[78-L] Kinescopes (WAS Average Age)

[David Lennick]

Kines existed later than we might think. I can remember watching Ernie Kovacs 
on (most likely) Channel 7 in Buffalo in the early 60s and the quality was 
horrible..it was still coming to them on kinescope. And the CBC was late to get 
videotape..Ed Sullivan taped a special piece to run on the Wayne & Shuster show 
up here, after their early successes on his show, and sent it to Toronto (my 
mother may actually have been the mule). The Corpse had to find somebody to 
transfer it to FILLUM so they could run it live. Needless to say, it looked awful.

Hey, I regularly write about things I know nothing about.

dl

On 11/15/2010 9:57 AM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> I am actually astonished how many of these kinescopes still exist. When I
> was learning about the history of television when I was in my teens, I heard
> all sorts of horror stories about such shows having been destroyed. My
> father once passed by a dumpster on Columbus Avenue where he saw reels of
> 16MM film thrown in. He actually tried to grab a few of them for me (I was
> about eight at the time), but they were a real mess according to him. It was
> many years later that I figured that these were probably TV programs.
>
> We know about Gleason's collection; the Honeymooners segments were
> eventually released on home video. The real story was that Milton Berle had
> a collection of his Texaco shows that he'd stored (I distinctly remember him
> guesting on Tom Snyder's show where he insisted he had none of his own
> shows). A pity they aren't available.
>
> BTW, does anyone have the DVD collection of the Goldbergs TV shows? UCLA did
> a fabulous job.
>
> Jeff Sultanof
>
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Robert M. Bratcher Jr.<
> rbratcherjr at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>
>> Many Kines wound up on the used 16mm film collectors market. I see some on
>> Ebay
>> from time to time along with all the other TV shows on 16mm film.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Michael Biel<mbiel at mbiel.com>
>> To: 78-L Mail List<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>> Sent: Mon, November 15, 2010 12:50:47 AM
>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Kinescopes (WAS Average Age)
>>
>> Steve --
>>
>> Once again you are writing about things you know nothing about, and
>> consider that if you know nothing about it that means that it doesn't
>> exist.  There ARE "organized effort[s] to collect and organize extant
>> TV-program "home" recordings".  Some of this was discussed at IASA/AMIA
>> in Phila last week.  (And NOBODY here wants you to give your usual sob
>> story about not being able to afford bus fare to attend these
>> conference, so DON'T MENTION IT.)
>>
>> Live TV programs were captured on Kinescope Film Recordings routinely in
>> 1948 and there were some examples in 1947.  ALL live network TV programs
>> were kinescoped by 1949 because there were many stations that were not
>> wireline connected to the networks and had to get ALL their network
>> programming by kinescope films or regular films for those programs which
>> were filmed (like I Love Lucy).  While the majority of these kines have
>> been destroyed, perhaps a hundred thousand still exist, and there is the
>> possibility of ANY network program from 1948 thru 1956 existing.
>>
>> Once videotape came in, some programs were not put on kine, and because
>> of the lack of interchangability of tapes among machines between 1956
>> and 1961, most were erased.  There were people as early as 1962 or 63
>> using "home" videotape recorders, and Hugh Hefner's archive of thousands
>> of reels hopefully are still being maintained.  (2-inch helical Ampex
>> 660.)  RCA had successful videotape experiments back in 1954 and it was
>> even used on the air a few times.  (1/2-inch 120 IPS.)  Jack Paar
>> jeryrigged a 16mm camera to record home kinescope films in the 1950s.
>> Some of his TV retrospectives and DVDs come off of these homemade films.
>>
>>
>> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> __________________________________