That cartoon you refer was called "Aviation Vacation" but it had no recurring characters. There was an ending logo featuring Bugs where he says "And that's the end!" in contrast to the common ending Looney Tunes logo with Porky in it saying "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" ~Ben
Is it true Hulu's and Me-TV's prints of The Brady Bunch were sourced from the circa 1985 masters (the first videotaped masters)? I sort of think (W)TBS still used the 1975 filmed syndicated prints until the show ended its run on that station in 1997, because I remember one episode from the first season (1969-70) had a dismal-sounding Paramount Television logo at the end, and I think that deficiency was from an aging film print. Also, TBS's print of the pilot episode ("The Honeymoon") looked rather dismal in the kitchen scene, according to Sylvia Stoddard's history of The Brady Bunch ("An Outrageously Funny, Far-Out Guide to America's Favorite TV Family") the kitchen scene looked "mauve, olive, and taxicab yellow with orange and black accessories. The '60s were wild, but not quite this bilious" which reinforces my point of view. ~Ben
In the 70's when a Elvis movie air, I would sit with my Dad's GE portable cassette recorder and record the songs. It took me a few views to get the complete soundtrack to King Creole recorded due to the different edits of the movie. One edit deleted "Dixieland Rock". I remember one edits coming back from a commercial into the middle of a song!
While these are the normal closing credits to use this music, one season 2 episode of I Dream of Jeannie also used that same variation in syndication. That episode? "The Greatest Entertainer in the World." Does anyone remember exactly when the goof first turned up? I want to think that happened in mid 1980s syndication, or when Nick at Nite acquired the series in 1994. ~Ben
Ah, but then you'd miss the upcoming seasons of the Simpsons. There's still lots to enjoy in the world, and there's always beauty out there if you know where to look for it.
The whole issue of title theme replacement regarding a handful of episodes from the first season of Star Trek becomes a huge mess in the years after 1984. Why? Only about nine episodes - in production order - had the electric violin version of the main title theme, including "Where No Man Has Gone Before" which today remains the only episode to use that version both at the beginning and the end. Fred Steiner's arrangement, with cellos, is widely heard but on too many episodes. The early DVD sets used the electric violin version of the theme song but only for the opening titles (again "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the only episode to also have the related end title version), and again on too many episodes. List of known episodes with the electric violin version of the main and end title themes (NBC order): 1x01 - "The Man Trap" (9/8/1966) 1x02 - "Charlie X" (9/15/1966) 1x03 - "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (9/22/1966) 1x04 - "The Naked Time" (9/29/1966) 1x05 - "The Enemy Within" (10/6/1966) 1x06 - "Mudd's Women" (10/13/1966) 1x07 - "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (10/20/1966) 1x08 - "Miri" (10/27/1966) 1x09 - "Dagger of the Mind" (11/3/1966) The cello version first officially debuted on the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" (1x10, 11/10/1966) but on DVD and Blu-Ray the first version is substituted in the opening title by mistake. While "Balance of Terror" was filmed before the change of arrangement its late air date (1x14, 12/15/1966) meant the use of the cello version instead. Additionally, the first two episodes in broadcast order were the only ones this particular season to have a creator credit for Gene Roddenberry in the opening titles (as would be the case for all episodes in seasons two and three; here, he is only credited as a producer in the end titles), and when William Shatner's credit comes up the word "Starring" is missing. For "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in addition to it being the only episode to retain the electric violin version of the title theme at both the open and close, Shatner's famous opening monologue is also missing. ~Ben
The lines weren't missing on every episode. Some had the full song, some didn't. I remember this from seeing reruns on WGN-Channel 9 in Chicago during the 1970s, and as far as I know it continued as long as 16mm film prints were used. (Can't say for sure though, because when WFLD-Channel 32 picked up the show, they skipped the opening theme song altogether.) I'm told that edit may have originated during the time NBC carried reruns of the show on Saturday mornings (mid-to-late 1960s).
I'd bet money that when I watched the re-runs in the mid 70s on channel 5 in New York that the theme song was always shown intact, because I never remember seeing it otherwise.
If there is one episode of The Brady Bunch that sounded bad in syndication, it might be episode 11, "Vote for Brady" (12/12/1969). Why? TBS reruns of the episode pitched down the Paramount Television logo audio one semitone, while leaving the rest of the audio normal pitched. I recreated that version: The correct sounding logo was this one: Paramount Television Logo (1969-C) ยป ~Ben
How bad did they look? Granted, out of the 13 episodes I have, this is the worst, but watch the first minute and count the flashing rings. [Edit} I posted this, then I remembered, this is the second worst. One episode on the discs jumps forward a few frames, every couple of minutes. Like there was lots of film breaks.
This know-it-all Film Professor argued with me that you can't tell a good print from a bad one on Television(Granted, this was the 70s, way before Hi-Def). I was annoyed, because the difference between licensed prints of vintage films like those from UA, and dupes of "Public Domain" films was glaringly obvious to me on TV.(Some public domain copies were surprisingly good, however).
Well they did release lousy looking 16mm prints and at the time color television wasn't all that great but I think it was noticeable to anyone that could remember the 35mm prints used by the network. Honestly, when I would watch the syndication prints that played in the San Francisco Bay Area, I would ask myself "did they always look that bad"? So yeah, I'd disagree. Colors fade, dirt and grit get worse in some situations, etc.
Ask him from me how a blind and deaf person managed to become a professor at a film department. When it comes to picture and sound quality, everything matters, and there are people with the show that go to the ends of the earth making the production look and sound as good as it possibly can. Even in the 1970s, the networks were well aware that there was a huge difference between the quality of 16mm and 35mm film on television. (But at the same time, I don't dispute that plot, character, and story trump everything.) I can recall times when Universal sent a 35mm print and a 16mm backup print to NBC for live network air in the 1970s, and (for whatever reason) the 35mm print would break and they'd have to fall back to the 16mm print live on the air. The quality difference usually knocked me right out of the chair. I don't know what would happen if both prints failed. Even as late as 1978, they were not running videotape copies of film shows or movies. I think that started around 1979-1980, when 1" videotape began taking over the broadcast business. It also helped that producers and cinematographers became much hipper as to what could be done from film color correction for commercials, and would no longer accept the crappy quality of live film chain telecasts. I'm not gonna go back 200 messages and look, but I may have previously said that when it comes to bicycled 16mm syndication prints shipped to local stations, the studios almost always went to the absolute lowest bidder and had the prints made in mass quantities. I think Paramount typically used Movielab, an old film laboratory that used to be on Santa Monica & Highland (about 2 miles from the studio), which did very haphazard work. They'd take the 35mm camera negatives (OCN), strike a 35mm interpositive off of that (IP), then strike a 16mm reduction internegative off of that (IN), then make 100 or so 16mm prints from that. So what you were seeing was four generations down from the original image. The optical loss from 35mm to 16mm was massive because of the lenses involved. It didn't help that it was a crappy lab run by people who didn't care very much. The only reason they went to videotape syndication in the 1980s was that some bright bulb at Paramount realized, "hey, a 1" videotape of Star Trek or Happy Days only costs about $50... but a 16mm print of these shows costs about $200!" So it was all done for reasons of economy. Quality was also a reason, but that was low on the list.
I think for what it is.. (WE ARE WATCHING DIGITALLY REMEMBER) it looked pretty good! (Would look/sound even better in true analogue) I saw a bar on the left hand side (Overlapping of the signal I think)
I'm watching a dismal looking episode of Laramie on the NBC Western TV Legends DVD. It doesn't look like crappy videotape/pan and scan but it's still bad. Has anyone seen the Bonanza First Season DVD? How's the picture quality?
Other things to note: Yes, old syndication prints were a variable lot. And the stations with old 16mm film libraries bought and paid for years ago, tended to use them until they were used up. Also bear in mind, smaller markets were especially bad about picture quality and many a small UHF station had to deal with second and third hand equipment if not even worse, made the engineer's work that much harder keeping the station on the air let alone looking all that good. Vidiot's interesting information about what went on the business and the internecine squabbles between departments makes for very interesting reading. But back in the day, we had to live with what we could get. Growing up in Oak Ridge, TN sans cable TV, we had two channels, we had from Knoxville WBIR TV 10 (CBS) and WATE TV 6 (NBC) and ABC was on WTVK TV 26, a weak to impossible catch then if you lived in the valley down below in Oak Ridge, the folks on the hill on West Outer Drive could get with good antennas, all Knoxville stations, all Chattanooga stations, WTBS in Atlanta, and could get WLOS from Asheville, NC. When WTVK TV 26 increased their power to 5 million watts, over the air reception became possible down in the valley in Oak Ridge reliably. ABC series I usually didn't get to watch in the 1970's when new until I got my first Sony U matic 3/4" VCR in 1975 and a neighbor who worked for TV 26 who was a MCR operator would save the delayed tapes for me to watch beginning in 1975. Before that I had to wait for the second and third run syndication prints, and sometimes they looked like gawdawful train wrecks on abused old film chains. And given our market's budgets, we were lucky to get a picture. Rachael Bee can attest to that.
When I lived in Tampa in the mid-1970s and owned a Betamax (1976-77), I had cable and could receive a station from West Palm Beach, about 200 miles away. They would occasionally show what were rarities during that era, like episodes of Outer Limits that were nearly uncut, with very few commercials, at about 3 in the morning. Much to my consternation, they typically looked like what I call "Super 8 on a bedsheet," just awful, miserable quality, with some crappy film chain they had set up. For 40 years ago, this was all you could get -- long before cult shows like this came out on home video. This was a case where the syndication prints weren't too bad, but the $1.98 projector and camera the local station were using just made it looked like total crap. I wish I had kept some of those old Betamax tapes, because the picture quality had to be seen to be believed.
To me, "Bonanza" Season 1 looks really good... (But then again, I thought "The Monkees" TV series on DVD looked great too, but after reading threads on here, it seems some people thought they looked horrible and someone said they had a videotape of episodes they recorded in the 80s that looked better than what was on the DVDs!)
CBS/Paramount spent quite a bit of money remastering all the Bonanza episodes from top-quality 35mm IPs in the early 1990s, and it really looked good (all done by the staff of AME Video in Burbank). I don't know where The Monkees was gone, but I think Sony Pictures originally did it, then when they made the deal with Rhino, Rhino redid it. It's possible Rhino redid them cheap and the quality didn't measure up to the 1980s mastering. To me, it's more about the people you hire -- plus how much time they take to do the job -- that affects the final quality. Rhino/Shout Factory is not known for doing video mastering very well, and on the rare occasions their stuff looks good, generally what happened is they wound up buying an existing master done by somebody else.
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but what do you guys think of the picture quality of the Get Smart DVD set, the seasons shot in color? I don't like it. The skin tones are quite on the pink side for one thing...
FamilyNet uses these same prints that Antenna TV uses as Sony still has the syndication rights to the show and they don't own the masters, Rhino does.
