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Post by George D on Oct 6, 2012 18:00:21 GMT
I found this online.. muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Fraggle_Rock_%28UK%29"A selection of episodes was released on VHS. A petition to have Fraggle Rock released on DVD was run on the web for many years; until 2004 the only DVD release had been in the UK, a "best of" collection of 12 episodes in a grainy transfer from the VHS release. TVS, the original broadcasters, has passed through several owners since 1992 and of the 96 episodes, only 12 master copies are so far known to still be in existence. HIT Entertainment has tried unsuccessfully to locate the missing episodes, including extensive enquiries with The Jim Henson Company both in the UK and the US. (For a detailed list of UK video and DVD releases, see Fraggle Rock UK Videography.) When UK television channels wish to broadcast the show, they are forced to use US versions; such was the case with Cartoon Network in 2004. Its really ironic that with this being 1984 no video collector or tv enthusaist videotaped them. There are shows from the 80s that I have recorded in my collection as almost complete runs with original commercials. Fortunately, us shows exist, so the only selling point of my stuff is the orig commercial angle.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 6, 2012 19:01:26 GMT
Yeah, that is either cribbed from Wikipedia or else the other way around. Either way, it's nonsense: the DVD release was taken from broadcast-quality tapes, and the "VHS release" referred to was a set of 20 episodes across 12 tapes put out by RCA in the mid-80s. Eight of those episodes resurfaced on the DVD.
As for home-recordings...we know that a great many were indeed recorded on their original broadcasts. The problem is that tapes weren't particularly cheap back then, and it was ultimately just a kids' show so the majority of recordings were likely timeshifting and thus recorded over soon after. Most of the surviving off-airs come from the collection of someone who actually worked on the show.
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Post by George D on Oct 6, 2012 23:36:39 GMT
Depends what you call cheap.
Compared to blank dvds they're expensive. For a tv show collector, when home video came out in the late 70s, while it cost me $15.00 a blank, it was still cheaper than collecting film. By the mid 80s, prices had dropped and I started recording large amounts of material. As an example, when STNG came out, I recorded most of the entire series with original commercials. Im a small collector. I know collectors in usa who recorded thousands of tapes.
Also, im surprised there werent bootleg tape dealers that recorded stuff off air to sell at markets, mail, etc who might have it. In america in the 80s and 90s one could go to film memorabilia conventions and see tables full of vintage tv and movies. Muppets could be viewed as a collectible genre which is very surprising not much has surfaced.
Is the part true that the us version is being syndicated in uk?
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Post by John Green on Oct 6, 2012 23:56:55 GMT
Hi,George, According the the terse comment here: www.mausoleumclubforum.org.uk/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=25253 such repeats as there are,are of the U.S. ones. With Lostshows,the current information is quite confusing.Anyone familiar with the Amazon listings can see that "all 24" episodes of the first series exist and are on DVD,whereas Lostshows indicates that several are missing.I think it would help if they spelled out exactly what it is we're looking for. It was about '81 that I saw Fulton Mackay on stage in 'Saint Joan' with Julie Covington....I've just realised that 'Porridge' for which he's best known was remade in the U.S. as 'On the Rocks'.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 7, 2012 10:22:00 GMT
In the UK, a blank 3-hour VHS still cost £10-15 in the early-to-mid-80s. Prices did drop off by the end of the decade, but we're still talking about a kids' show, and by the time Fraggle aired the Muppets were going out of fashion. 'The Muppet Show' had been huge, but that had ended in 1981 - and unlike Fraggle, was aimed at a family audience and scheduled accordingly.
I don't doubt recordings were made and still exist; I just don't expect to find very many of them outside of the collections of people who worked on the show and wanted a record of it. Bear in mind too that the UK version of the show was never seen outside the UK, so we don't even had the possibility of sales copies surfacing. There were also very few repeats - outside of 'The Bells of Fraggle Rock', which was aired three Christmases running, I know the first 15 shows (in 1984) were repeated later the same year and a couple more were repeated in late 88 (probably to bring the run of episodes up to 13, since they didn't have enough new ones available at the time), but that's it. When the original run ended in August 1990, there were no more sightings.
As for knowledge of the problem...it isn't even common amongst fans of the show, most of whom have only ever seen the US version. I've been searching for years, and up until last summer when a friend made contact with one of the UK puppeteers, only two off-air recordings had turned up. These things just aren't 'doing the rounds'. (Another thing you'd expect to find if these things were at all common is the original 1987 broadcast of 'A Muppet Family Christmas', but again I've only ever seen two recordings - both poor.)
It's possible that the full set of episodes still exists in the ex-TVS archive, but with the paperwork gone there's no way to know short of looking through the tapes and I don't know if that will ever happen. I also have an eye-witness account of tapes being thrown into skips when TVS closed down; I'm keeping my fingers crossed that those were either raw studio recordings or else dupes!
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Post by George D on Oct 7, 2012 12:45:50 GMT
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 7, 2012 13:00:02 GMT
Nope :-)
The original 1987 edit hasn't been seen since either '87 or '88. The programme was re-edited slightly for a subsequent repeat, probably to make space for more commercials, and this new edit has become the master copy. It's available on DVD in the UK.
The US DVD release is missing a further five minutes due to music-clearance issues. The DVD you link to - which, by the way, is an illegal bootleg - reinstates those cuts.
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Post by George D on Oct 7, 2012 13:28:58 GMT
I dont think this topic has been addressed on the forum before so perhaps a full discussion as to whats missing, whats in poor shape and what the difference between edits are.
The one I showed you appears to be 97 minutes so im not sure if that restores the missing scenes.
Once I know more what the differences are, and what specifically is missing or in poor shape I can keep an eye out for it.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Oct 7, 2012 13:39:02 GMT
I don't know where the 97 minutes comes from, but as the set says it's two discs then there must be something else in there too. The show runs to around 50 minutes in its original form; about 48 after the re-edit and the butchered US DVD release is around 42. Just to be clear: the original edit is not missing, it's just been superceded by the re-edit. Details of the differences between the versions can be found here: muppet.wikia.com/wiki/A_Muppet_Family_Christmas
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Post by George D on Oct 7, 2012 17:22:15 GMT
I dont know whats on the dvds either, but Im wondering if its the two versions. 52 and 42 would make 94 minutes.
At least we know it exists and that most/all of the footage is in circulation in one form or another.
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Post by John Green on Oct 7, 2012 18:27:21 GMT
I'm wondering if any of the Mackay material featured in news/magazine programmes at the time?
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Post by Nic Ayling on Oct 7, 2012 20:04:13 GMT
Fraggle Rock used to be played within No. 73
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2012 12:00:44 GMT
I know where all 96 episodes are, that are in pristine condition - and so do Henson but they do not want to be remotely commercial about it and seem to be prepared to let them go in the bin??
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Post by Ray Langstone (was saintsray) on Oct 11, 2012 12:04:48 GMT
I know where all 96 episodes are, that are in pristine condition - and so do Henson but they do not want to be remotely commercial about it and seem to be prepared to let them go in the bin?? So, where are they?
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Post by John Wall on Oct 11, 2012 12:05:49 GMT
I know where all 96 episodes are, that are in pristine condition - and so do Henson but they do not want to be remotely commercial about it and seem to be prepared to let them go in the bin?? So, where are they? Zimbabwe !
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