4 ms·
> While many people assumed that television networks held on to everything they aired, that wasn’t the case. Studios were constantly erasing and recycling broad
by apo 7y ago
> While many people assumed that television networks held on to everything they aired, that wasn’t the case. Studios were constantly erasing and recycling broadcast tapes in order to save money and free up storage space.
I've heard about this happening during the early days of TV. For example, there was a lost episode of Dr. Who that finally turned up and part of the story was that most studios just re-recorded over the old stuff.
I didn't realize the practice continued into the 80s.
Are there any estimates for how much TV footage was never preserved by the networks?
- ghaff 7y agoI suspect the vast majority is long gone--and much of what isn't gone is on decaying media that isn't well catalogued in some vault someplace. The situation is better for anything that made it into wide syndication presumably but even the owners of some shows can't rebroadcast or sell on DVD/digital in their original form because they don't own the rights to music.
- wmf 7y agoI would expect scripted TV to be shot and mastered on film until ~2000 and you'd hope the negative would be stored somewhere but maybe not. It's a lot easier to imagine live TV such as news or sports not being recorded or saved. Broadcast-grade tapes probably weren't cheap.
- rabidrat 7y agoTV was not recorded on film. Older TV looks different than older film, for this reason.
- opencl 7y agoSome stuff was shot on film, some stuff was shot on videotape. Really early TV was either recorded on film or not recorded at all since video tape recorders didn't exist until the mid-50s.
- elsonrodriguez 7y agoTo add another wrinkle, some stuff was broadcast live via video and recorded to film by basically pointing a film camera at a TV. This was then used to broadcast the content in another timezone.