Lost TV shows

There's a rumor that Reg Grundy Productions (the American division of of the Australian Grundy Organisation) ordered NBC to destroy the Daytime tapes of Sale of the Century, hence why the only episodes reran were August 1988-March 1989 and the entire January 1985-May 1986 Syndication run.

Unfortunately, it is always up to the production company to decide what to do with their programs. Merv Griffin Enterprises ordered NBC to destroy the daytime tapes of Wheel of Fortune, and continued to do so until mid-1985.

 

I figured the Volume 1 subtitle was wishful thinking.

 

I hope someone saved a few episodes of that great '70s game show 'Diamond Head'... I saw a lot of vintage Beat The Clocks and Tell The Truths on the Game Show channel when we had Comcast satellite in Alaska. They were always showing '70s-'80s Match Games too, even the Ross Schaffer ones.

 

At the end of 1978, when the inventory of the BBC was accounted for (including the Film and Videotape Library and BBC Enterprises), along with the British Film Institute, there were 137 episodes still missing. Had they started their inventory just six years earlier, they would have found nearly every episode still existing on 16mm film at BBC enterprises. But the good news is that had they not acted when they did in 1978, a whole pile of episodes (including the first Dalek story) would have been destroyed in a matter of days.

For the Jon Pertwee era, 69 of the episodes exist as original master tapes (or film, in the case of Spearhead From Space). The remaining 59 episodes had their master tapes wiped, but the color was recovered from a number of sources, including tapes sold overseas, home recorded copies, chroma dot recovery, and manual color restoration.

If one is interested in the history of missing Doctor Who episodes, there is a wonderfully detailed website devoted to the topic here: THE DESTRUCTION OF TIME

 

Correction to the above: In addition to the 10 episodes, there's an eleventh episode included as a bonus feature.

 

I consider the "Volume 1" subtitle as hopeful thinking since there is still a chance that some more episodes are out there (the DVD features a request to anyone who has episodes of the series). The episodes in the collection came from collectors who had films of the episodes (according to Wikipedia the original films were destroyed in an earthquake) and I think that the reason the extra episode was included as a bonus feature rather than a regular episode is that it came from a lower quality source (to me it looked like it came from video tape [I have the episode and one other on a two-episode video tape collection]). The DVD also features a photo gallery and it looks like it features photos from some of the missing episodes.

 

Only one episode of the 60s serial DARK SHADOWS remains lost. That's a pretty good percentage given that there were 1225 episodes. They've gotten a fan-recorded audio of the episode, but the video is gone.

 

A damn shame, just imagine if the entire series had been done in color:

 

Its actually 11 of the 26 that are known to exist and on the DVD set. By all accounts, Jack Chertok had the 35s and negatives destroyed. That doesn't mean that there aren't any 16mm prints out there yet to be found. Not likely but you never know.

 

Not exactly. Channel 38 in Boston, the Bruins station, recorded the CBS broadcast and saved the goal and likely a big chunk of the game. CBS didn't save anything from their 5 years of covering the NHL.

 

Gibbsville.
United States (Larry Gelbart)

 

Julie Newmar

 

Peter Cook tried to do the same thing with Not Only... But Also and basically got told to bugger off!

 

Benny Hill did a sitcom in 1961/62 on the BBC simply titled 'Benny Hill' with a different story each week. Out of 19 episodes (roughly 3 Series), only 2 exist (and only one has come to light on the internet).

Very little pre 1961 material survives either BBC wise, although the specials he did for Lew Grade's ATV still appear to survive (with the earliest going back to 1957, probably the earliest complete show, though some BBC fragments appear to exist from 1956 if going by the 2003 'Living Famously' BBC documentary).

Incidentally it seems a similar situation with radio. They're currently playing his 1964/1966 radio series 'Benny Hill Time' on BBC Radio 4, and quite a few sound like they're probably either off air copies or from transcription discs (not including the 4 released on Cassette in 1995, and what is either the first or fifth edition, I'm unsure atm, with an early version of 'The Minstrel Boy' sketch)

 

How about some of The Brady Bunch related and spinoff shows? And the classic seasons of Whose Line Is It Anyway.

 

The two I'm the most curious about are the Spike Jones 15-minute shows, and Ernie Kovacs. Weren't both partially salvaged by their wives/widows?

 

I can't say that I am in mourning over the loss of game shows and failed 60s sitcoms. I do scour YouTube for ephemera like old news broadcasts and documentaries. Something frivolous like the USA version of TW3 would pique my interest. I wish there were more episodes of the CBS 20th Century series available; I suspect they will surface some day.

 

A series they used to show on the ABC (Australia) on Saturday nights at 5.30PM was The World of Beachcomber starring Spike Milligan. I've seen the soundtrack but the show seems to be completely lost.

 

Neither are lost. In fact, both had rerun during the taping era.

 

Why would you think any of those shows don't exist?

 

The producer of TW3, Leland Hayward, was offered the tapes and since they were topical he felt they wouldn't have any rerun value and told NBC he wasn't interested. A few survive and are at the Paley Center, including color tape on the final show.

 

I might be confusing this with another story but I recall reading something about this and one of the reasons they gave him was that they didn't have the paper work to be able to facilitate that request. Red tape got in the way!

 

According to wikipedia, "Reportedly 102 out of the 127 episode Kinescopes of Mister Peepers survive". This is a show that was popular for a time, enough that it went into daily syndication as the kinescope films.

 

Mr. Peepers was attempted in syndication but there weren't enough stations interested for sales to proceed.

 

Mister Peepers - Wikipedia

DVD release
In 2005, the first 26 episodes of Mister Peepers, which had been preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, were released on DVD by S'more Entertainment. In November 2008, the second boxed set of Mister Peepers was released by S'more Entertainment. The tagline at the bottom of the box reads: "America's Favorite Science Teacher, Underdog and All-Round Nice Guy." The Underdog comment 'coyly' references Cox's later role as the voice of the title character in the Underdog cartoon.

Mister Peepers began as a summer replacement series in 1952 for the Ford Motor Company on Thursday nights. After becoming popular, it returned to the airwaves in late October of that same year to replace a floundering new Sunday evening sitcom named Doc Corkle by its sponsor, the Reynolds Metals Company. The first DVD set, titled simply Mr. Peepers, contains the 1952 summer episodes as well as those from October 1952 to March 1953 partway through the first season. The "Mister Peepers - Season 2" DVD sets picks up chronologically where the first left off, containing episodes from the remainder of the first season and part of the second season, from March 1953 to November 1953.