[78-L] Kinescopes (WAS Average Age)

[Michael Biel]

From: Randy Watts <rew1014 at yahoo.com>
> I don't know when broadcasters stopped airing kinescopes, but they were
> still being made into the 1970s. A film collector I used to know owned
> black and white kines of two early "All in the Family" episodes. Perhaps
> kinescopes retained a practical value in the days before videocassettes
> when reference copies were required. A 16mm print of a television show
> would have been easier, and more portable, to deal with than the same
> show on videotape.  Randy 

By the mid-70s the 3/4-inch U-matic was everywhere in every TV execs
office, so the kine was obsolete for checking purposes.  There may still
have been a market in the educational film library field, such as McGraw
Hill Young America Films which included a lot of CBS documentaries in
their catalog.  

The 1975 CBS program "When TV Was Young" has a great opening sequence
with Charles Kurault in a videotape room with a quad machine.  He
explains that he is the recorded Kurault because he is home watching
this like you are.  Then they remove the color because most of the shows
to be discussed were in B&W.  Then he walks over to a Kinescope Film
Recorder and we see him via a kine!  It very well might have been the
last time that kine recorder was used!!!  The scene continues with him
walking thru a huge warehouse of kines.  The rest of the show is pretty
good, too, the best analysis and summary of the years of live TV, much
better than the anniversary shows the following two years.  There is a
masterful analysis of the camera angles and blocking of one of the
scenes of Requiem For A Heavyweight.  I used to show it in broadcast
history class every year.   

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 


--- On Mon, 11/15/10, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> 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