What's a good American lost TV site?

[Wright Blan]

I've seen the MTR lost tv list, but I feel it doesn't even scratch the surface. Where's a good place to look for a good selection of info about missing American television?

[Lance C]

There has always been the general thought, that the the Americans invested more in their TV and therefore treated it with more respect. Hence there is an incline that 'its all there' with eager technicians carefully looking after it. For example I would think it very easy to find in the States a 1964 episode of a long forgotten soap like ' Peyton place'. In the UK however a 1964 episode of a soap like 'Crossroads motel' would probably be non existent?

This is why I think American sites dedicated to this are very few and far between.. BUT ! as you say if you scratch the surface there are some serious gaps in the
American Archives that need more interest and appreciation from the public.
' Dark Shadows ' for example appears to have suffered a similar fate to ' Dr Who ' , in that they were both cheaply made , with the producers thinking they would only have ephemeral, domestic market interest. The result being that the tapes were used and abused.

its not for me to say on bandwidth etc but I am sure if Mark started an American thread it would generate a lot of interest?

[Wright Blan]

Guest-Lance said:

There has always been the general thought, that the the Americans invested more in their TV and therefore treated it with more respect. Hence there is an incline that 'its all there' with eager technicians carefully looking after it. For example I would think it very easy to find in the States a 1964 episode of a long forgotten soap like ' Peyton place'. In the UK however a 1964 episode of a soap like 'Crossroads motel' would probably be non existent?

This is why I think American sites dedicated to this are very few and far between.. BUT ! as you say if you scratch the surface there are some serious gaps in the
American Archives that need more interest and appreciation from the public.
' Dark Shadows ' for example appears to have suffered a similar fate to ' Dr Who ' , in that they were both cheaply made , with the producers thinking they would only have ephemeral, domestic market interest. The result being that the tapes were used and abused.

its not for me to say on bandwidth etc but I am sure if Mark started an American thread it would generate a lot of interest?

Trust me, there are a few biggies when it comes to missing American tv. Probably the most notable is Johnny Carson's first night as host of "The Tonight Show".
Also, the broadcast of the first Super Bowl is nowhere to be found, despite the fact that TWO networks covered it. There are other major historic sporting events that are aparently lost also. Don Larson's perfect game (baseball) for example.
A lot of local stuff is probably lost forever also. For example, there was a local show in Altanta during the early 70's called "Rock Explosion" or something like that, which experimented with pairing up music with locally filmed material...early music videos, in other words. There is mabye one reel of it still left.

There is, of course a reason why us Americans "invested" more in our tv: The producers early on realized they could make TEXTmoney TEXT by selling the repeats. I believe Desi Arnaz pionered this with "I Love Lucy."

Most lost US tv was live broadcasts or stuff the networks didn't think they could make money off of the resale. Boy, were they ever wrong.

[Wright Blan]

Guest-Wright said:

A lot of local stuff is probably lost forever also. For example, there was a local show in Altanta during the early 70's called "Rock Explosion" or something like that, which experimented with pairing up music with locally filmed material...early music videos, in other words. There is mabye one reel of it still left.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to get this uo before the witching hour.
The show I was mentioning was called "Now Explosion". There seems to be little more of it around than I thought, and it's now in an archive at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs! Sic 'em! WOOF! WOOF!).

Here's the website:
www.thenowexplosion.net/

[DARK SHADOWS]

Isn't DARK SHADOWS (1966-71) an exception in US soaps, being exceeedingly well-preserved?

All but one of the 1225 episodes exist, (and the one thats absent appears to have been the result of the wrong tape being filed away rather than any deliberate destruction), and while some 30-odd other tapes are AWOL, b/w TRs are in existance).

I doubt very much if any of the other soaps of this period have more than a handful of episodes available.

[Terry]

Another notable missing episode is the Tonight Show featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney - very poor quality audio and video copies exist, but there's nothing at NBC...

[Elliot]

I wonder if anyone can tell me what the survival rate of the Playhouse 90 episodes is and if these are commercially available. Okay, I'm not 100% sure if this is the right topic for such a question so apologies for being O/T.

[Ian Beard]

PLAYHOUSE 90?

No clue as to the survival rate, but at least a couple were issued "officially" on laserdisc. I've noticed several others being offered on public-domain video too.