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shows that have been destroyed (1 Viewer)

jimmyjet

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what shows do we really have good evidence for, that the only copies have been destroyed ?

obviously, they can never be released, if we dont have anything to release them from.
 

derosa

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Likely not a popular title, so many won't care, but the Second season ofthe animated series "the Archie's Comedy Hour" from 1969 was butchered.Missing are Archie's song segments, bridges and teasers, likely gone forever.The DVD sets have PAL speed up, and the shows are chopped into syndicatedprices, and released on separate sets as Sabrina & Groovie goolies.In general, multi-segment anthology type animated shows that aired in a blockhave faired very poorly on DVD. The experience of watching them as airedhas been destroyed.
 

oldtvshowbuff

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what shows do we really have good evidence for, that the only copies have been destroyed ? obviously, they can never be released, if we dont have anything to release them from.
Were you thinking of the Universal vault fire of five years ago?
 

Mark-P

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Well of course the most famous, is that more that 100 Doctor Who episodes are lost forever because the BBC was in the practice of erasing videotapes for reuse. It never occurred to them that the shows had any historical value.
 

Bob Furmanek

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I've heard the 35mm masters of MY LIVING DOLL are MIA, as well as some Jack Webb-produced TV shows.
 

Ron1973

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Not really "classic" in the sense that we discuss but years of Memphis Wrestling will never be seen on DVD due to tapes being erased over. It aired live on Saturday mornings and was taped for rebroadcast on other stations. All that really survives are copies collectors made in other markets. We're talking it airing on television from the 50's up until around 2001 and a handful of episodes exist from the 70's, some from the 80's and more in the 90's where people were taping them.
 

Jack P

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Here are the classic game shows of the 60s and 70s that were wiped from existence but for a small handful of episodes.

Jeopardy! (the original Art Fleming version, 1964-1975)
The Match Game (the original NBC version, 1962-1969)
Wheel Of Fortune (the Chuck Woolery hosted episodes, 1975-1981. Supposedly destroyed out of spite by Merv Griffin)
Split Second (1972-1975)Password (The ABC revival, 1971-1975)

The list goes on.
 

jimmyjet

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another thing that i recall from quite awhile ago - some group was trying to restore stuff before it "disintegrated".

i tend to recall it mainly being movies.

but i would think it would apply to tv shows, as well ?

what sort of stuff simply has decayed, rotted, etc. to the point, that no really acceptable transfer can occur ?
 

Peter M Fitzgerald

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There was a regionally-syndicated hunting & fishing show, THE SOUTHERN SPORTSMAN, hosted by Franc White (1926-2012), that ran from 1972-1996. It originated from WRAL in Raleigh, NC. I used to watch it in the mid/late 1970s in Virginia, where it would air around midday on Sunday.

White owned the master tapes to his show, but he apparently stored them in an airplane hanger, where they baked in the summer heat and eventually perished. So, the only tapes floating around today are those that viewers recorded themselves.

The WRAL website has one uploaded for historical purposes: http://www.wral.com/wral-tv/video/1416204/#/vid1416204
 

Mike Frezon

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Jack P said:
Here are the classic game shows of the 60s and 70s that were wiped from existence but for a small handful of episodes.

Jeopardy! (the original Art Fleming version, 1964-1975)
The Match Game (the original NBC version, 1962-1969)
Wheel Of Fortune (the Chuck Woolery hosted episodes, 1975-1981. Supposedly destroyed out of spite by Merv Griffin)
Split Second (1972-1975)Password (The ABC revival, 1971-1975)

The list goes on.
I would love to see some of the Art Fleming episodes of Jeopardy. And I was a big adolescent fan of Jo Ann Pflug on the original Wheel of Fortune program. :biggrin:

Would anyone know if the short-lived NBC daytime game show "It Takes Two" (hosted by the venerable Vin Scully) exists in any form?
 

AndyMcKinney

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Mark-P said:
Well of course the most famous, is that more that 100 Doctor Who episodes are lost forever because the BBC was in the practice of erasing videotapes for reuse. It never occurred to them that the shows had any historical value.
The BBC wiped a lot more than Doctor Who, and compared to many other shows, Doctor Who is extremely well-represented in the BBC archive (only 110 episodes missing out of 700. Shows like Dixon of Dock Green, for instance, have only a handful remaining out of a vast number of editions recorded. Many colour episodes of the culturally-important Steptoe and Son still haven't survived, and if it weren't for the show's creators having a BBC employee (illegally) allow them to copy episdoes to an early reel-to-reel video recorder, several of the Steptoe episodes wouldn't exist at all.

The BBC wiped a great many of their Benny Hill Show specials. When they learned he was leaving for Thames TV, they spitefully wiped his 1968 episodes within weeks of airing.

The Peter Cook/Dudley Moore classic Not Only, But Also was totally wiped by the BBC, in spite of Cook and Moore even offereing to pay for the preservation of the tapes themselves (or to pay for new blank tapes so their wouldn't have to be wiped). The corporation, nonsensically, refused their offer.

Monty Python's Flying Circus was scheduled for wiping, but a syndication sale to North America (which required NTSC copies of the PAL tapes to be made) let that show off the hook (though some bits of some sketches that were shown on the original broadcasts are now gone in a few cases).

I'm not saying you're one of "those" Doctor Who fans, but there are several out there who put forth the attitude that it was the "only" show the BBC wiped, or the only one important enough to go looking for. The BBC destroyed a great number of their output in the late '60s and through the '70s.
 

AndyMcKinney

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Jack P said:
Here are the classic game shows of the 60s and 70s that were wiped from existence but for a small handful of episodes.
Wheel Of Fortune (the Chuck Woolery hosted episodes, 1975-1981. Supposedly destroyed out of spite by Merv Griffin)
That's just an urband legend. There's no real evidence to support that theory.

There are a great many more US daytime gameshows that have been wiped (you did later go on to add "The list goes on", to be fair).

Some other examples include ABC Pyramid, Hollywood Squares (daytime version), daytime Concentration (allegedly).

The last season of CBS What's My Line? colour episodes are missing (only B/W kinescopes of them were made), so once the master videotapes were wiped, the colour for those episodes disappeared (also, I think about one out of every four WML? episodes went out "live" and wasn't taped at all, just kinescoped in B/W, so maybe 1/4 of the colour ones were never preserved in colour anyway).

All three networks destroyed a lot of their daytime and late-night programming into the '70s. Johnny Carson got absolutely livid when he discovered that NBC destroyed practically all the master tapes of his first 10 years as host of The Tonight Show (including the one from his very first show), and made it a point to demand that then not only cease and desist, but that control of all Tonight master tapes reverted to him in his next contract negotiation.
 

AndyMcKinney

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Out of 20,000-plus episodes of shows produced by the DuMont network, there are only 300-400 surviving today, mainly because ABC assumed ownership of them in the early '70s, and decided the empty warehouse space (for their own programming) was more valuable than what was on all those DuMont film reels.

Most of what survived was Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners sketches from his variety show, and those only survived because he had them preserved himself. If the only copies had been in the DuMont library, they'd have ended up in the East River along with (almost) everything else produced by DuMont.
 

Guy Foulard

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AndyMcKinney said:
The BBC destroyed a great number of their output in the late '60s and through the '70s.
And not only the BBC! So many classic programs for the commerical ITV channels of the 60s were destroyed, too.
 

Richard V

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The first season of The Avengers, is either totally or mostly lost. I have seen the first episode with Ian Hendry, and it is a totally different series. The opening credits, totally different, and Patrick Macnee plays a much more sinister character than his devil may care John Steed of the RIgg/Blackmon years.
Also, Mr. Adams and Eve is reportedly gone, save for a single episode I have seen on youtube.
 

Bryan^H

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'Son Of Svengoolie'. I spoke with Rich Koz(Sven) a couple years ago about the possability of his classic horror host shows coming to dvd. He said although he would have loved to see that happen, all the tapes were thrown in the dumpster after his show was cancelled. What a shame. If I were the janitor of that tv station I would have saved every last show of his.
 

Jack P

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Mike Frezon said:
I would love to see some of the Art Fleming episodes of Jeopardy. And I was a big adolescent fan of Jo Ann Pflug on the original Wheel of Fortune program. :biggrin:

Would anyone know if the short-lived NBC daytime game show "It Takes Two" (hosted by the venerable Vin Scully) exists in any form?
Other than the fact that she was Mrs. Chuck Woolery at the time, Jo Ann Pflug had no connection to the original Wheel Of Fortune.

Urban legend or not, the fact that it's only the Woolery era that was wiped out remains highly suspicious and the matter of Merv and Chuck parting on acrimonious terms is well-known.

There are indeed a lot more I could have listed but I was citing the best examples only. In point of fact, daytime HSQ may not be as wiped out as we first thought because the stash of tapes recovered in 2002 did include a number of daytime shows but GSN never chose to license those for airing (other than a "Storybook Squares" special from 1977) so there are obviously more shows in existence of that title than the others noted. Also, ABC Pyramid is intanct from June 1978 to the end of its run in June 1980 (1978 shows aired on GSN in 1997).

Only two episodes of "It Takes Two" are known to exist. If you were an NBC daytime show prior to 1978, your chances of being saved were very poor. OTOH, CBS daytime shows of the 70s have fared reasonably well since CBS was still holding onto the tapes when the production companies finally decided they needed to keep their own copies (hence why the Goodson-Todman library has "Now You See It" but not ABC Password).
 

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