Lost television broadcast

"Lost episode" redirects here. For other uses, see Lost episode (disambiguation).

Lost television broadcasts are composed of mostly early television programs and series that for various reasons cannot be accounted for in personal collections or studio archives.

Reasons for loss

A significant amount of early television programming is not lost but rather was never recorded in the first place. Early broadcasting in all genres was live, sometimes performed repeatedly, because there was no means to record the broadcast or because content itself was reasoned to have little monetary or historical value. In the United Kingdom, much early programming was lost due to contractual demands by the actors' union to limit the rescreening of recorded performances.

Apart from Phonovision experiments by John Logie Baird, and some 280 rolls of 35mm film containing a number of Paul Nipkow television station broadcastings, no recordings of transmissions from 1939 or earlier are known to exist.

In 1947, Kinescope films became a viable method of recording broadcasts, but programs were only sporadically filmed or preserved. Tele-snaps of British television broadcasts also began in 1947 but are necessarily incomplete. Magnetic videotape technologies became a viable method to record and distribute material in 1956. Televised programming (especially that which was not considered viable for reruns) was still considered disposable, however, and what was recorded was routinely destroyed by wiping and reusing the tapes, until the rise of the home video industry in the late 1970s.

The ability for home viewers to record programming was extremely limited; although a home viewer could record the video of a broadcast by kinescope recording onto 8 mm film throughout television history or record the audio of a broadcast onto audiotape beginning in the 1950s, one could generally not capture both on the same medium until super-8 debuted in the 1960s. (Attempting to film a television broadcast using the kinescope process, because it required positioning the camera squarely in the line of viewing of the screen and thus blocked the view of other people trying to watch, also was quite disruptive to the television viewing experience and is thus exceptionally rare among home movies. Audio recordings, which do not require obstructing the view of other viewers, are more common, and numerous copies of otherwise lost television broadcasts exist.) The mass availability of home video recording in the late 1970s and early 1980s was also a benefit for television producers and archivers; because video was now economical enough for even a home viewer to afford, networks could now afford to save all of their programming as well.

Significant lost broadcasts

Australia

LIke most other countries, only a small portion of the early decades of Australian TV programming has survived. Many economic, technical, social and regulatory forces combined to prevent large-scale preservation of Australian programs from this period, and also contributed to the later destruction of most of what was recorded at the time.

One fundamental structural fact is that in the first decade of Australian TV, 1956-1966, Australia produced very little original local content, compared to most other English-speaking nations. From the introduction of TV in Australia in 1956 to around 1964, the vast majority of locally produced original programming was made by the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Some of this was recorded, but little of that material has survived. Another fundamental fact, as noted above, is nearly all of the relatively small amount of original content produced by the two commercial networks operating in the same period (mainly consisting of news, sport, talk, game shows, and variety shows) was broadcast live, and was rarely recorded. One of the best-known and most often seen surviving recordings from this period is the footage that purports to be the recording of the inaugural broadcast of TCN-9 Sydney on 16 September 1956, but this is in fact a fabrication - the actual broadcast was not recorded at the time, so the station restaged it some days later, for archival and promotional purposes.

The low level of Australian TV content was due to a combination of factors specific to the Australian market. These included:

As a result of these influences, the three commercial networks (Nine, Seven and Ten) relied heavily on imported shows. They produced little original programming, and most of what they made was low-cost live versions of popular formats - game and variety shows, talk shows, and sports broadcasts (notably football, racing and wrestling). In the realm of so-called 'quality' programming, the ABC was far-and-away the biggest producer in this period - by June 1964, the ABC had produced 185 of the 212 plays, all 31 operas, and 90 of the 95 ballets shown on Australian TV in that period. The near-total 'colonisation' of Australian TV in this period was quantified by the 1963 Vincent Report on the Australian media, which found that 97% of television drama broadcast in Australia between 1956 and 1963 was sourced from the USA or the UK.[1]

Another key factor is that there was (and still is) simply no regulatory requirement for Australian independent producers, commercial networks or the ABC to make and submit recorded copies of their original programs for preservation by an archive authority such as the National Library of Australia. Had this been implemented from the industry's inception in 1956, much more of the lost original programming from this 'first phase' of Australian TV would still survive in some form.

Another significant factor in this early period was the relatively primitive technology then available to pre-record television programs, or to record live broadcasts 'off-air'. Although Australia introduced TV rather later (1956) than comparable nations like the UK and the USA, the use of videotape did not become widespread in the Australian industry until the early 1960s, so only a small number of episodes from the earliest period have survived. Nearly all of that material is in kinescope format.

Although many important ABC programs from these early days were captured as telecine recordings, most of this material was later lost or destroyed. In a 1999 newspaper article on the subject, author Bob Ellis recounted the story of a large collection of historic telecine recordings of early ABC drama productions, and other programs, including some of the first Australian TV Shakespeare productions, and the pioneering popular music show Six O'Clock Rock. Learning that the ABC planned to dispose of these recordings, Bruce Beresford (then a production assistant at the ABC), arranged for a friend to pose as a silver nitrate dealer, and the anonymous collector purchased the films for a nominal cost. Subsequently, the collector occasionally rented some of the films out to schools for a small fee, but unfortunately, the daughter of one of the actors involved (Owen Weingott) recognised her father from a Shakespeare production, and told him about it. Assuming that the ABC still owned the print and was making money out of these recordings without compensating the actors, Weingott lodged an official complaint. Commonwealth police descended on the illegal collector, but he was warned that they were coming, and in a panic he destroyed almost all the material he possessed.[2]

Well into the 1970s, it was still common for news, current affairs, sports coverage, game shows, talk/panel shows, 'infotainment' programs and variety shows to be broadcast live, and these were usually not recorded, because (in this early period) recording and editing TV shows on videotape was expensive and time-consuming, and because of the comparatively lower cost, and the high level of skill available to Australian TV networks in live broadcasting, and the lack of any market for such recordings, pre-recording or archiving of most day-to-day TV content was considered unnecessary and uneconomical. Although some news and other programming from this period has survived, most of what is still extant is material that was captured on film (such as actuality footage, interviews, press conferences, etc., recorded for news stories).

Another factor, common to all countries, was that prior to the introduction of domestic video technology in the 1970s, there was generally no economic motive for Australian TV to make or keep recordings of most TV shows, except in the case of pre-produced 'mainstream' documentary, comedy or drama programs that could be sold to other stations in Australia, or to broadcasters in other countries (e.g. Skippy The Bush Kangaroo). Likewise, virtually no private recordings exist of Australian TV material produced prior to the introduction of domestic video, because viewers simply had no practical means to record programs off-air.

Prior to the establishment of reliable, high-quality inter-city cable and satellite links, some Australian programs of the 1960s were routinely videotaped, usually for distribution to affiliate stations in other states - like the popular In Melbourne Tonight with Graham Kennedy - but the vast majority of these program tapes were later erased, or simply destroyed.

Even after videotape was well-established in Australian TV production, the practice of erasing and reusing tapes was common in both commercial TV and the ABC, and this continued well into the 1970s. As a result, there is only a very small portion surviving of the many thousands of hours of videotaped programming made during the 1960s and early 1970s. Another factor that specifically affected the preservation of ABC-TV programming was that the majority of its mainstream 'original' content (including comedy, drama, variety, news and current affairs) was produced 'in-house'; consequently these programs all suffered considerable losses due to the Corporation's policy of 'recycling' videotape - a practice further exacerbated by budget cuts in the 1970s. In one notorious case, a controversial instalment of the 1970s ABC comedy series The Off Show (the infamous "Leave It To Jesus" episode) was lost because the show's producer vehemently objected to its religious satire, and deliberately erased the master tape the night before it was due to be broadcast.

Notable losses include:

All the episodes from the first 12 months' (1969-1970) of the ABC's music magazine series GTK are now lost, but in one of the rare 'happy endings' for this topic, the majority of the material recorded for the post-1970 episodes was rediscovered in ABC archives and storerooms in the early 2000s, when the ABC closed and sold off its Gore Hill, Sydney studio complex. This due to the fact that most of the GTK program segments were recorded on film (in an older part of the studio complex) and then transferred to video for broadcast. Although many broadcast masters were wiped, many more were rescued and hidden by the program's later producer, Bernie Cannon, and nearly all the post-1970 filmed segments, including the irreplaceable archive of live-in-studio performances by local bands, have survived.

Other shows missing from archives include most of the first two years' of Countdown, nearly all of the hundreds of 15-minute episodes of the ABC's popular soap Bellbird, two thirds of all the taped 166 episodes from the ABC's Certain Women, many episode of the drama series Delta, and a large proportion of the Ten Network's hugely popular Young Talent Time. Much of the early years of Nine's equally popular Hey Hey it's Saturday was never recorded, and many recorded episodes have since been erased.

Some programs or segments of programs from the late 1970s onwards have been retrieved from people home taping shows off-air (portions of Young Talent Time have survived in this manner).

No footage is known to exist of the Melbourne version of Tell the Truth[3]

General lack of repeats of 1950s and 1960s Australian series makes it difficult to know what is extant and what is lost. For example, there is no information available as whether any episodes still exist of Take That (1957-1959), sometimes considered to the first Australian television sitcom. Information on archival status is also lacking for other 1950s-era series like The Isador Goodman Show (1956-1957), It Pays to Be Funny (1957-1958), Sweet and Low (1959), among others.

Conversely, some of the best-known 'survivors' of this period are comedy or drama series commissioned and broadcast by the ABC's commercial rivals. Frequently, these were outsourced productions made by private companies, such as Skippy, and most notably the many drama series made by Melbourne-based Crawford Productions, which at its peak in the 1970s had major primetime series running concurrently on all three Australian commercial networks. Fortunately, since Crawfords retained the rights to its productions, and was able to earn money from reruns, so most of its production output was preserved. Crawford is now unique in Australian TV history because it still owns and markets a comprehensive archive of all its major productions from the 1960s and beyond, including Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police, and The Sullivans.

The National Film and Sound Archives holdings of 1950s era shows include several episodes of the 1957 discussion series Leave it to the Girls,[4] most of the 1958-1959 soap opera Autumn Affair,[5] and a number of episodes of the comedy game show The Pressure Pak Show.[6] These shows, produced by ATN-7 in Sydney, probably survive because they were pre-recorded for the purpose of interstate broadcast ("Autumn Affair", despite primitive production values, was repeated into the 1960s, see article on the show for more info on these repeats).

Europe

Japan

Netherlands

A further clip of Olivia Newton-John performing was found by Ray Langstone in 2013.

Philippines

Spain

Greece

United Kingdom

United States

Select list of TV programs with missing episodes

name date description
The Adventures of Twizzle 1957 Every episode of the series recorded except for the first episode "Twizzle & Footso" are believed to have been lost forever.
Baffle 1973-1974 American word-guessing game show. Only 3 out of 100 episodes still exist.
Barley Charlie 1964 Only 3 of the 13 episodes produced of Australia's third-ever sitcom survive.
The Bear Bryant Show 1958–1982 One of the first college football coaches' shows; over 250 episodes were made during Bear Bryant's tenure at the University of Alabama. Early episodes were aired live and not recorded; videotape began to be used in the 1970s, but was routinely wiped. Less than a third of the run, 77 episodes in all, survives.
Beulah 1950–1953 Only 7 episodes have survived.
Camel News Caravan 1948–1956 An early news program, most episodes are believed to be lost.
Captain Video and His Video Rangers 1949–1955 Almost entire run destroyed after the DuMont Television Network ceased to exist. 27 episodes remain.
Cavalcade of Stars 1952-1957 Popular variety series; dozens of episodes were destroyed in the 1970s.
Coke Time with Eddie Fisher 1953-1957 Many episodes have been lost, although some (such as one starring Florence Henderson) have survived.
Countdown 1974-1987 Numerous episodes erased by ABC.
Crossroads 1964–1988 More than 80 percent of Associated TeleVision's run was wiped or otherwise lost, although Central Television's run is intact.
Curiosity Shop 1971-1973 The entire series is believed to be lost.
Dark Shadows 1966-1971 Only one episode, #1219, is missing, although a reconstruction using a home audio recording and narration has been created for home video.
Doctor Who 1963–present 97 episodes of this series are missing. See Doctor Who missing episodes.
Dollar a Second 1953–1957 Only two episodes have survived. A third kinescoped program exists in the J. Fred & Leslie W. MacDonald Collection of the Library of Congress.
Doorway to Fame 1947–1949 One of the first "talent shows" aired on United States television, Only two episodes survive.
Dream House 1983-1984 Only a small number of episodes are known to survive; the master tapes were accidentally destroyed in a flood in 2013.
DuMont Evening News 1954–1955 No episodes are known to survive.
Family Affairs 1949–1950 None of the six episodes of this, the first[21] television serial remain, as they were not archived by the BBC.
Faraway Hill 1946 No footage, stills, or scripts survive from this program, which was the first soap opera aired on American television.
Gambit 1972–1976 More than 1,000 episodes appear to be lost.
The Goldbergs 1949–1956 Only the last two seasons survive intact, with the CBS and NBC runs being largely lost.
The Grove Family 1954–1957 Very little of the UK's first soap opera remains today in the BBC archives.
Hour Glass 1946–1947 No footage remains of US television's first network variety show.
In Melbourne Tonight 1957–1970 Hundreds of episodes no longer exist.
It's Alec Templeton Time 1955 One of the last DuMont series. Although Alec Templeton was a celebrity of some note, no episodes exist of the televised version of his program.
Jul og Grønne Skove 1980 One of the later examples of lost TV shows, this was a Christmas calendar originally broadcast on Danish television by DR. Half of the 24 episodes were wiped some time in the mid-80's, as were many of DR's productions made prior to 1987, where DR made an agreement with "Statens Mediesamling" to archive all future productions.
Mama 1949–1957 The vast majority of the episodes produced of this series no longer exist.
Mary Kay and Johnny 1947–1950 Almost completely destroyed. The show was originally broadcast live and not recorded, but began using kinescopes in 1948. Many episodes from the latter period still existed as late as 1975, but only one complete 1949 episode (in the Paley Media Collection; see their web catalogue) and a few seconds from the show's last few episodes still exist today.
Mindreaders 1979–1980 Only around two episodes are known to survive, even though wiping had been largely phased-out by the "Big Three" United States networks at the time.
Newsweek Views the News 1948–1950 A prime-time public-affairs program featuring editors of Newsweek magazine discussing current events; only two episodes survive.
Number 96 1972-1977 Most of the black and white episodes were taped over by the Ten Network.
Opera Cameos 1953–1955 One of several "cultural" programs aired by the DuMont Television Network as counter-programming, only eight episodes survive of the 50+ episodes produced.
The Pinky Lee Show 1954–1955 Few episodes of this critically acclaimed TV series have survived.
Pinwright's Progress 1946–1947 Aired live and never recorded, only still photographs remain of the world's first situation comedy.
Puttnam's Prairie Emporium 1988–1990 The master tapes were reportedly wiped by CKCK-TV in the early 1990s. A single episode (an outtakes and bloopers special), and a few minutes from one other are known to survive.
Queen for a Day 1956–1964 Almost every episode of this popular TV series was destroyed.
Rocky King, Inside Detective 1950–1955 Original negatives were dumped into Upper New York Bay in the 1970s.
The School House 1949 Only one episode has survived from early 1949 of this DuMont show, featuring Wally Cox (flubbing his lines in a live DuMont TV set commercial) and Arnold Stang with musical performances set in a high school classroom.
Sara and Hoppity 1962–1963 The master tapes are believed to have all been lost or destroyed. The pilot version of the first episode "Sara & Hoppity" was discovered in a 16mm print along with the 16mm film reels of all 39 episodes of Space Patrol in possession of Roberta Leigh in the late 1990s. One other episode is known to have been found, while only 1 minute of silent footage from another was found.
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! 1969-70, 1978 In the mid-1990s, Hanna-Barbera Productions released several remastered versions of this series, noted by the use of their then-current "Comedy" All-Stars logo. Currently, only one episode has been remastered in its original 1969 broadcast: the episode "Go Away Ghost Ship". The others, as well as all eight season two episodes, are presumed to be unviewable in their original broadcast. The reprints are easily noticeable due to their being a lower pitch than the originals.
Search for Tomorrow 1951–1982 Because CBS wiped it, thousands of episodes no longer exist. However, the J. Fred & Leslie W. MacDonald Collection of the Library of Congress has 3 kinescopes from 1953, 1 from 1954, and 39 from May to August 1966.
Sense and Nonsense 1954 Only one episode survives of this WABD series.
Sixpenny Corner 1955–1956 The only soap opera ever made by Associated-Rediffusion, and the first British serial to be broadcast on a non-BBC channel is believed to have been completely destroyed.
Snap Judgment 1967–1969 A game show believed to be completely wiped from the NBC archives.
Starlight 1936–1949 The first ever variety show transmitted anywhere in the world, and the BBC's first ever programme. The BBC did not have access to means of recording until late 1949, so no footage is known to exist of this show today.
The Match Game 1962–1969 Approximately 11 NBC network episodes survive out of the 1,752 episodes produced.[22]
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 1962-1972 Only 33 1962–1972 episodes have survived erasure by NBC.
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends 1984–present The Season 2 premiere, "The Missing Coach", was filmed, but then replaced with "Thomas, Percy & The Coal". Britt Allcroft said that the plot would be too hard for children to comprehend. Several production stills, though, still exist in several books.
Vic and Sade 1949, 1957 One TV episode (from the 1957 run) is known to exist, out of ten produced. Much of the preceding radio program is also missing.
Young Talent Time 1971-1988 Almost all early episodes were erased by the Ten Network.
Z-Cars 1962–1978 Half of the episodes of this popular police television series are still missing, although many episodes once believed to be lost were recovered on 16mm film.
Various CNN broadcasts 1980–present Although CNN does keep extensive footage and news coverage, copies of programming with original presenter links (i.e. the newsreader) are rarely kept see section 3 part B.

Recovery efforts

The public appeal campaign the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt for the search for lost BBC productions has ended. The BBC still does accept materials and they can be contacted through the "Donating to the BBC Collection" page of the history on the BBC website.[23]

On 20 April 2006 it was announced on Blue Peter that a life-sized Dalek would be given to anyone who found and returned one of the missing episodes of Doctor Who.[24]

In December 2012 the Radio Times announced it was launching a hunt for more Doctor Who episodes in aid of the show's 50th anniversary,[25] by publishing their own list of missing episodes[26] and setting up a specific address which the public can email if they have any information on lost episodes.[25]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stuart Cunningham et al, The Media and Communications in Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2001, ISBN 978-1-86508-674-3), p.175
  2. ↑ Bob Ellis, "The Lost Picture Show", Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1999
  3. ↑ http://colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=1;parentid=;query=tell%20the%20truth%20Media%3A%22TELEVISION%22;querytype=;rec=6;resCount=10
  4. ↑ http://colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/summary/summary.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;page=0;parentid=;query=%22leave%20it%20to%20the%20girls%22%20Media%3A%22TELEVISION%22;querytype=;resCount=10
  5. ↑ http://colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/summary/summary.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;page=0;parentid=;query=%22autumn%20affair%22%20Media%3A%22TELEVISION%22;querytype=;resCount=10
  6. ↑ http://colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/summary/summary.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;page=0;parentid=;query=%22pressure%20pak%20show%22%20Years%3A%3E%3D1957%20Years%3A%3C%3D1959%20Media%3A%22TELEVISION%22;querytype=;resCount=10
  7. ↑ http://www.abbaontv.com/1975/description-eddy-go-round.html
  8. ↑ http://www.abbaontv.com/1975/description-eddy-becker-show.html
  9. ↑ Bentley, Chris (August 2001). The Complete Book of "Captain Scarlet". Carlton Books Ltd. ISBN 1-84222-405-0.
  10. ↑ List of missing Doctor Who episodes at the BBC
  11. ↑ "BBC Comedy page on "Not Only... But Also"".
  12. ↑ Upstairs, Downstairs programme guide
  13. ↑ http://www.lostshows.com/default.aspx?episode=75b99d8f-48c9-40a9-8cd4-7a3e123b54d1
  14. ↑ http://www.lostshows.com/default.aspx?episode=7155cd25-2194-4007-b263-7c135cec5347
  15. ↑ http://www.lostshows.com/default.aspx?episode=d9b43ef8-6c3c-47be-9834-4c9368639edc
  16. ↑ Adams, Edie (March 1996). "Television/Video Preservation Study: Los Angeles Public Hearing". National Film Preservation Board. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
  17. ↑ The Search for the Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes – 21 May 2006
  18. ↑ The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
  19. ↑ Ventriloquist wins $17.8 million award in Metromedia suit
  20. ↑ April Enterprises Inc. v. KTTV
  21. ↑ Parliamentary papers, Volume 6. Great Britain: House of Commons, HMSO. 1950. p. 26. television's first serial "Family Affairs" made its appearance
  22. ↑ "The Match Game". The Match Game Website. Retrieved August 12, 2007.
  23. ↑ "Donating to the BBC Collection". BBC. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  24. ↑ "Missing episode hunt". BBC Doctor Who news. 20 April 2006. Archived from the original on 4 December 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2006.
  25. 1 2 Mulkern, Patrick (8 December 2012). "The hunt for the lost classics of Doctor Who". Radio Times. Immediate Media Company. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
  26. ↑ Mulkern, Patrick (8 December 2012). "RT's checklist of missing Doctor Who episodes". Radio Times. Immediate Media Company. Retrieved 13 December 2012.

External links

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