would probably cost millions to put them back together again, assuming they still exist in any form. Putting The Brady Bunch back together to the network length versions for DVD required settling for substandard sources; would this be a similar case? And were any of the segments repeats to begin with, like say doubling up a new segment with an old one?

 

Let me get this straight...

The first six seasons of Gunsmoke (1955-1961) were originally re-ran with the Marshal Dillon re-titling on CBS starting from when the first one-hour year, season seven, began in the fall of 1961. It was not until 1964 that these first 233 episodes, all 1/2-hours, were syndicated per se; this syndicated run ended in the mid-1980s. These would for the most part not be seen again until specialty cable channels such as Encore Westerns and Me-TV began re-running them, under both the original Gunsmoke and re-titled Marshal Dillon versions.

Seasons seven through eleven (1961-1966) were not re-ran until circa 1983, and even then was only confined to a few episodes, before Encore Westerns had shown all 176 episodes from this package.

And finally, we come to the part of the run most widely seen in syndication: the nine color seasons (twelve through twenty, 1966-1975), as all 226 of these episodes were re-ran.

~Ben

 

Yes, you got it straight.

 

When USA first ran Lost in Space, they started with the color episodes. It took them months, if not a year, to finally get around to running the first season.

WTBS always ran black and white seasons, to my knowledge. I always saw I Dream of Jeannie and LIS's b&w episodes. WTNH in CT also ran then b&w Jeannie's. Uncut, if I recall correctly.

Meanwhile, for some reason, ME-TV keeps skipping certain episodes of Bonanza. They only run four out of the five Guy Williams episodes. It's among his best dramatic TV work, so losing any of them is a shame.

 

USA originally intended to run only the color Lost in Space episodes, but finally reran the B&Ws due to viewer demand. At least, that’s what their marketing department said.

WTBS managed to hang onto the B&W Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie episodes longer than most, but by the late 80s, they were gone. At some point, their old Columbia package expired and they had to take the new one from the Program Exchange, which didn’t offer the B&Ws.

 

Yep.

By the time I started paying attention in the '90s, Nick at Nite had the two B&W seasons of Bewitched, TBS had the color seasons.

Also, all three seasons of Gilligan's Island ran complete on TBS by that time, because Mr. Turner had broken out his crayons and made season 1 color.

 

When AHH ran again several years ago on Encore, the only episode they were missing was To Catch a Butterfly, which I filled in with a 16mm film transfer.

 

Back around 1999, WCIU-Channel 26 in Chicago was running "Hogan's Heroes." I remember one episode (don't know which one) joined the theme song "in progress" and at the very beginning (for a second or two) it looked like a tape that had been partially erased up to that spot.

Of course, HH was produced on film, but I wonder at what level this happened -- did someone in the station's master control screw up, or was a broadcast tape sent to them that way?

 

Could be any one of a number of reasons. Tape crease, someone accidentally erased the tape, switcher problems, etc.

 

I swear they did earlier in the year! I know I specifically DVRed it. Of course, my HD died, so I lost it, was waiting for it to run again. Interesting.

 

And yet another once-fruitful HTF discussion derails into a political discussion.... Let's get back on track, shall we?

 

I don't believe they're been withdrawn from syndication. Paraphrasing what I read some months ago, someone at this board said that they had saw a single complaint on MeTV's Facebook page about one of the Shorty episodes, with MeTV promptly replying that they wouldn't show it again.

I suspect this is just a result of that overreaction.