Did Syndication Prints really look this bad?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by goodiesguy, Jun 13, 2013.

  1. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Speaking of old Syndication prints, here's one for The Fugitive. It's part 1 of the series finale.

    Unlike the 80's/90's prints from Worldvision, these ones weren't time-sped at all. Instead, they were chopped up quite a bit.

     
  2. Steve Carras

    Steve Carras Golden Retriever

    Location:
    Norco, CA, USA
    And unlike the 1968 ones, you can see the original title like in pic posted!
     
  3. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    Now I understand what you're talking about: it is indeed not the post-production firms themselves, but rather specific telecine machines (or, as you mention, the telecine operators) they were using to process these prints to videotape before giving them back to Paramount to re-sell to the numerous TV stations nationwide. This would really explain the minor differences in the logo.

    I would guess they took the basic 1975 (or 1982) Paramount Television logo that existed on a 35mm filmreel, and then used the telecine machine (cf. Rank Cintel Mk. III) to copy/transfer it to videotape. Some of the telecine machines produced better results than others. Thus, in the case of both Solid Gold and Madame's Place in 1982, the two respective post-production houses (Compact Video and Complete Post) just might have been using the same telecine machine.

    ~Ben
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's true, but no two Ranks were ever the same. And different people set the machine up differently and approach color-correction differently. I worked differently in the 1980s than I did in the 1990s, and I work much differently today than I did 10-15 years ago. Things change, but the goal is the same.

    I have seen terrible problems when different colorists drove right off the road in making a show look completely different than previous episodes, to the point where they had to be redone. Getting things consistent was a nightmare. But it was also a problem for film labs, where color went sideways all the time, even week to week.
     
  5. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    A_I had Pathe-Tic color due to Pathe-Tic-ally low budgets to work with also. They were the Mad Dog 20/20 of movie studios in their era. Low budget cheapie drive in fodder.
     
    Steve Carras likes this.
  6. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    Edited with a Stihl Farm Boss chainsaw! Scratched, faded, juddery, chopped, screwed, mutilated, and also with a film chain with a worn out camera tube, and acquired 4th hand and doing it's last at a 5th rate, backwoods, UHF independent station held together by Scotch tape, bailing wire, and where the employees set land speed records to the bank to cash their paychecks. Owned by the FUBAR Rural Television Company, a division of Hillbilly Broadcasting, Inc. We proudly use the most abused, cheapest, 10th hand equipment we can find, one failure short of the scrap metal yard.
     
  7. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US


    Referring back to this video comp I made, I would have to say that at least the first two logos are probably the most natural looking, and that number 3 was probably too bright.

    According to CLG (Closing Logo Group) posts, the 4th logo included here starts and ends as a still logo, as the film clip only rolls while the word "Television" goes in under "Paramount," but I am unsure of if the freezing bits were intentional or not.

    ~Ben
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
    bmasters9 likes this.
  8. MarkTheShark

    MarkTheShark Senior Member

    Speaking of which...back in the 1970s, when there weren't a hundred channels, there was sort of a "hierarchy" (even if it was just in my own mind) among our local TV stations. WGN-Channel 9 was the main one, they had the Cubs and did a lot of local production. (In fact, when I was a kid, when I saw something either live or on video -- as opposed to film -- I would say it "looks like Channel 9.")

    WFLD-Channel 32 was the next step down the ladder. That was where reruns of shows and movies went when Channel 9 was finished with them, or they weren't good enough to be on Channel 9. (Again, all of this was unspoken, and just my own perceptions at the time.)

    Then there was WSNS-Channel 44. This was the last stop for the unloved, obsolete old reruns before they were retired from circulation. At least in our house, Channel 44 always came in a little fuzzier than the other UHF stations. But beyond this, my memory is with all other things being equal, they also tended to have lousier film print quality than the other stations -- they'd run stuff that was scratchy, choppy and splicy, that seemed like WGN and WFLD would have rejected those prints as being too substandard, even for reruns on a local TV station.

    Am I on to something here? Could a low-budget TV station save money by settling for less than top-of-the line film prints which had been through the wringer?
     
  9. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    WFLD and the other Field Communications-owned TV stations were also notorious for removing the closing logos from many shows up to the mid 1980s.

    ~Ben
     
    McLover likes this.
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There's a Closing Logo Group? :eek:

    Sometimes with graphics, there was a tendency in the 1980s and 1990s to freeze the non-moving sections to eliminate the side-to-side weave that was inherent in 35mm film print technology back then. We'd freeze the image, then "unfreeze" it when it started moving, then freeze it again when it stopped moving. The problem with doing that is that the grain also froze, so it looks unnatural and weird. Now, we're a lot more sophisticated in the way we fix stuff like that. We have the ability to stabilize images without affecting grain, so now the titles can have no image weave if we take the time to do that. I'll do it when time is available, but often it's a hopeless task if the film is damaged or has other issues.
     
  11. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    Closing Logos Group Wiki Home Page - CLG Wiki

    Very interesting about the way the last version of the Paramount Television "Blue Mountain" logo was done. This is where I got some of the info about the Paramount logos:
    Paramount Television (CBS) - CLG Wiki

    ~Ben
     
    bmasters9 likes this.
  12. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    No, but the low end stations often got programming on "Barter" for commercial inventory. And sometimes those stations got old prints on programming which served to fill time, and often shows which were rock bottom. And had been ran multiple times elsewhere. Also remember, many of these low budget UHF independents were using well used, and abused equipment and often third, fourth, or more hand as those were low budget operations running on a shoestring. Small markets in the day got by on much lower budgets and a lot of used equipment in the day.
     
  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    KDOC-TV, channel 52 in the 1980s, was actually using S-VHS on the air, which I thought was appalling. It'd kinda be like running a radio station playing 8-track tapes on the air. :eek:
     
    Scowl, jdicarlo, McLover and 2 others like this.
  14. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    A lot of times I think these shows would serve as filler during sports rain delays. I kind of miss those days (before most major sports went to cable) because the stations would sometimes show some really great or obscure sitcoms or something.
     
    McLover and MarkTheShark like this.
  15. MarkTheShark

    MarkTheShark Senior Member

    I remember "Hogan's Heroes" popping up on WGN-Channel 9 a lot when a Cubs game either got rained out or didn't last as long as expected.

    When the White Sox got rain-delayed, WSNS-Channel 44 would run these old 16mm baseball films as filler. I'm thinking I also probably saw some of those on Disco Demolition night.
     
    jdicarlo, Steve Litos and McLover like this.
  16. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    A lot of these old, bottom rung films got ran during baseball rain delays on such bottom rung stations. Sometimes, they'd even run industrial films or whatever they could get for free or cheap. And upper end stations would run something from their better film library.
     
    Vidiot likes this.
  17. JQW

    JQW Forum Resident

    A similar thing happened here in the UK with the smaller ITV stations at certain times of the year. Although ITV went on air at 9:25am every weekday, all franchise holders carried networked schools programming until midday on most weekdays of the year. However during school holidays they had to fend for themselves to fill up the schedule. My then local franchise, Tyne Tees Televsion (named after two of the three major rivers in the region) was fairly small, and pulled in a whole host of somewhat random programming to fill up their schedules, not even bothering to show commercials as the audience was so low.

    We got a whole mish-mash of externally created content - imports from the US and Canada (such as Sesame Street and The Beachcombers), old cartoons (the Beatles ones popped up a lot), and content originally created by other ITV regions on subjects as diverse as folk music, country crafts, oil painting and gardening. Occasionally there was also a promotional film from a public body, such as a documentary on an old castle produced by the National Trust. They also took in the odd live cricket match from another ITV region - every time I caught it the game was postponed due to heavy rain, and something else put in its place. Naturally these schedules were never published in the official listings magazine or the daily newspapers.

    I'm certain that the ITV regions simply traded old shows between each other to fill up space - there's rumours of footage of Nick Drake performing on a Granada arts show (Granada was the region covering Manchester and Liverpool) turning up in another region a few years after its original broadcasr. Once schools content got moved to Channel 4 in the late 1980s, the entire network adopted a proper weekday schedule, and content like this was relegated to late nights or emergency schedule fillers.
     
    jdicarlo, McLover and bmasters9 like this.
  18. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    Ah yes. baseball game delays!! I remember Chanel 9 here in NY showing beat up prints of The Bowery Boys during Mets game rain delays. Some were in REALLY bad shape. But you know, when youre 11, sitting at home on a rainy Saturday watching The Bowery Boys, it all seemed ok.
     
  19. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I recall watching WHYY-TV 12 in Wilmington/Philadelphia and catching them running a LaserDisc movie live on air. I could tell because at the side break of the movie the telltale "Side B" showed up. I seem to recall it being a movie that had recently been issued in widescreen on LaserDisc and rather than run the standard 4:3 issue, they probably wanted to impress by running it in letterbox widescreen.
     
    stereoguy likes this.
  20. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    I have a question about The Andy Griffith Show's 5th season (the last in black and white), when in syndication since the 1970s: is it true that a monochrome version of the season 6-8 opening title was used instead of the season 2-4 opening title? The reason being, is that when I remember watching this series on (W)TBS, WGN and TV Land, the season 5 episodes are using the low-pitch theme tune (first used in the closing credits starting with season 2) from seasons 6-8 (with no announcer).

    ~Ben
     
  21. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Hey, great! I would take that over a lousy 4x3 print any day. :)
     
    Frittenköter likes this.
  22. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    While Star Trek (TOS) had been remastered in stereo sound since the 2006 remasters, I cannot help but wonder if the new 1" videotaped syndication prints first seen in 1984 could've been subject to the same stereo sound treatment Paramount Television had used on most of its new and returning shows starting with the 1984-85 season (Cheers, Solid Gold and others)?

    ~Ben
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2018
    chilinvilin likes this.
  23. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US


    It would appear season 1 of the original 1970-75 version of The Odd Couple had changed opening credits quite a few times. Besides the later version used on the last 9 episodes that first season (1970-71) that introduced us to this quote...
    ... it would appear the original version of the intro w/o the narration was actually shortened on a couple of the first 15 S1 episodes. Some of these first 15 episodes also said Neil Simon's The Odd Couple but the playwright himself requested his credit be removed from the series title because he had no involvement whatsoever in the TV version, instead getting a separate credit saying "Based on the Play 'The Odd Couple' by Neil Simon." He would, however, appear in a cameo role on one episode after having enjoyed the success of the series' first two seasons.

    ~Ben
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2018
    apesfan likes this.
  24. antoniod

    antoniod Forum Resident

    Ch. 56 in Boston!
     
    jdicarlo likes this.
  25. Benjamin Edge

    Benjamin Edge Forum Resident

    Location:
    Milwaukie, OR, US
    While stereo sound had been the buzzword for most new and returning TV shows (both network and first-run syndication) starting with the 1984-85 season, I wonder if any off-network shows in syndication (cf. Gunsmoke, M*A*S*H and others) ever got their prints upgraded around the same time to have that?

    ~Ben
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine