Interesting. It was actually surprisingly common to erase and reuse video tapes. The original VTR tapes were two inches wide and ran at 15 ips, so the reels were pretty expensive even by the standards of television networks, and when you were taping a lot of shows the costs could add up fast.
Another classic that’s had 39 episodes preserved on film is The Honeymooners starring Jackie Gleason. The Dumont television network, which aired the show, developed a combined film and television camera they called the “Electrocam system”. I’m pretty sure the show was broadcast live, as was the usual practice at the time, but was simultaneously filmed by these innovative cameras. The quality looks to me about as good as I Love Lucy, which was filmed with professional movie cameras.
I’ve thought that if you could travel back to the past only once then you immediately returned to the present, what is the best way to make money. One thought was go to the BBC and buy/trade for the tapes of all of the Doctor Who s along with permission to copy and distribute. When I return to the present, look what I found.
Are you sure it was videotapes they were dumping? The Dumont network ceased operations in August, 1956, while the first practical commercial videotape recorder, the Ampex VR-1000, was first demonstrated in March, 1956, and didn’t actually start shipping until later. Their unique Electronicam system was used to distribute television shows on film to affiliate stations. It was probably film canisters they were dumping.
They both had business sense and creative talent. Lucy fought hard against network executives and Phillip Morris, their primary sponsor, who strongly opposed having Arnaz play her husband on the show. Something about it not being “American” as perceived by audiences, and that no one would believe a Cuban with a thick Spanish accent could really be her husband. In the end, the choice to cast Arnaz as her husband on the show was pure genius. Arnaz had a terrific sense of comedy, and his various sarcastic quips were only enhanced by the accent, not to mention Lucy constantly mocking it when they had disagreements! Without Arnaz, the show risked being just another sitcom instead of, at the time, being by far the most popular in television history.
The first Superbowl was broadcast by both CBS and NBC. There are tapes of the game itself but for a long time it was thought the television broadcasts were gone.
But it turns out a guy in Pennsylvania owned an early home video recorder and taped the CBS broadcast of the game. The recording was found in an attic in 2011.
However the NFL says the guy does not have the rights to the broadcast and won’t let him release it.
Fair enough, but the point being made was that reels of videotapes for the early Ampex VTRs were quite expensive and erasing and reusing them was fairly common. It would have been very unusual for anyone to just dump them. I saw that they cost around $325 in 1958, which is more or less consistent with an article from Scotland saying they cost around £100 there around that same time. That’s around $3,600 in today’s dollars! Which becomes a big deal when you’re taping hundreds or thousands of shows!
Technically, it was “recordings,” which probably meant kinescopes. Most of DuMont’s programs were low-budget and completely forgettable, except for the legacy of Ernie Kovacs..
Kovacs’ earlier work at CBS also didn’t survive, and his work at ABC (which was videotaped) was also in the process of being of being destroyed before Kovac’s widow, Edie Adams, bought the remaining tapes (and the rights to the programs) with her own money
Indeed, I was going to mention that. In fact, I already did. The Honeymooners was one of the shows that was a beneficiary of the Dumont Electronicam system, so two seasons (39 episodes) were preserved on film in high quality. Another great piece of television history! Jackie Gleason was famous for disliking rehearsals and preferring to just wing it, but he was incredibly good at it! You can see some of the actors occasionally flub their lines during what were live broadcasts at the time, but nobody cared because they were all great at what they did!
Just to be clear, the “classic thirty-nine” were not the original appearance of the characters.
The Honeymooners originated as a recurring sketch on Cavalcade of Stars, a variety show on DuMont which Jackie Gleason hosted from 1950 to 1952 (after its original host, Jerry Lester, moved to NBC). Gleason in turn jumped to CBS in 1952, where he hosted The Jackie Gleason Show (the role he was born to play) and the Honeymooners sketches continued there.
The sketch was popular enough that it was expanded into a half-hour series in 1955. This series lasted for a single season and this is where the “classic thirty-nine” episodes come from.
On a separate note, back in this time period, shows were often broadcast live. In some situations they were simultaneously taped and they might be re-broadcast once a few months later when normal production was on break. But these re-broadcasts were just seen as filler for an off-week. Nobody imagined that shows would go into an ongoing broadcast cycle.
The cast of The Honeymooners negotiated contracts when the show was being planned. Gleason, Art Carney, and Joyce Randolph were all represented by lawyers who specialized in entertainment contracts. But Audrey Meadows was represented by her brothers, who were attorneys but who had never negotiated any entertainment contracts before. During the course of the negotiations they were seeking a little bonus for their sister so they asked for perpetual royalties on all future broadcasts.
The CBS lawyers concealed their amusement. They were familiar with how television worked and realized the brothers didn’t understand that most shows never got re-broadcast at all and none got re-broadcast more then once. So they happily signed an agreement to pay Meadows for all future broadcasts, knowing that this agreement was worthless.
Except, of course, that it wasn’t. Television stations started filling airtime with reruns of old shows and The Honeymooners kept getting aired over and over and over again. And every year, Audrey Meadows would receive a check for her perpetual royalties.
As I previously noted, CBS made exactly the same mistake on a much, much bigger scale with I Love Lucy, happily granting Desilu syndication rights which they believed were basically worthless. It became the most syndicated show on television, practically a staple of morning television for many, many years. The heart-on-satin opening, specially designed for syndication to replace the original commercial opening, became one of the most recognizable icons on television.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but anyone who’s amused by stories of the big shots signing royalties away to the small fry should study the Silna brothers and the NBA.