Lost television broadcast
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Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives) usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect.


Common reasons for loss

A significant proportion of early television programming was never recorded in the first place. Early broadcasting in all genres was live and sometimes performed repeatedly. Due to there being no means to record the broadcast or, later, because the content itself was thought to have little monetary or historical value it was not deemed necessary to save it. In the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, early programming was lost due to contractual demands by the actors' union to limit the rescreening of performances. Apart from
Phonovision Phonovision is a proof of concept format and experiment for recording a mechanical television signal on gramophone records. The format was developed in the late 1920s in London by Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird. The objective was ...
experiments by
John Logie Baird John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly dem ...
, and some 280 rolls of 35mm film containing some of Paul Nipkow television station broadcasts, no recordings of transmissions from 1939 or earlier are known to exist. In 1947,
Kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s (preserving the image on a monitor via an adapted cinematic film camera) became a practical method of recording broadcasts, but programs were only sporadically preserved by these means. Tele-snaps of British television broadcasts also began in 1947 but are necessarily incomplete. Magnetic
videotape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videoca ...
technologies became a viable method to record material in 1956 in the US via the cumbersome Quadruplex system using 2-inch wide tapes. Televised programming (especially that which was not considered viable for
rerun A rerun or repeat is a rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program. There are two types of reruns – those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Variations In the United Kingdom, the word ...
s) was still considered disposable. What was recorded was routinely destroyed by wiping and reusing the tapes. The home video industry only developed from the late 1970s providing a new outlet for release. The ability for home viewers to record programming was extremely limited before videotape; although a home viewer could record the video of a broadcast onto
8 mm film 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...
throughout television history or record the audio of a broadcast onto audiotape beginning in the 1950s, one could generally not capture both on the same medium until
super-8 Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format. The film is nominally 8 mm wide, the same as older formatted 8& ...
debuted in the 1960s. Home movies of this kind are exceptionally rare. Audio recordings are more common and numerous copies of otherwise lost television broadcasts exist.


Wiping

Wiping, also known as junking, is a colloquial term for action taken by
radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30  hertz (Hz) and 300  gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...
and
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes,
videotape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videoca ...
s, and kinescopes (
telerecording Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...
s), are erased and reused, or destroyed. Although the practice was once very common, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, wiping is now much less frequent. Older video and audio formats were expensive (relative to the amount of material that could be stored) and took up much more storage space, than modern digital video or audio files, making retention costly. There was more incentive to recycle the media for reuse or (in the case of film media) any silver content than to preserve the content. This increased the incentive to discard existing broadcast material to recover storage space and material for newer programs. The advent of domestic audiovisual playback technology (e.g., videocassette and DVD, and particularly with the rise of digital media in the 1990s) has made wiping less beneficial, as the cost of producing and maintaining copies of telecasts dropped dramatically. In addition, broadcasters also later realized how much commercial potential from home video,
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
, and online streaming usage of their archived material was possible and that served as a strong economic incentive to preserve all recordings. Over time this came to include scenes not originally broadcast due to time constraints and outtakes not originally used whether due to mistakes on the part of cast or crew or for some other reason – once producers and distributors realized there was significant demand for such content especially from devoted fans of their programs, they preserved the content to be marketed later (especially on home video releases). To the extent that wiping still exists, it is primarily used when it is deemed necessary for content to be irrevocably expunged for legal or ethical reasons (such as when there is concern the content might be illicitly obtained and/or used for unlawful and/or inappropriate purposes), or alternatively to erase
ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...
l content with little to no intrinsic value.


Australia

Like most other countries, only a small portion of the early decades of Australian TV programming has survived. Many economic, technical, social and regulatory forces combined to prevent large-scale preservation of Australian programs from this period, and also contributed to the later destruction of most of what was recorded at the time. There was, and is, no regulatory requirement to lodge copies of programs with an archive authority such as the
National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "maint ...
. In the first decade of Australian TV, 1956–1966, Australia produced very little original local drama content, compared to other English-speaking nations. From the introduction of TV in Australia in 1956 to around 1964, the commercial stations did produce their own programmes, but the majority of locally produced original programming was made by the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission. By June 1964, the ABC had produced 185 of the 212 plays, all 31 operas, and 90 of the 95 ballets shown on Australian TV in that period. Some of this was recorded, but little of that material has survived. One of the best-known and most often seen surviving recordings from this period is the footage that purports to be the recording of the inaugural broadcast of TCN-9 Sydney on 16 September 1956, but this is in fact a fabrication – the actual broadcast was not recorded at the time, so the station restaged it some days later, for archival and promotional purposes. In this early period, the technology then available to pre-record television programs, or to record live broadcasts off-air, was relatively primitive. Although Australia introduced TV rather later (1956) than other nations like the USA, the use of videotape did not become widespread in the Australian industry until the early 1960s, so only a small number of episodes from the earliest period have survived. Nearly all of that material exists as
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s. Although many important ABC programs from these early days were captured as kinescopes, most of this material was later lost or destroyed. In a 1999 newspaper article on the subject, author Bob Ellis recounted the story of a large collection of kinescopes of early ABC drama productions, and other programs, including some of the first Australian TV Shakespeare productions, and the pioneering popular music show ''
Six O'Clock Rock ''Six O'Clock Rock'' was an Australian rock and roll television show broadcast on ABC from 28 February 1959 to 1962 at 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Program synopsis Inspired by the BBC program '' 6.5 Special'', it had a similar format to its riv ...
''. Learning that the ABC planned to dispose of these recordings, Bruce Beresford (then a production assistant at the ABC), arranged for a friend to pose as a silver nitrate dealer, and the anonymous collector purchased the films for a nominal cost. Subsequently, the collector occasionally rented some of the films out to schools for a small fee, but the daughter of one of the actors involved (
Owen Weingott Owen Ash Weingott (21 June 1921 – 12 October 2002) was an Australian actor, director and drama teacher. Although primarily working in theatre, he appeared on radio and television in serials and made for television films and voice overs. Weingo ...
) recognised her father from a Shakespeare production, and told him about it. Assuming that the ABC still owned the print and was making money out of these recordings without compensating the actors, Weingott lodged an official complaint. Commonwealth police descended on the illegal collector, but he was warned that they were coming, and in a panic he destroyed almost all the material he possessed. Well into the 1970s, it was still common for news, current affairs, sports coverage, game shows, talk/panel shows, infotainment programs and variety shows to be broadcast live, and these were usually not recorded. In this early period, recording and editing TV shows on videotape was expensive and time-consuming, and because of the comparatively lower cost, and the high level of skill available to Australian TV networks in live broadcasting, and the lack of any market for such recordings, pre-recording or archiving of most day-to-day TV content was considered unnecessary and uneconomical. Although some news and other programming from this period has survived, most of what is still extant is material that was captured on film (such as actuality footage, interviews, press conferences, etc., recorded for news stories). Another factor, common to all countries, was that before domestic video technology was introduced in the 1970s, there was generally no economic motive for Australian TV to make or keep recordings of most TV shows, except in the case of pre-produced mainstream documentary, comedy or drama programs that could be sold to other stations in Australia, or to broadcasters overseas (e.g. '' Skippy The Bush Kangaroo''). Likewise, virtually no private recordings exist of Australian TV material produced before domestic video was introduced, because viewers had no practical means to record programs off-air. Before reliable, high-quality inter-city cable and satellite links were established, some Australian programs of the 1960s were routinely videotaped, usually for distribution to affiliate stations in other states – like the popular '' In Melbourne Tonight'' with Graham Kennedy – but the vast majority of these program tapes were later erased, or simply destroyed. Even after videotape was well-established in Australian TV production, the practice of erasing and reusing tapes was common in both commercial TV and the ABC, and this continued well into the 1970s. Only a very small portion surviving of the many thousands of hours of videotaped programming made during the 1960s and early 1970s survives. The majority of ABC-TV's mainstream original content (including comedy, drama, variety, news and current affairs) was produced in-house; consequently these programs all suffered considerable losses due to the corporation's policy of reusing videotape – a practice further exacerbated by budget cuts in the 1970s. In one notorious case, a controversial installment of the 1970s ABC comedy series ''
The Off Show ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'' (the infamous "Leave It To Jesus" episode) was lost because the show's producer vehemently objected to its religious satire, and deliberately erased the master tape the night before it was due to be broadcast. Notable losses include: * most of the 1969–1971 episodes of the ABC's weekly current affairs discussion show '' Monday Conference''; * '' This Day Tonight'' (ABC TV's groundbreaking nightly current affairs show) – most of the in-studio segments and other pre-recorded video segments were later wiped, although a small proportion of recorded reports survive because it was still common at the time (late 1960s-early 1970s) that location footage for feature stories was shot and edited on film before transfer to video for broadcast, so some of these film sources have survived. * the vast majority of episodes the numerous Australian TV pop shows that flourished in the 1960s and early 1970s (many of which emanated from Channel 0 in Melbourne) including ''
The Go!! Show ''The Go!! Show'' (also known simply as ''Go!!'') was an Australian popular music television series which aired on ATV-0, Melbourne, from August 1964 to August 1967. It was produced by DYT Productions at the ATV-0 studios in Nunawading, Vict ...
, ''
Kommotion ''Kommotion'' was a popular Australian "Top 40" pop music TV show that premiered in December 1964. The program was hosted by popular disc jockey Ken Sparkes, who was one of the main presenters at Melbourne pop radio station 3UZ. In 1965, after ...
'', Uptight'' and the'' 'Happening 70 / 71 / 72' series'' * many episodes of the pioneering
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
n
prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...
'' Number 96'', despite the fact that it was independently produced in-house for the 0–10 Network. All the episodes from the first 12 months (1969–1970) of the ABC's music magazine series '' GTK'' are now lost. The majority of the material recorded for the post-1970 episodes was rediscovered in ABC archives and storerooms in the early 2000s, when the ABC closed and sold off its Gore Hill,
Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
studio complex. This is due to most of the ''GTK'' program segments being recorded on film (in an older part of the studio complex) and then transferred to video for broadcast. Although many broadcast masters were wiped, many more were rescued and hidden by the program's later producer, Bernie Cannon, and nearly all the post-1970 filmed segments, including the archive of live-in-studio performances by local bands, have survived. Other shows suddenly missing from the archives include most of the first three years' of ''
Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and ev ...
'' (episodes beyond 1978 of ''Countdown'' have survived in this manner), nearly all of the hundreds of 15-minute episodes of the ABC's popular soap '' Bellbird'', two thirds of all the taped 166 episodes from the ABC's '' Certain Women'', and a large proportion of the Ten Network's hugely popular '' Young Talent Time'' from the 1971–1976 era. Much of the early years of Nine's then-Saturday Morning children's program ''
Hey Hey it's Saturday ''Hey Hey It's Saturday'' was a long-running variety television program on Australian television. It initially ran for 28 years on the Nine Network from 9 October 1971 to 20 November 1999, with a recess in 1978. Its host throughout its entire ...
'' was unrecorded, and many episodes recorded in the early 1970s have since been erased. Some programs or segments of programs from the mid 1970s onwards have been retrieved from people's
home taping "Home Taping Is Killing Music" was the slogan of a 1980s anti- copyright infringement propaganda campaign by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a British music industry trade group. With the rise in cassette recorder popularity, the BPI fe ...
shows off-air (portions of ''Young Talent Time'' and ''Countdown'' have survived in this manner). No footage is known to exist of the Melbourne version of ''Tell the Truth''. General lack of repeats of 1950s and 1960s Australian series makes it difficult to know what is extant and what is lost. For example, there is no information available as to whether any episodes still exist of '' Take That'' (1957–1959), sometimes considered to the first Australian television sitcom. Information on archival status is also lacking for other 1950s-era series like ''
The Isador Goodman Show ''The Isador Goodman Show'' is an early Australian television variety series. The series debuted on 6 November 1956 and ran into early September 1957, aired on Melbourne station HSV-7 and starred pianist Isador Goodman, with some episodes also f ...
'' (1956–1957), ''
It Pays to Be Funny ''It Pays to Be Funny'' was an Australian television comedy game show. In Sydney it aired on station ATN-7, while in Melbourne it aired on GTV-9 (at the time, the two stations were known for sharing some programs, as this was prior to the formati ...
'' (1957–1958), '' Sweet and Low'' (1959), among others. Some of the best-known survivors of this period are comedy or drama series commissioned and broadcast by the ABC's commercial rivals. Frequently, these were outsourced productions made by private companies, such as the many drama series made by Melbourne-based Crawford Productions (a production brand of WIN Television), which at its peak in the 1970s had major primetime series running concurrently on all three Australian commercial networks. Crawfords retained the rights to its productions, and was able to earn money from reruns, so most of its production output was preserved. Crawford is now unique in Australian TV history because it still owns and markets a comprehensive archive of all its major productions from the 1960s and beyond, including ''
Homicide Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
'', '' Division 4'', '' Matlock Police'', and ''
The Sullivans ''The Sullivans'' is an Australian period drama television series produced by Crawford Productions which ran on the Nine Network from 15 November 1976 until 10 March 1983. The series tells the story of a fictional average middle-cla ...
''. The
National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national co ...
holdings of 1950s era shows include several episodes of the 1957 discussion series '' Leave it to the Girls'', most of the 1958–1959 soap opera ''
Autumn Affair ''Autumn Affair'' is an Australian television series made by and aired by Network Seven station ATN-7, and also shown in Melbourne on Nine Network station GTV-9. Television in Australia had only been broadcasting since 1956 and Seven was the fir ...
'', and a number of episodes of the comedy game show ''
The Pressure Pak Show ''The Pressure Pak Show'' is an Australian television game show. It first aired from 1957 to 1958 on ATN-7 in Sydney and GTV-9 in Melbourne. It was hosted by Jack Davey, who also hosted '' The Dulux Show'' and '' Give it a Go''. The program was ...
''. These shows, produced by ATN-7 in Sydney, probably survive because they were pre-recorded for the purpose of interstate broadcast (''Autumn Affair'', despite primitive production values, was repeated into the 1960s).


ABC

The
Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owne ...
(ABC) erased much of its early produced output. Much of the videotaped ABC programme material from the 1960s and early 1970s was erased as part of an economy policy instituted in the late 1970s in which old programme tapes were surrendered for bulk erasure and reuse. This policy particularly targeted older programmes recorded in black-and-white, leading to the loss of many recordings made before early 1976, when the real reason is that Australian television converted to colour. The ABC continued erasing older television output until the late 1970s. Programmes known to have been produced then lost include most studio segments and stories from the 1960s current affairs shows '' This Day Tonight'' and ''Monday Conference'', hundreds of episodes of the long-running rural serial '' Bellbird'', all but a handful of episodes of the early-1970s drama series '' Certain Women'', an early-1970s miniseries of dramatizations based on
Norman Lindsay Norman Alfred William Lindsay (22 February 1879 – 21 November 1969) was an Australian artist, etcher, sculptor, writer, art critic, novelist, cartoonist and amateur boxer. One of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generat ...
's novels, and nearly all of the pre-1978 episodes of the weekly pop-music show ''
Countdown A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and ev ...
''.


Network Ten

Many produced episodes of popular Australian commercial TV series are also lost. In the 1970s,
Network Ten Network 10 (commonly known as Ten Network, Channel 10 or simply 10) is an Australian commercial television network owned by Ten Network Holdings, a division of the Paramount Networks UK & Australia subsidiary of Paramount Global. One of fiv ...
had an official policy to reuse tapes; hence, many tapes of '' Young Talent Time'' and '' Number 96'' were wiped. To this day, Network Ten still only keeps some of its programming. Other notable losses from the Ten archive include hundreds of episodes of the Melbourne-based pop music shows commissioned and broadcast by ATV-0 Melbourne in the 1960s and early 1970s—''
The Go!! Show ''The Go!! Show'' (also known simply as ''Go!!'') was an Australian popular music television series which aired on ATV-0, Melbourne, from August 1964 to August 1967. It was produced by DYT Productions at the ATV-0 studios in Nunawading, Vict ...
'' (1964–1967), ''Kommotion'' (1964–1967), ''Uptight'' (1968–70), and the ''Happening 70s'' series (1970–1972).


Nine Network

The
Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...
discarded copies of some of their programs, including the popular GTV-9 series '' In Melbourne Tonight'' starring Graham Kennedy. Though it ran five nights a week from 1957 to 1970, fewer than 100 episodes are known to survive, and many of the surviving episodes are edited prints made for rebroadcast across Australia. Early episodes of breakfast show ''
Hey Hey It's Saturday ''Hey Hey It's Saturday'' was a long-running variety television program on Australian television. It initially ran for 28 years on the Nine Network from 9 October 1971 to 20 November 1999, with a recess in 1978. Its host throughout its entire ...
'' do not exist because the programme was broadcast live and did not begin live videotape recordings until a number of years later.


Bangladesh

From 1964 to 1967, all TV programs were recorded on film in what was then
East Pakistan East Pakistan was a Pakistani province established in 1955 by the One Unit Policy, renaming the province as such from East Bengal, which, in modern times, is split between India and Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Myanmar, wit ...
(until 1971). Then in 1967, VTR recording was introduced to record their TV programs in high quality. Bangladesh Television rarely practiced wiping since its archive has been carefully maintained.


Brazil

From 1968 to 1969,
Rede Tupi Rede Tupi (; in English, Tupi Network) was a Brazilian television network free-to-air. Its parent broadcaster, located in the city of São Paulo, was the first TV station to operate in the country, being inaugurated on 18 September 1950 by jo ...
produced new episodes of the
telenovela A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines ''tele'' (for "television") and ''novela'' (meaning "novel"). Similar drama genres around the world include '' teleserye'' ...
''
Beto Rockfeller ''Beto Rockfeller'' is a Brazilian telenovela produced by TV Tupi and aired from November 4, 1968, to November 30, 1969. It was created by Cassiano Gabus Mendes, written by Bráulio Pedroso and directed by Lima Duarte and Walter Avancini. Plot B ...
'' by recording over previous episodes; as a result, few episodes survive. After the closure of TV Tupi in 1980 the 536 tapes at its São Paulo studios were transported to a warehouse in the São Paulo suburb of
Cotia Cotia is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The population is 253,608 (2020 est.) in an area of 323.99 km². The city is at an elevation of 853 m. Cotia is linked with th ...
and were simply left to deteriorate there until they were recovered by the Cinemateca Brasileira in 1985 and subsequently restored by TV Cultura in 1989. Only two Rede Tupi owned and operated stations are known to have any preserved videotapes; TV Itacolomi's archives are now owned by TV Alterosa, the Minas Gerais affiliate of
SBT sbt is an open-source build tool for Scala and Java projects, similar to Apache's Maven and Gradle. Its main features are: *Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks *Continuous compilation, te ...
in Belo Horizonte, whereas almost all of TV Piratini's material was lost in a fire in 1983, two years after the building of the extinct station was occupied by TVE-RS, the statewide public television station in
Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a state in the southern region of Brazil. It is the fifth-most-populous state and the ninth largest by area. Located in the southernmost part of the country, Rio Grande do Sul is border ...
. The few TV Piratini surviving tapes are stored at the Hipólito José da Costa Communication Museum, in
Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the twelfth most populous city in the country and the center of Brazil's fif ...
, albeit in a heavily deteriorated state. Also, some tapes at the Rede Tupi studios in
Urca Urca is a traditional and wealthy residential neighborhood with nearly 7,000 inhabitants (2000 census) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Although most of the neighborhood dates from the 1920s, parts of it are much older. What is now called the Forte Sã ...
,
Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
were later found to have been significantly degraded by
vinegar syndrome Cellulose acetate film, or safety film, is used in photography as a base material for photographic emulsions. It was introduced in the early 20th century by film manufacturers and intended as a safe film base replacement for unstable and highly ...
, hence they were unable to be migrated to a modern format. However, part of the library of Rio de Janeiro TV Tupi studios was found in 2005 at the headquarters of Radio Tupi, and later donated to the Brazilian National Archive, which signed an agreement with
Globo Globo (meaning '' globe'' in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian) may refer to: * Grupo Globo, a Brazilian conglomerate primarily in mass media ** TV Globo, a television network *** GloboNews, a television 24-hour news channel *** Globo (Portuguese T ...
in 2007 to preserve the material. RecordTV also lost much footage from the 1960s due to wiping, fires, and deterioration; most of the MPB music festivals no longer exist, and the sitcom ''
Família Trapo "Família" is the seventh single by Brazilian rock band Titãs, released in 1987. The song is about the everyday issues of a family. It was once covered by Molejo on their 1998 album ''Família''. The song was featured on the Rede Manchete telenov ...
'' ( pt) has only one surviving episode, featuring
Pelé Edson Arantes do Nascimento (; born 23 October 1940), known as Pelé (), is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a forward. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and labelled "the greatest" by FIFA ...
. Until 1997, Rede Record had no policy on archiving videotapes; since then, at least 600 videotapes that were previously believed to be lost have been recovered with the help of the Ressoar Institute.
Globo Globo (meaning '' globe'' in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian) may refer to: * Grupo Globo, a Brazilian conglomerate primarily in mass media ** TV Globo, a television network *** GloboNews, a television 24-hour news channel *** Globo (Portuguese T ...
lost the first 35 broadcasts of '' Fantástico'' and most of the first years of '' Jornal Nacional'', in addition to many segments of their other soap operas as a result of wiping, and also due to three fires that occurred in 1969 (at its São Paulo studios), 1971 and 1976, (the latter two at its Rio de Janeiro studios) where in the 1976 fire, an estimated 920 to 1,500 tapes were destroyed. Most of
TV Excelsior Rede Excelsior was a Brazilian television network founded by Mário Wallace Simonsen on July 9, 1960, in São Paulo, São Paulo. Its last broadcast happened on September 30, 1970, when the Brazilian military dictatorship put an abrupt end to ...
's output was damaged in a fire in 1969; however, in the late 1990s about 100 tapes of Rede Excelsior programming were discovered in the archives of Globo and TV Gazeta and these tapes were restored by the Faculdade Cásper Líbero and subsequently donated to the Cinemateca Brasileira in 2001. The Brazilian public television network Cultura has preserved many old programs and has one of the most complete archives among Brazilian television networks. Despite having suffered a fire in 1986, this fire did not reach the station's archives. After the bankruptcy of
Manchete Rede Manchete (; lit.: Headline Network; also known as TV Manchete or only Manchete) was a Brazilian television network that was founded in Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1983 by the Ukrainian-Brazilian journalist and businessman Adolpho Bloch. The ne ...
, in 1999, most of the collection was seized at the station's studios, in
Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
, until it was included in the bankruptcy estate and later auctioned by the Brazilian courts, which caused part of the library to be lost. However, some telenovelas (such as '' Pantanal'') had reruns by some television networks (such as
SBT sbt is an open-source build tool for Scala and Java projects, similar to Apache's Maven and Gradle. Its main features are: *Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks *Continuous compilation, te ...
and Band). Many
SBT sbt is an open-source build tool for Scala and Java projects, similar to Apache's Maven and Gradle. Its main features are: *Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks *Continuous compilation, te ...
1980s and 1990s productions were lost due to wiping and also due to floods that occurred in 1987 and in 1991 at its studios in the district of
Vila Guilherme Vila Guilherme is a district located in the north of São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian s ...
. The network did not have a archiving policy until 1996, when the network moved its studios to
CDT da Anhanguera The Centro de Televisão da Anhanguera, popularly known as CDT da Anhanguera, is the second largest center of television production in Brazil and is the headquarters of the Brazilian TV company Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão, SBT. The complex is ...
in Osasco, Greater São Paulo.


Canada

The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the governmen ...
never practised wiping of programs they produced themselves. As a result, the CBC now maintains a nearly complete archive of all programming produced by them that was recorded. One exception was the 1953–54 science-fiction series ''
Space Command A space command is a military organization with responsibility for space operations and warfare. A space command is typically a joint organization or organized within a larger military branch and is distinct from a fully independent space force. ...
'', of which only one out of 150 episodes are known to survive, although the whole series was
Kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
d for distribution to stations across Canada. The CBC also says that the 1984–93 music video series, '' Video Hits'', no longer exists in their archives; presumably, any recordings were wiped for legal reasons as the show used content licensed from music companies. The
CTV Television Network The CTV Television Network, commonly known as CTV, is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. Launched in 1961 and acquired by BCE Inc. in 2000, CTV is Canada's largest privately owned List of Canadian ...
has admitted to wiping many programs during the 1970s. Because of Canadian content requirements, the need for Canadian-produced programming led to more preservation of the shows they produced, and even very poorly received programs (such as ''
The Trouble with Tracy ''The Trouble with Tracy'' is a Canadian television series produced by CTV for the 1970–1971 television season, with intended distribution by the U.S.-based National General Pictures. It is considered by some to be one of the worst situation com ...
'') were saved and rerun for several years after their cancellation. Furthermore, Canadian rebroadcasts have been a source of some programming their producers in the United States and the United Kingdom have lost.


Chile

A large portion of the publicly-owned TVN's archives between 1969 to 1973 were burned by the military during the coup in 1973. Only a few films in 1969 and 1970 are known to survive, including a still frame featuring the company's logo at the time, and the text ''Desde Arica, hasta Tierra del Fuego'' (From Arica, to Tierra del Fuego), as well as several idents featuring its mascot at the time, ''Tevito'', which also included the mascot being crushed by the TVN logo.


Europe

The first edition ever of the
Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...
of 1956 was broadcast live and only a sound recording of the radio transmission and a section of the winning song's reprise has survived from the original broadcast. The ninth edition of 1964 is said to have been recorded on tape, but a fire reportedly destroyed the copy at DR, the Danish broadcaster who produced the contest. Another recording of the contest was thought to have existed at the French television archives, but it has since been revealed that this is not the case. Only small portions of the original broadcast and audio from the radio transmission are accessible for the time being.


Belgium

* Only 9 of the 185 episodes of the Flemish sitcom '' Schipper naast Mathilde'' from 1955 to 1963 survive. * Most Flemish youth series from the 1950s were not preserved: ''Bolletje en Bonestaak'' (1955), ''Jan zonder Vrees'' ('' John the Fearless'', 1956), ''Schatteneiland'' ('' Treasure Island'', 1957), ''Reis om de wereld in 80 dagen'' ('' Around the World in 80 Days'', 1957), and ''Professor Kwit'' (1958). The series ''Manko Kapak'' (1959) is an exception and survives on kinescope. * Only 3 of the 12 episodes of the Flemish courtroom drama series ''Beschuldigde sta op'' from the 1960s to 1980 survive.


Greece

The vast majority of Greek television shows before the 1980s are considered lost, as ERT never took archiving seriously. Recent efforts have been made to archive what is left, but the material is very limited.


Ireland

The
Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. ...
was a latecomer to television, Telefís Éireann being established at the end of 1961. Although early news broadcasts were recorded on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s, almost all broadcasts from the first fifteen years (i.e. up to 1977) are lost. Of the soap opera ''
Tolka Row ''Tolka Row'' was an Irish drama serial set in a fictional housing estate on the northside of Dublin. Based on Maura Laverty's play of the same name, ''Tolka Row'' was first broadcast on 3 January 1964 and aired weekly for five series until it e ...
'' (1964–68) only the last episode survives, while almost all the early episodes of '' The Late Late Show'' (1962–present) are lost. Even when shows were sent abroad — ''
The Riordans ''The Riordans'' was the second Irish television drama serial made by Raidio Telefís Éireann (then called ''Telefís Éireann''). It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny. Its location fil ...
'' was sent to Australia for rebroadcast — the tapes were often sent back to Ireland and recorded over, as they were so expensive.


Italy

The 23rd, 24th and 25th editions of the Italian
Sanremo Festival The Sanremo Music Festival, officially the Italian Song Festival () and commonly known as just (), is the most popular Italian song contest and awards ceremony, held annually in the city of Sanremo, Liguria. It is the longest-running annual ...
of 1973, 1974 and 1975 have been lost. Only some portions of the original tapes have survived in the Daily News Archives. The 26th edition of 1976 was lost by RAI but it could be recovered in the Spanish Broadcasting Company's (TVE) vaults, since it was broadcast all around Europe and recorded by TVE. Many early RAI television programs were not preserved. Only a few episodes of the game show '' Lascia o raddoppia?'' have survived and no recording of the musical variety ''
Settevoci ''Settevoci'' was an Italian musical variety show broadcast by Rai 1 (at the time called "Programma Nazionale") from 1966 to 1970, hosted by Pippo Baudo and aired on Sunday afternoon.Aldo Grasso, Massimo Scaglioni, ''Enciclopedia della Televisione ...
'' is extant.


Netherlands

The best known missing programs are the children's shows ''Ja zuster nee zuster'' from the 1960s and most of ''Hamelin'' (''Kunt u mij de weg naar Hamelen vertellen'') from the 1970s. The 1970s Dutch TV series ''The Eddy-Go-Round Show'' hosted by Eddy Becker, despite featuring high-profile guests, is reported to have been largely erased by the broadcaster it aired on, though a short section featuring Swedish pop group
ABBA ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The grou ...
performing " I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" was later uncovered on a tape recorded by a home viewer. An additional episode was later uncovered as the host had kept a copy himself, and was later re-broadcast on a Dutch cable channel in 2012. A clip of Marmalade performing on the show also has survived. A further clip of
Olivia Newton-John Dame Olivia Newton-John (26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022) was a British-Australian singer, actress and activist. She was a four-time Grammy Awards, Grammy Award winner whose music career included 15 top-ten singles, including 5 number-one s ...
performing was found by Ray Langstone in 2013.


Spain

Hundreds of episodes from the internationally versioned show '' Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez'', mainly from the first two seasons (1972–1973 and 1976–1978), including the first episode of the first season, are lost or were destroyed. Only four episodes out of 54 from the first season and 12 out of 83 from the second season are known to survive. The following seasons from the third to the fifth one (1982–1986) are also incomplete, but not as dramatically diminished as the previous seasons. The sixth season of 1987 is the first fully located and preserved one. Since Televisión Española archives were not catalogued until 1987, and there are thousands of tapes in kilometers of shelves of unknown uncatalogued content, there could be more episodes there than what is preserved today (the last previously thought lost then found episode from the first season was just discovered in 2005). Also, some of the lost episodes of seasons two, three, four and five exist as either complete or as portions on the archives or on home video recordings made by members of the public.


Yugoslavia (SFR)

Yugoslav Radio Television Yugoslav Radio Television (''Jugoslavenska radiotelevizija''/Југославенска радиотелевизија or ''Jugoslavenska radio-televizija''/Југославенска радио-телевизија; JRT/ЈРТ) was the national ...
(JRT) practiced wiping until the 1970s when it gained access to newer and cheaper methods of recording, which allowed it to regularly archive programming.


Japan

Of the original 1973 ''
Doraemon ''Doraemon'' ( ja, ドラえもん ) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio. The manga was first serialized in December 1969, with its 1,345 individual chapters compiled into 45 ''tankōbon'' volumes and ...
'' 31 segments are lost due to the studio warehouse that stored all content of the show, having to sell the reels off for money, which ultimately failed in the end. The show only lasted for 26 episodes—it was interrupted due to the dissolution of Nippon TV Video, the production studio. 21 episodes are known to survive, two of which have no audio. The final episode was called "Sayonara Doraemon" (Goodbye Doraemon) and aired on September 30, 1973. Audio, still images, the opening theme and ending theme survive all together. In 1995, 16 episodes were found to be stored in Studio Rush (now known as IMAGICA), and other segments have been found, though two remain without their audio tracks. The opening and ending credits do still exist as well, along with a pilot film that was produced in 1972. These are occasionally shown at ''
Doraemon ''Doraemon'' ( ja, ドラえもん ) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Fujiko F. Fujio. The manga was first serialized in December 1969, with its 1,345 individual chapters compiled into 45 ''tankōbon'' volumes and ...
'' fan conventions in Japan, but cannot be released legally on DVD owing to rights complications due to the production studio being defunct. It was briefly rebroadcast in 1979, but was abruptly pulled off television by order of Shogakukan, who did not want the new adaptation's reputation to be affected by the existence of the previous one. The entirety of the
Nippon TV JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as , is the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned-and-operated by the which is a subsidiary of the certified broadcasting holding company , itself a listed ...
tokusatsu television series ''
Assault! Human!! ''Assault! Human!!'' (突撃! ヒューマン!! ''Totsugeki! Hyūman!!'') is a 1972 ''tokusatsu'' series produced by Toho. Plot King Flasher, a mysterious being, and his army of Flashers threaten the safety of the Earth, starting by targeting c ...
'', originally produced and aired in 1972, was lost at some point after the series was rebroadcast in the 1980s, after the master tapes were reused. While suits from the show were purchased, then reused by Toho in the 1973 series '' Go! Greenman'', the only traces of ''Assault! Human!!'' come in the form of supplementary materials such as reference books, merchandise, magazine articles and the show's soundtrack. All episodes of the
Osamu Tezuka Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu''; – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such ...
anime '' Big X'' are said to be lost except for episodes 1, 11, and 40–59. Only episodes 37 and 38 of ''Space Alien Pipi'' survive, along with the opening and ending theme. Certain episodes of '' Perman'' are lost, some have picture but no audio. Most episodes of the Children's puppet show ''Hyokkori Hyōtanjima'', running from 1964 to 1969 on NHK for total of 1,224 episodes, were reportedly wiped after the broadcast. The tapes were reportedly reused for other programs since video tapes were costly. 6 episodes have resurfaced from black and white kinescopes, as well as 2 color episodes.
Toei Animation () is a Japanese animation studio primarily controlled by its namesake Toei Company. It has produced numerous series, including ''Sally the Witch,'' '' GeGeGe no Kitarō,'' '' Mazinger Z'', '' Galaxy Express 999'', '' Cutie Honey'', '' Dr. Slu ...
is known to wipe broadcasts of older anime series. For a time, the original films of ''
Dragon Ball is a Japanese media franchise created by Akira Toriyama in 1984. The Dragon Ball (manga), initial manga, written and illustrated by Toriyama, was serialized in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from 1984 to 1995, with the 519 individual chapters colle ...
'', ''
Dragon Ball Z ''Dragon Ball Z'' is a Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation. Part of the ''Dragon Ball'' media franchise, it is the sequel to the 1986 '' Dragon Ball'' anime series and adapts the latter 325 chapters of the original ...
'', and some of ''
Dragon Ball GT is a 1996–1997 Japanese anime television series based on Akira Toriyama's ''Dragon Ball'' manga. Produced by Toei Animation, the series premiered in Japan on Fuji TV and ran for 64 episodes from February 1996 to November 1997. Unlike the ...
'', which contained high-quality audio, were wiped. They were considered lost media until a group of fans collected VHS recordings of the series during their original broadcasts, which contained the original audio. The audio was then sent to Christopher Sabat of Funimation. An official release of these series containing the original audio has yet to be made.


Mexico

Due to its multiple studio facilities, namely its Chapultepec and San Ángel studios,
Televisa Grupo Televisa is a Mexican multimedia mass media company. A major Latin American mass media corporation, it often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content. In April 2021, Televisa and Univision Communications announce ...
preserved most of its scripted series for broadcast years after the preserved programs had ended their original runs. Some Televisa programs, however, were lost in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that destroyed part of the network's archive. However, smaller channels, such as XEIPN-TV and XHDF-TV, did not begin to preserve their recorded broadcasts until the early 1980s.
Monterrey Monterrey ( , ) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the third largest city in Mexico behind Guadalajara and Mexico City. Located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the city is ancho ...
's Multimedios Televisión keeps most of its programming, though some special historical programming dealing with its flagship station's history clearly shows that some footage has been either donated by viewers recorded from its original broadcast, or uses footage of its programming recorded by archivists.


Pakistan

In the early days of PTV, a few test transmissions were broadcast, but the majority of programming was live. Since at the time PTV did not have the tools needed to create backups, the programming was considered lost as soon as it aired. Pre-recorded shows started airing in 1971, stored mostly using Video Tape Recorders (VTR) and later shifting to VPRs. Both were stored in spools. Final archive cuts of aired shows were stored in a near-freezing room, which was the standard storage requirement. However, sometime in the early 1980s, the air conditioning for archives was turned down too much, causing the spools to succumb to the heat and fuse together. When the industry finally realised in early 1990s that transfer to digital video was imminent, the equipment needed to play back the old spools was no longer in working condition and replacement parts were almost nonexistent. The spools were stored at the Shalimar recording company, and PTV has been able to play segments for retrospective programs. Additionally, viewer home recordings also exist and are the only source of video for some shows. The Center for Media Psychology Research Pakistan website gives a different story, stating that after the switch to colour broadcast, the recording medium in the 1970s was the one inch spool format which recorded sound and electronic moving pictures as a combined stream on a magnetic recording medium. However, due to the one inch magnetic spool containing all old archives was eventually lost.


Philippines

The first three years (1979 to 1982) of the longest-running television show in the Philippines, '' Eat Bulaga!'', have been lost. The first full surviving episode was broadcast on August 7, 1982, the third anniversary of the show. The inaugural game of the
Philippine Basketball Association The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is a men's professional basketball league in the Philippines composed of twelve company-branded franchised teams. Founded in 1975, it is the first professional basketball league in Asia and is the se ...
(PBA) in 1975, along with most of the games that were broadcast during the first seven seasons of the league, are believed to be lost. The oldest known full game archive of the league was from the 1979 season. Most of the league's playoffs games, including a significant number of games involving Ginebra, were missing in the PBA archives, when the archive was digitized in 2010. Short clips of older games are in possession of private collectors. The television archive of
ABS-CBN Corporation ABS-CBN Corporation is a Filipino media company based in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is the largest entertainment and media conglomerate in the Philippines. It is a subsidiary of Lopez Holdings Corporation which is owned b ...
from 1953 to 1972 are believed lost, when the station was taken over by the government of
Ferdinand Marcos Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. ( , , ; September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat who was the 10th president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled under martial ...
when he declared martial law in the country. In addition, ABS-CBN alleged in its complaint-affidavit filed after the
People Power Revolution The People Power Revolution, also known as the EDSA Revolution or the February Revolution, was a series of popular demonstrations in the Philippines, mostly in Metro Manila, from February 22 to 25, 1986. There was a sustained campaign of c ...
against Roberto Benedicto (who took over ABS-CBN's facilities following the declaration of martial law) that "the musical records and radio dramas accumulated by ABS-CBN in a span of twenty-five (25) years and stored in its library were now gone". The status of the archived broadcasts of Banahaw Broadcasting Corporation, the television network that took over ABS-CBN's facilities from 1973 to 1986 is unknown. An audio recording of the daily sign off as well as a video recording of a 10-second station ID are known to exist.


United Kingdom


Recording technology and rights

Drama and entertainment output was studio-based and followed the tradition of live
theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...
and
radio drama Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine t ...
. The earliest recording method for television was
telerecording Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...
(Kinescope in the US), first used in 1947, which involved capturing the image from a special television monitor onto film using a modified film camera. increased in use during the 1950s, and surviving UK programmes which were not pre-filmed usually exist in this form until the late 1960s. Conventional filmmaking methods, other than for factual programming, were only gradually introduced from the mid-1960s. All television programmes have copyright and secondary rights associated with them. For drama and entertainment, the actors, writers, and musicians involved in a production all have underlying rights. In the past, these rights were defended rigorously—permission could even be denied by a contributor for the repeat or re-use of a programme. Talent unions were highly suspicious of the threat to new work if programmes were repeated; indeed, before 1955
Equity Equity may refer to: Finance, accounting and ownership *Equity (finance), ownership of assets that have liabilities attached to them ** Stock, equity based on original contributions of cash or other value to a business ** Home equity, the diff ...
insisted that any telerecording made (of a repeat performance) could only "be viewed privately" on BBC premises and not transmitted. ''
The Sunday Night Play ''BBC Sunday-Night Play'' is the anthology drama series which replaced ''Sunday Night Theatre'' in 1960. It was broadcast on what was then BBC Television (now BBC One). The series often included versions of modern theatrical successes, but orig ...
'' (a major event in the 1950s) was performed live in the studio. On Thursday, because telerecording was then of insufficient broadcast quality, another live performance followed, the artists returning to perform the play again. ''Black Limelight'' is a stage play which was adapted for British television three times, with each version being lost. These include a 1952 version as part of '' Sunday Night Theatre'', which was broadcast live and not recorded, a 1956 version as part of '' Armchair Theatre'' and a 1962 version as part of '' BBC Sunday-Night Play''. Although the Quadruplex videotape system was used in the UK from 1958, this system was expensive and complex; recorded programmes were often erased after broadcast in an era when the UK had few channels and repeats were rare. Videotape was not initially thought to be a permanent archivable medium – its high cost and the potential reuse of the tapes led to the transfer of programme material to film, via telerecording, whenever sales of overseas screening rights were possible or preservation deemed worthwhile. The recycling of videotapes, coupled with savings made on the storage of the bulky 2" tapes, enabled costs to be kept down. The introduction of colour television in the United Kingdom from 1967 meant that broadcasters felt there was less value in retaining monochrome recordings. Such tapes could not be re-used for colour production, so they were disposed of to create space for the new colour tapes in the archives, which were quickly filling up. The increased cost of colour Quadruplex videotape—approximately £1,000 per tape at today's prices—meant that companies still often re-used the tapes for cost control purposes. Negative attitudes to a programme's value also persisted. Some early colour productions were telerecorded onto monochrome film for overseas sales to countries which did not yet have colour television. Early colour programmes may only survive in this form. Today, most programmes are pre-recorded and it is relatively inexpensive to preserve programming for posterity.


BBC

The BBC, the United Kingdom's first public service broadcaster, had no policy on archiving until 1978.


The early years in Britain

The BBC's
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
service dates back to 1936 and was originally a nearly live-only medium. The hours of transmission were very limited and the bulk of the programming was transmitted either live from the studio, or from outside broadcast (OB) units; film was a minor contributor to the output. When the first television broadcasts were made, there were two competing systems in use. The EMI electronic system (using
405 lines The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture. It was ...
) competed with the Baird 240-line mechanical television system. Baird adopted an intermediate film technique where the live material was filmed using a standard film camera mounted on a large cabinet which contained a rapid processing unit and an early flying spot scanner to produce the video output for transmission. The pioneer broadcasts were not, however, preserved on this intermediate film as the nitrate (celluloid) stock was scanned while still wet from the fixer bath and never washed to remove the fixer chemicals. Consequently, the film decomposed very soon after transmission; nothing is known to have survived. No studio or OB programmes from 1936 to 1939 or 1946 to 1947 have survived because there was no means of preserving them. The world's earliest television crime drama ''
Telecrime ''Telecrime'' was a British drama series that aired on the BBC Television Service from 1938 to 1939 and in 1946. One of the first multi-episode drama series ever made, it is also one of the first television dramas written especially for televisi ...
'' (1938–39 and 1946) or '' Pinwright's Progress'' (1946–47, the world's first regular
situation comedy A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use new ...
), ''
The Disorderly Room ''The Disorderly Room'' is a musical comedy sketch written by the actor and writer Eric Blore during the First World War. It was first performed at the Victoria Palace Theatre, London, in 1919 and starred Blore, Stanley Holloway, Tom Walls, Leslie ...
'', ''
Sports Review ''Sports Review'' was an early British television programme, produced by the BBC and broadcast by their BBC Television Service during the late 1930s. It was the first regular sports programme to be transmitted by television. The programme was pre ...
'', ''
Theatre Parade ''Theatre Parade'' was a British television programme, one of the world's very first regular series, broadcast by the BBC Television Service from its inception during 1936 until 1938. The programme presented excerpts from popular London theatre p ...
'', and the play '' Wasp's Nest'', were broadcast live and not recorded. The only visual evidence of these programmes today consists of still photographs as live programmes were never recorded at all.


Lost programmes

Four of the six episodes of '' The Quatermass Experiment'' (1953), Britain's first
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
television programme aimed at an adult audience, were never recorded; the two existing episodes are the BBC's earliest recordings of any fictional series. The visual quality of the second episode's recording was considered so poor—a fly entered the gap between the camera and monitor at one point—that the remainder of the series was not recorded. High-profile examples of programme losses include the vast majority of the BBC's Apollo 11 Moon landing studio coverage, and all 147 episodes of the
soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...
''
United! ''United!'' is a British television series which was produced by the BBC between 1965 and 1967, and was broadcast twice-weekly on BBC1. The series followed the fortunes of a fictional second division football team, Brentwich United. The footbal ...
''. There are gaps in many long-running BBC series ('' Dixon of Dock Green'', '' Sykes'', ''
Out of the Unknown ''Out of the Unknown'' is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Most episodes of the first three series were a dramatisation of a science fi ...
'', and ''
Z-Cars ''Z-Cars'' or ''Z Cars'' (pronounced "zed cars") is a British television police procedural series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, near Liverpool. Produced by the BBC, it deb ...
''). Three episodes from the second series of '' Dad's Army'' are missing, as are 26 episodes of ''
Hancock's Half Hour ''Hancock's Half Hour'' was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sidney James; the radio version also co-starr ...
''. ''
The Madhouse on Castle Street ''Madhouse on Castle Street'' is a British television play, broadcast by BBC Television on the evening of 13 January 1963, as part of the '' Sunday Night Play'' strand. It was written by Evan Jones and directed by Philip Saville. The production ...
'', a 1963 BBC teleplay starring a then-unknown
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, is considered lost. It was erased in 1968, and despite attempts by the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
to recover it, a telerecorded copy has still not been found . ''
A for Andromeda ''A for Andromeda'' is a British television science fiction drama serial first made and broadcast by the BBC in seven parts in 1961. Written by cosmologist Fred Hoyle, in conjunction with author and television producer John Elliot, it concern ...
'', a science fiction series that was Julie Christie's first major role, only survives in the form of a single episode (episode six, "The Face of the Tiger"), some film fragments from episodes one ("The Message"), two ("The Machine"), three ("The Miracle") and seven ("The Last Mystery"), and a complete audio recording of episode seven. As of 2021, 97 black and white episodes of the BBC science-fiction series ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...
'' are not known to survive, all from the tenures of the first two Doctors,
William Hartnell William Henry Hartnell (8 January 1908 – 23 April 1975) was an English actor. He is best remembered for his portrayal of the first incarnation of the Doctor in ''Doctor Who'' from 1963 to 1966. In film, Hartnell notably appeared in '' Brig ...
and Patrick Troughton (see ''Doctor Who'' missing episodes). Audio recordings survive for all of the lost episodes and have been released commercially by the BBC. Several episodes of some serials, including '' The Invasion'', '' The Reign of Terror'', '' The Power of the Daleks'' and ''
The Ice Warriors ''The Ice Warriors'' is the partly missing third serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 11 November to 16 December 1967. In this serial, the ...
'' (all episodes only surviving in audio form), were reconstructed using animation for DVD releases. The BBC holds many clips from the lost episodes ranging from such sources as an 8 mm camera, censored clips physically cut from the episodes, insert shots, and clips shown on 1960s and 1970s programmes (such as ''
Blue Peter ''Blue Peter'' is a British children's television entertainment programme created by John Hunter Blair. It is the longest-running children's TV show in the world, having been broadcast since October 1958. It was broadcast primarily from BBC Te ...
''). In late 2013, five previously missing episodes of '' The Enemy of the World'' and four of the five missing episodes of '' The Web of Fear'' were recovered from a television relay station in
Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. The only episode thought to be definitively irrecoverable is "The Feast of Steven", from the 1965–1966 serial '' The Daleks' Master Plan'', mainly due to the episode never being shown overseas. The BBC wiped many editions of '' Not Only... But Also'', starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cook and Moore reportedly offered to pay for the cost of preservation and buy new videotapes so that the old tapes would not need to be reused, but this offer was rejected. Some
telerecording Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...
s of the black and white episodes survive, but the completed programmes on colour videotape of the 1970 series was wiped, so that the only surviving colour sketches are the
16mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, ed ...
inserts. Only two episodes of the drama documentary
Crisis Command __NOTOC__ ''Crisis Command – Could You Run the Country?'' is a BBC Two role-playing interactive drama documentary which was based on realistic scenarios and dramatised situations that Britain could face one day. All episodes were first aired ...
, which aired in 2004, are currently known to exist online. There is lost material in all genres — as late as the early 1990s, a large number of videotaped children's programmes from the 1970s and 1980s were irretrievably wiped by the BBC archives on the assumption that they were of "low priority", without consulting the BBC children's department itself.


Other lost material

Virtually the entire runs of the corporation's pre-1970s soap operas have been lost. In the 1950s and 1960s, the BBC soap operas ''
The Appleyards ''The Appleyards'' is a British television soap opera for children, made and transmitted fortnightly by BBC Television from October 1952 to April 1957, from the BBC's Lime Grove Studios. It was produced and directed by Naomi Capon. Transmitted ...
'', '' The Grove Family'', ''
Compact Compact as used in politics may refer broadly to a pact or treaty; in more specific cases it may refer to: * Interstate compact * Blood compact, an ancient ritual of the Philippines * Compact government, a type of colonial rule utilized in Britis ...
'', '' The Newcomers'', ''
199 Park Lane ''199 Park Lane'' was a British soap opera that aired on BBC1 in 1965. Airing twice a week, the series was set in a luxury block of flats in London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Engl ...
'', and ''
United! ''United!'' is a British television series which was produced by the BBC between 1965 and 1967, and was broadcast twice-weekly on BBC1. The series followed the fortunes of a fictional second division football team, Brentwich United. The footbal ...
'' produced approximately 1,200 episodes altogether. There are no episodes of either ''United!'' or ''199 Park Lane'' in the archives, while only one episode of ''The Appleyards'', three episodes of ''The Grove Family'', and four episodes each of ''Compact'' and ''The Newcomers'' are known to exist. The early televised Francis Durbridge serials from 1952 to 1959 were either never recorded (the first two, ''Broken Horseshoe'' and ''Operation Diplomat'') or not retained. Also vulnerable to the corporation's wiping policy were programmes that only lasted for one series. '' Abigail and Roger'', '' The Airbase'', ''
As Good Cooks Go ''As Good Cooks Go'' was a black-and-white British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1969 to 1970. Written by John Warren (actor), and John Singer, it starred Tessie O'Shea and Frank Williams. Cast *Tessie O'Shea – Blodwen O'Reilly *Robert Dorni ...
'', the 1960 adaptation of '' The Citadel'', the 1956 adaptation of ''David Copperfield'', ''
The Dark Island ''The Dark Island'' is a six-part British television miniseries, produced by Gerard Glaister for the BBC. It premièred on 8 July 1962. It was later adapted for radio, which was transmitted in 1969. It was set on the Outer Hebridean island of ...
'', '' The Gnomes of Dulwich'', ''Hurricane'', '' For Richer...For Poorer'', '' Hereward the Wake'', ''The Naked Lady'', ''Night Train To Surbiton'', ''Outbreak of Murder'', ''Where do I Sit?'', and ''Witch Hunt'' have all been wiped, with no footage surviving, while four out of seven episodes of the paranormal anthology series '' Dead of Night'' were wiped. Only about 30 episodes of '' Dixon of Dock Green'' remain out of a run of 432, and more than half of the episodes of ''
Z-Cars ''Z-Cars'' or ''Z Cars'' (pronounced "zed cars") is a British television police procedural series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, near Liverpool. Produced by the BBC, it deb ...
'' are missing. An edition of '' Hugh and I'' ("Chinese Crackers"), starring Hugh Lloyd, Terry Scott, John Le Mesurier and David Jason was located by
Kaleidoscope Publishing Kaleidoscope Publishing is a publishing house founded by Richard Down and Chris Perry, and based in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1988 and exists to promote the appreciation of British television, including classic and cult programming. No ...
in 2010 in the archives of
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, and brought to general public attention in February 2011. Episodes of the pop music chart show ''
Top of the Pops ''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British Record chart, music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show ...
'' from its first decade were wiped or, if transmitted live, not recorded.
The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
' only live appearance on ''
Top Of The Pops ''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British Record chart, music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show ...
'' in 1966, performing the single " Paperback Writer" is believed to have been wiped in a clear-out in the 1970s. An off-air recording of 11 seconds of footage made on an 8mm film camera was discovered in April 2019. Clips of the Beatles miming " Can't Buy Me Love" and " You Can't Do That" on an episode from 25 March 1964 were found online by missing episode hunter Ray Langstone in 2015. The last lost edition dates from 8 September 1977. There are only four complete ''TOTP'' episodes surviving from the 1960s, while many otherwise-missing episodes survive only as fragments. Most appearances of
Pink Floyd Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics an ...
with
Syd Barrett Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd in 1965. Barrett was their original frontman and primary songwriter, becoming known for his ...
—are unavailable. Only two episodes still exist of ''
The Sandie Shaw Supplement ''The Sandie Shaw Supplement'' was a television show hosted by the British singer Sandie Shaw in 1968; and also the name of her fourth original album released in November of that year by Pye Records, and re-issued shortly afterwards on the Marble ...
'' (a music-variety show hosted by the eponymous singer), recorded in 1967.


Finding missing BBC programmes

Since the establishment of an archival policy for television in 1978, BBC archivists and others over the years have used various contacts in the UK and abroad to try to track down missing programmes. For example, all
BBC Worldwide BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadca ...
customers—broadcasters around the world—who had bought programmes from the corporation were contacted to see if they still had copies which could be returned; ''Doctor Who'' is a prime example of how this method recovered episodes that the corporation did not retain. At the turn of the 21st century, the BBC established its Archive Treasure Hunt, a public appeal to recover lost productions, which has had some successes. The BBC also has close contacts with the National Film and Television Archive, which is part of the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
and its "Missing Believed Wiped" event which was first held in 1993 and is part of a campaign to locate lost items from British television's past. There is also a network of collectors who, if they find any programmes missing from the BBC archives, will contact the corporation with information—or sometimes even the actual footage. Some examples of programmes recovered for the archives are ''Doctor Who'', '' Steptoe and Son'', '' Till Death Us Do Part'', ''Dad's Army'', ''
Letter from America ''Letter from America'' was a weekly fifteen-minute speech radio series broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and its predecessor, the Home Service, and around the world through the BBC World Service. From its first edition to its last, it was presented by ...
'', '' The Likely Lads'', and ''
Play for Today ''Play for Today'' is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage ...
''.


ITV

The BBC was not alone in this practice: the franchise holders that formed its commercial rival ITV also wiped videotapes and destroyed
telerecording Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...
s, leaving gaps in their archive holdings. The former nature of the ITV network, in which private independent companies were awarded franchises to serve geographical areas for a set period of time, meant that when companies lost their franchise, their archives were often sold to third parties and became fragmented, and/or risked being destroyed, as ownership and
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
remained with the production companies, rather than with the network. Most of the archives of two ITV contractors ABC Weekend TV and Associated-Rediffusion were destroyed after 1968 when they were merged to become
Thames Television Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broa ...
. Associated-Rediffusion's archive suffered considerably more damage than ABC's, leaving little of '' No Hiding Place'', ''
The Rat Catchers ''The Rat Catchers'' is a 1960s British television drama series made by Rediffusion and broadcast on ITV. The series was not networked, playing on different days of the week in London from other regions. It is about a top secret British Intel ...
'', and other programmes. Almost all of the entire first series of '' The Avengers'' was erased shortly after transmission (only a few episodes survive in their entirety, along with the first 15 minutes of the very first episode). The few surviving tapes of Associated-Rediffusion belong to many different organisations, as the majority of Associated-Rediffusion's tapes were disposed of, although in recent years there have been occasional discoveries, such as a 1959 episode of '' Double Your Money,'' and the remaining missing episode of '' Around the World with Orson Welles'', found by Ray Langstone in 2011. Most material from the 1960s also only survives as telerecordings. Some early episodes are also believed to be damaged or in poor quality, whereas much of the output of other broadcasters – such as many early episodes of '' The Avengers'' which were shot in the electronic studio rather than on film, produced by ABC – have been destroyed. Many master tapes belonging to ATV have since deteriorated due to bad storage and are unsuitable for broadcasting. In particular, the ATV version of the popular soap ''
Crossroads Crossroads, crossroad, cross road or similar may refer to: * Crossroads (junction), where four roads meet Film and television Films * ''Crossroads'' (1928 film), a 1928 Japanese film by Teinosuke Kinugasa * ''Cross Roads'' (film), a 1930 Brit ...
'' is missing 2,850 episodes of its original 3,555. Also often largely lost are quiz shows; few editions exist of the 1970s version of '' Celebrity Squares'' with Bob Monkhouse, or Southern's children's quiz '' Runaround''. Many early music programmes, such as '' Ready Steady Go'' are poorly represented. Of more than 50 episodes produced, only the initial episode of '' The Adventures of Twizzle'', the first TV series produced by Gerry Anderson, is known to survive as of 2022. The original (unbroadcast) black-and-white recording of the premiere episode of the British series '' Upstairs, Downstairs'' (1970–1975) does not exist in any form, with the possible exception of a few stills and the location footage which features at the start of the transmitted shot-in-color rerecording of the episode. The original recording took place on 13 November 1970, and was in monochrome, owing to a dispute with studio technicians, the so-called
Colour Strike The Colour Strike was a period of industrial action by technicians at all ITV companies from 13 November 1970 to 8 February 1971 (although some shows made during this period in black-and-white were having their first transmission as late as Dece ...
, who refused to work with colour recording equipment as part of a work to rule. The following five episodes were also recorded in monochrome, before the dispute ended with the recording of episode 6 in color on 12 February 1971. After the entire thirteen-episode season run had been recorded, it was decided to rerecord the first episode in colour to gain the highest possible audience for its first UK transmission and to help with overseas sales. The re-recording took place on 21 May 1971, and the series' UK debut was on 10 October 1971. The original monochrome recording was never transmitted and was wiped. All of the other five black-and-white episodes from Series 1 survive. The state of the archives varies greatly between the different companies;
Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its ...
holds a large number of its older black-and-white programmes, the company having an unofficial policy of retaining as much of its broadcast material as possible despite financial hardship in its early years. This includes the entirety of the soap opera ''
Coronation Street ''Coronation Street'' is an English soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres around a cobbled, terraced street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. Orig ...
'' which is now held at the Yorkshire Television archive, which itself possesses largely intact archives, although some early colour shows from the late 1960s and the early 1970s, such as the entire output of the drama ''Castle Haven'', the first two series of '' Sez Les'' and the children's variety show '' Junior Showtime'' are believed wiped. The former ITV company
Thames Television Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broa ...
also has a significant library. The archive of networked programmes made by
Southern Television Southern Television was the ITV broadcasting licence holder for the South and South-East of England from 30 August 1958 to 31 December 1981. The company was launched as 'Southern Television Limited' and the title 'Southern Television' was co ...
, for example, is now owned by the otherwise-unconnected Australian media company Southern Star Group but Southern's regional output is in the hands of
ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc is listed on th ...
. Furthermore, responsibility for archive preservation was left to individual companies. For example, ITV has no record of its live coverage of the 1969 Moon landings after the station responsible for providing the coverage, London Weekend Television, wiped the tapes. Of the 96 British inserts to the 1980s franchised Anglo-
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
-
Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
children's show '' Fraggle Rock'', only 12 are known to exist, as the library of the British producer ( TVS) has been sold and subsequently split up. In recent years, the trend of preserving material has started to change. The archives of Westward Television and Television South West are now held in trust for the public as the South West Film and Television Archive, whilst changes in legislation mean that ITV companies which lose their franchises must donate their archives to the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
. However, the change of ITV from a federal structure to one centralised company means that changes of regional companies in the future seems highly unlikely. No copies of ''The Adventures of Francie & Josie'' exist, as most of
Scottish Television Scottish Television (now, legally, known as STV Central Limited) is the ITV network franchisee for Central Scotland. The channel — the largest of the three ITV franchises in Scotland — has been in operation since 31 August 1957 and is th ...
's early shows were destroyed in a fire in late 1969 (although some sources state 1973). ''The Adventures Of Francie & Josie'' was made from 1961 to 1965 by STV. Most editions of the anarchic British children's Saturday morning television series '' Tiswas'' were transmitted live without any official recording, and many of the original master tapes of such editions as recorded by the broadcaster were wiped or deteriorated after the series was canceled in 1982. When a series of ''Tiswas'' highlight compilation tapes was released on video in the early 1990s (followed in 2006 by a DVD), much of the footage appeared to have been culled from the off-air recordings of members of the public.


Recovery of missing programmes

Since the BBC library was first audited in 1978, missing programmes or extracts on either film or tape are often found in unexpected places. An appeal to broadcasters in other countries who had shown missing programmes (notably
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
, and
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
n nations such as
Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
) produced "missing" episodes from the archives of those television companies. Episodes have also been returned to broadcasters by private film collectors who had acquired 16mm film copies from various sources. Two Series 1 episodes of '' The Avengers'' (an ABC Weekend TV production) which were thought to be missing were recovered from the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
Film & Television Archive in the United States. It emerged in September 2010 that more than 60 recordings of BBC and ITV drama productions originally sent for broadcast in the United States by the PBS station WNET (which serves New York City and
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
) had been found at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
. The BBC
sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
'' Steptoe and Son'' is completely intact, although approximately half of the colour episodes only exist in monochrome; this was after copies of episodes thought to be lost were recovered in the late 1990s from early non-broadcast standard video recordings made for writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson by BBC technicians. For many years the pilot episode of '' Are You Being Served?'' survived only in black and white, appearing in this form on the 2003 DVD release of the show. In 2009, a colour version was reconstructed when it was realised that the black and white film reel had actually recorded sufficient colour information as a dot crawl pattern to allow
colour recovery Colour recovery (or colour restoration) is a process which can restore lost colour to television programmes which were originally transmitted from the colour video tape which the original master was recorded on during final production prior broadc ...
. A few audio recordings of '' Till Death Us Do Part'' have been recovered, as well as an extract of the pilot and two episodes from series three. In the various sales of rights for '' Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'', Series 1-4 from the UK edition were assumed to have been lost forever. However, in 2015, Challenge, a British channel repeating game shows, announced they had been found and were rebroadcast, though some episodes in that set remain missing and unfound. Copies of several compilations from the British 1960s comedy '' At Last the 1948 Show'', held by many to be a forerunner of ''
Monty Python's Flying Circus ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (also known as simply ''Monty Python'') is a British surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, who became ...
'', were discovered in the archives of the Swedish broadcaster SVT, to whom the producers
Rediffusion London Associated-Rediffusion, later Rediffusion London, was the British ITV franchise holder for London and parts of the surrounding counties, on weekdays between 22 September 1955 and 29 July 1968. It was the first ITA franchisee to go on air, ...
had sold them upon the companies' loss of its broadcasting licence. Their recovery enabled the reconstruction of otherwise missing original editions of the programme, meaning most of the series exists in visual form. Off-air home audio recordings of television programmes have also been recovered, at least preserving the soundtracks to otherwise missing shows, and some of these (particularly from ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...
'') have been released on CD by the BBC following restoration and the addition of narration to describe purely visual elements. Tele-snaps, a commercial service of off-screen shots of programmes often purchased by
actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), lit ...
s and television directors to keep a record of their work in the days before
videocassette recorder A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the reco ...
s, have also been recovered for many lost programmes.


Preservation of the current archive

Advances in technology have resulted in old programmes being transferred to new digital media, where they can be restored or (if they are damaged or otherwise cannot be restored) kept from decaying further. In the United Kingdom, archival television recordings of both the BBC and ITV, along with other channels, have often been migrated from the older 2-inch quadruplex and 1-inch Type C videotapes to digital formats. Live broadcasts in Britain are still not necessarily kept, and wiping of material has not ceased. According to writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, there are "big gaps in the record of children's television of the Nineties."


United States


Introduction

In the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, the major broadcast networks engaged in the practice of wiping recordings until the late 1970s. Many episodes were erased, especially daytime and late-night programming such as daytime
soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...
s and
game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...
s. The daytime shows, almost all of them having been taped, were erased because they were not perceived as having continuing commercial value (due to the volume of episodes, rerun syndication of such programming was rarely undertaken). In the early 1970s, the passage of
Financial Interest and Syndication Rules The Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, widely known as the fin-syn rules, were a set of rules imposed by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States in 1970. The FCC sought to prevent the Big Three television networks from m ...
barred the networks from syndicating their own archived programming; intended to encourage more local and independent content, it had the unintended consequence of prompting the networks to discard tapes that syndication companies had no interest in distributing (especially those in black and white). Videocassette recorders, first introduced in the US with Cartrivision in 1972, were uncommon until the early 1980s. It is thought unlikely that lost television episodes exist in the collections of individuals, though this occasionally happens. Home audio recordings, however, were relatively common at the time, and audio recordings of these episodes are somewhat more common. One example of an early home video recording being the only surviving footage of an event is a clip of
John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
visiting the announcers' booth during a 1974 ''
Monday Night Football ''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, ...
'' broadcast. ABC lost the footage of this event, but a private collector's copy appears in ''
The Beatles Anthology ''The Beatles Anthology'' is a multimedia retrospective project consisting of a television documentary, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book describing the history of the Beatles. Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison ...
''. Similarly, home
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s of World Football League recorded as game film serve as the only surviving copies of several games in that league's short history. The success of
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
networks devoted to reruns of genres perceived as being of low value and thus discarded eventually suggested this was false, as the large number of episodes required for a daily program made even a short-run game show a candidate for syndication.


The early years

Most of the earliest American mechanical television programs of the early 1930s, including '' The Television Ghost'', ''
Piano Lessons Piano pedagogy is the study of the teaching of piano playing. Whereas the professional field of music education pertains to the teaching of music in school classrooms or group settings, piano pedagogy focuses on the teaching of musical skills t ...
'' and variety shows by
Helen Haynes ''Helen Haynes'' is the assumed title of an early American television series. It aired in 1931 and again in 1932 on experimental New York City station W2XAB, and was a 15-minute music program viewed on mechanical television sets. There is scarce ...
and Harriet Lee, are considered lost, as no methods existed to preserve them. Only promotional pictures of the shows still exist. Almost no audio or film material of any television shows from prior to 1948 exist. One of the few exceptions was ''
Hour Glass An hourglass (or sandglass, sand timer, sand clock or egg timer) is a device used to measure the passage of time. It comprises two glass bulbs connected vertically by a narrow neck that allows a regulated flow of a substance (historically san ...
'', an early variety show that ran from 1946 to 1947 and was preserved in the form of audio and, in the case of one episode, still pictures. The debut broadcast of ''
The Ed Sullivan Show ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television program, television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in Septembe ...
'' (then called ''Toast of the Town'') from June 20, 1948, is considered lost. The episode featured what is almost certainly the first television appearance of the comedy act of
Dean Martin Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed "The King of Cool". M ...
and
Jerry Lewis Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian. As his contributions to comedy and charity made him a global figure in popular culture, pop culture ...
. Programs in the early days of television were live broadcasts which are lost because they were not recorded. Most prime-time programs that were preserved as
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s. This was also a common practice for broadcasting live TV shows to the west coast, as performers often performed a show back-to-back, but never three times in succession. Daytime programs, however, were generally not kinescoped for preservation (although many were temporarily kinescoped for later broadcast, episodes recorded in this way were usually discarded).


Networks and stations


CBS

Hosting sequences nearly always featuring celebrities, were sometimes made for telecasts of family films, such as for the first nine telecasts of MGM's '' The Wizard of Oz'' by CBS from 1956. It is not known if those made for ''Oz'' survived since they have not been seen since 1967. One hosting sequence from that era that does survive is the one Eddie Albert made for the 1965 CBS telecast of ''
The Nutcracker ''The Nutcracker'' ( rus, Щелкунчик, Shchelkunchik, links=no ) is an 1892 two-act ballet (""; russian: балет-феерия, link=no, ), originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaik ...
'', starring Edward Villella, Patricia McBride, and Melissa Hayden. It has even been included on the DVD release of the program.


DuMont

During the period the
DuMont Television Network The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...
(1946–1956) remained active, officials of the DuMont network wished to keep its programs as intact as possible. However, the network ceased to exist in 1956 and its archive was discarded in the 1970s. Nearly the entire film archive consisting of approximately 175 television series are missing, presumed destroyed. From the ten years of this network, only about 100 kinescope and originally film episodes of DuMont series survive at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
,
UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the a ...
, the
Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...
in New York, Chicago's
Museum of Broadcast Communications The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) is an American museum, the stated mission of which is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain through our arc ...
, on
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
or
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
, or in private collections. In 1996, early television actress Edie Adams testified at a hearing in front of a panel of the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
on the preservation of American television and video, that little value was given to the DuMont film archive by the 1970s, and that all the remaining kinescoped episodes of DuMont series were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay. This occurred around 1975, according to sworn testimony, to clear room at the New York City warehouse where it was previously being stored. See List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts for more info. Of the over 20,000 shows carried by DuMont in its ten-year existence, approximately 350 or so episodes of DuMont programming are known to exist today, less than two percent of its total output. The remainder were either never recorded (e.g., '' NFL on DuMont'') or were dumped in the earlier purges. At least one of DuMont's shows were archived on its own:
professional wrestling Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
from the Capitol Wrestling Corporation (the direct predecessor to WWE), whose footage of wrestling matches from Madison Square Garden III as well as many matches of 1950s wrestling star Gorgeous George survive as part of WWE Libraries.


ESPN

The first live sporting event broadcast by
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
was the first game of the 1979 Softball World Series in men's professional slow-pitch softball. Roughly 20 years later, the manager of the Kentucky Bourbons, losers in the series, contacted ESPN about acquiring a copy of that game, and was told that this was the only lost broadcast in the network's history. However, it was later found that the owner of the series-winning Milwaukee Schlitz had previously purchased a copy of this broadcast, and still had the tapes in his possession. The tapes were produced and eventually became the centerpiece of an '' E:60'' episode that aired as part of the network's 40th anniversary celebration in 2019.


NBC

NBC reused the tapes of ventriloquist Shari Lewis's 1960–1963 Saturday morning children's program '' The Shari Lewis Show'', to record coverage of the 1964 Democratic and Republican
National Convention The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nation ...
s. Lewis said in an interview decades later that to her, this was a shame, since the shows were beautifully done as a showcase of NBC's early color broadcast work. The
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is an annual parade in New York City presented by the U.S.-based department store chain Macy's. The Parade first took place in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States wit ...
has a majority of its telecasts lost. Many parades were either un-recorded, discarded, or wiped entirely after their only broadcast. Only two parade telecasts from 1980 or prior exist in their entirety (1959, 1976); four others survive only via audio recordings that are up for sale online. Many clips of the NBC telecasts were shown in anniversary specials, showing that some of their telecasts exist. NBC also broadcast the parade locally in 1939 and during the mid-to-late 1940's, but those are also lost, as professional television recording did not exist until after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The joint Japanese and English masters for the original 1960s version of '' Tetsuwan Atom''/'' Astro Boy'' were destroyed in 1975 by NBC after the syndication of the series ended and Tezuka Productions, which was undergoing bankruptcy at the time refused them for lack of funds to receive them. When
The Right Stuf Right Stuf Inc. (formerly known as The Right Stuf International Inc.) is an American video publisher and distributor of video programming that specializes in Asian entertainment (anime and live action films). The company since 2022 is owned by ...
gained the license for the series, they were forced to find broadcast copies of the show and mate them with English sound masters that were still extant.


Program types


Award shows

Several award shows from the 1950s and 1960s, such as the
Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
and the
Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
, only survive in kinescope format. From 1957 to
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in for a full term ...
, the Academy Awards were taped in black and white, but only survive in kinescope format for overseas distribution, especially for the European TV audiences, which used another system (
625 lines 625-lines is a standard-definition television resolution used mainly in the context of analog systems. It was first demonstrated by Mark Iosifovich Krivosheev in 1948. Analog broadcast television standards The following International Telecommun ...
as opposed to
525 lines 525-lines is a standard-definition television resolution used mainly in the context of analog systems. Analog broadcast television standards The following International Telecommunication Union standards use 525-lines: * CCIR System J * CCIR Sys ...
), as the tapes used for late broadcasting were reused. All of the taped broadcasts of the Academy Awards from
1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo ...
onward (the first to be broadcast in color) remain intact.


Children's programs

Approximately half of the episodes of 1957 syndicated cartoon '' Colonel Bleep'' are missing. The entire master archive was stolen in the early 1970s and not recovered. The current collection is taken from tapes sent out to individual stations, approximately half of which have been found. Sixty episodes of the long-running show ''
Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000 ...
'' are missing from the archives of
Sesame Workshop Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-know ...
. This list of lost episodes includes the debut of long-running cast member Linda and Oscar the Grouch's pet worm, Slimey. Some of these episodes only exist dubbed in German from the show's German-language version, '' Sesamstraße'', while raw footage containing street scenes for some of the lost episodes is believed to exist somewhere in the archives. ''The Paul Winchell Show'', also known as ''The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show'' was a children's show hosted by ventriloquist and voice actor Paul Winchell on Metromedia Television's KTTV in
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
. All of the episodes are said to have been lost after station management vindictively erased tapes in 1970 in retaliation after Winchell refused Metromedia's syndication deal and Winchell's offer to buy the tapes for $100,000.00. Winchell sued Metromedia in 1986 and was awarded $17.8 million, in total for the value of the tapes and in damages against Metromedia. Metromedia subsequently appealed to the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
, but lost. In 1995, when Hallmark Cards acquired the catalogue of the American animation studio
Filmation Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live-action programming for television from 1963 until 1989. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1962. Filmation's founders and ...
, they converted all the studio's series from
NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
to PAL. According to
Entertainment Rights Entertainment Rights PLC (formally known as Sleepy Kids) was a British multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that specialized in TV-shows and cartoons, children’s media, films, and distribution. In May 2009, the company was ...
, which acquired the Filmation library in 2004, Hallmark discarded Filmation's original master tapes after they were converted.


Comedy, talk shows and music

Little of the first
sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
, '' The Mary Kay and Johnny Show'', remains today. It was initially live and not recorded, but later in its run kinescopes were made for rebroadcasting. Fragments of episodes and one complete installment are known to exist. The '' Louisiana Hayride'' television program, broadcast in
Shreveport, Louisiana Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population of 393,406 in 2020, is ...
and other local areas, featured the first television appearance of
Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His ener ...
, but only an audio recording taken from the acetate disc of Presley's complete performance, singing "Tweedlee Dee", "Money Honey", "Hearts of Stone", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", "That's All Right" and "You're a Heartbreaker" on the program, has survived. The original broadcast date was March 5, 1955. The 1957 CBS production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's '' Cinderella'' starring
Julie Andrews Dame Julie Andrews (born Julia Elizabeth Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over seven decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy F ...
was believed to be lost for years. It was rediscovered in the late 1990s, but only in black-and-white kinescope; the original color broadcast has been lost. The kinescope has since been released on DVD. A number of episodes of the 1964-65 sitcom ''
My Living Doll ''My Living Doll'' is an American science-fiction sitcom that aired for 26 episodes on CBS from September 27, 1964, to March 17, 1965. It was produced by Jack Chertok and filmed at Desilu studios by Jack Chertok Television Productions, in associa ...
'', originally broadcast on CBS, are either lost or only survive in poor condition. The 2011 DVD release of the first half of the season includes an on-screen plea to anyone who might have prints of the missing episodes. Many of
Ernie Kovacs Ernest Edward Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962) was a Hungarian-American comedian, actor, and writer. Kovacs's visually experimental and often spontaneous comedic style influenced numerous television comedy programs for years afte ...
's videotaped network programs were also wiped. During different times as comedian, writer, and performer Kovacs had programs on all four major television networks ( ABC, CBS, DuMont, and NBC). After Kovacs's death, the networks wiped many programs. Kovacs's widow Edie Adams obtained as many programs and episodes as she could find, donating them to
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
's Special Collections. Almost all of NBC's '' The Tonight Show'' with
Jack Paar Jack Harold Paar (May 1, 1918 – January 27, 2004) was an American talk show host, author, radio and television comedian, and film actor. He was the second host of '' The Tonight Show'' from 1957 to 1962. ''Time'' magazine's obituary of Paar rep ...
and the first ten years (1962–1972) hosted by
Johnny Carson John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He is best known as the host of '' The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (1962–1992). Carson received six P ...
were taped over by the network or destroyed and no longer exist. Carson's shows were preserved by NBC into the early 1970s, but then thrown out to free storage space after the show moved to
Burbank, California Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank has a population of 107,337. The city was named after David Burbank, who ...
. When Carson later learned of their destruction, he was furious. Selected sequences from the 1962–1972 era survive and were often replayed by Carson himself (particularly in the months preceding his retirement in 1992) and have been released to home video; some audiotapes and still pictures of those years also exist, including the introduction to Carson's very first broadcast, which was presented with audio and still images during his final appearance hosting ''Tonight'' in 1992. Some Paar episodes also survive and have also been released to home video (in this case, DVD). Many of the 1960s ''Tonight Show'' episodes only survived in the kinescope format.
Dick Cavett Richard Alva Cavett (; born November 19, 1936) is an American television personality and former talk show host. He appeared regularly on nationally broadcast television in the United States for five decades, from the 1960s through the 2000s. In ...
's ABC shows were also taped over by his network in favor of other shows produced at ABC's studios in New York. Most of the 1980s talk show '' Hot Seat with Wally George'' broadcast before the show going into syndication were destroyed; the producing station ( KDOC-TV in the Orange County, California area) could not afford to archive the show. Many episodes that were nationally syndicated do exist.


Game shows

Game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...
s, more than any other genre, were prone to being lost. Many games between 1941 and 1980 lasted for time periods that were so short (some measured in a span of weeks or even days) that the networks felt it unnecessary to retain them, whereas recycling the tapes would be more profitable and less of an effort than attempting to sell the series in reruns, in an era before
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
. Almost all daytime
game show A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, ...
s from the 1970s and before have been destroyed. CBS's archives begin in 1972, ABC's in 1978, and NBC's in 1980. A handful of producers (such as Goodson- Todman) did arrange for the preservation of their shows even during the tape-recycling period. To a lesser extent, Barry-Enright Productions,
Chuck Barris Productions Barris Industries, Inc. was an American game show production company that was founded by Chuck Barris. History Barris founded his company on June 14, 1965 as Chuck Barris Productions. The company's first series was an unsold pilot called '' Peopl ...
,
Jay Wolpert Jay Wolpert (January 29, 1942 – January 3, 2022) was an American television producer and screenwriter. Life and career Wolpert was born in The Bronx, New York City. His first television appearance came as a contestant on the original version o ...
Productions, and the post-1980 Merv Griffin productions and to an even lesser extent Heatter-Quigley Productions had the foresight to preserve many of their games for later reruns; for years, these shows dominated the
USA Network USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Madi ...
's game show block, then the
Game Show Network Game Show Network (GSN) is an American basic cable channel owned by Sony Pictures Television. The channel's programming is primarily dedicated to game shows, including reruns of acquired game shows, along with new, first-run original and revive ...
(GSN) line-up and now make up a major portion of
Buzzr TV Buzzr is an American digital broadcast television network owned by Fremantle North America, a unit of the Fremantle subsidiary of RTL Group. The network serves as an outlet for the extensive library of classic game shows owned by Fremantle. Buzzr ...
's lineup. '' You Bet Your Life'', from the 1950s, as well as '' The Gong Show'', from the 1970s, was saved from destruction only because NBC gave hosts
Groucho Marx Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (; October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, singer, television star and vaudeville performer. He is generally considered to have been a master of quick wit an ...
and
Chuck Barris Charles Hirsch Barris (June 3, 1929 – March 21, 2017) was an American game show creator, producer, and host. Barris was known for hosting '' The Gong Show'' and creating '' The Dating Game'' and '' The Newlywed Game''. He was also a songwr ...
, respectively, recordings they were otherwise going to discard. '' The Newlywed Game'' (ABC, 1966-1974) Most episodes of the original ABC daytime version are lost, and many of those that do survive are said to have deteriorated. However, a handful have been shown on GSN, most notably the 1974 finale. The ABC nighttime version's status is also unknown for similar reasons, although a few of the evening shows have been shown on GSN's former block "Game Show Saturday Night". Most of the syndicated version exists, and has been rerun on GSN in the past. The original ''
Jeopardy! ''Jeopardy!'' is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given genera ...
'' (NBC, 1964–1975) has less than 1% of its episodes (24 out of 2,753) still in existence. Approx. 130 episodes of ''
The Hollywood Squares ''Hollywood Squares'' (originally ''The Hollywood Squares'') is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965 and the regular series debuted in 1966 on t ...
'' (NBC, 1966–1981) were broadcast on
Game Show Network Game Show Network (GSN) is an American basic cable channel owned by Sony Pictures Television. The channel's programming is primarily dedicated to game shows, including reruns of acquired game shows, along with new, first-run original and revive ...
, mostly the 1968 NBC nighttime version and 1971–1976 syndicated episodes, in addition to one daytime episode; NBC allegedly destroyed the remainder when it was announced that GSN acquired the rights to the ''Squares'' episodes , although several episodes exist at UCLA's Film and Television Archive. '' Snap Judgment'' (NBC, 1967–1969) is completely destroyed (a rarity for a Goodson-Todman produced show) with only one episode existing on audio tape. ''
The Big Showdown ''The Big Showdown'' is an American game show that aired on the ABC television network from December 23, 1974 to July 4, 1975. Jim Peck (in his national television debut) hosted the program and Dan Daniel (then a disc jockey on New York City's W ...
'' (ABC, 1974–1975) has only two full episodes surviving, namely the 1974 pilot and episode #67, which aired in March 1975. A video clip of another bonus round exists, along with an ABC promo and an undated audio clip of an opening. An audio recording of the July 4, 1975, finale exists and circulates among collectors. '' Second Chance'' (ABC, 1977), once thought completely lost other than a pilot episode, has three known episodes surviving, with one (the series finale) only existing on audiotape. '' High Rollers'' (NBC and syndication, 1974–1976 and 1978–1980) has only twelve known episodes remaining: two from the first run and ten from the second, including the finale. '' Winning Streak'' (NBC, 1974–1975) has only two known full episodes remaining plus the opening of a third - one surviving episode is noteworthy in that it was intended to air August 9, 1974, but was preempted due to news coverage of Richard Nixon's resignation and
inauguration of Gerald Ford The inauguration of Gerald Ford as the 38th president of the United States was held on Friday, August 9, 1974, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., after President Richard Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. The ina ...
) ''
Eye Guess ''Eye Guess'' was an American game show created by Bob Stewart and hosted by Bill Cullen, which aired on NBC from January 3, 1966, to September 26, 1969. The game combined a general knowledge quiz with a '' Concentration''-style memory element, ...
'' (NBC, 1966–1969) has only one and a half known episodes remaining. ''
Let's Make a Deal ''Let's Make a Deal'' (also known as ''LMAD'') is an American television musical comedy variety-game show that originated in the United States in 1963 and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The program was created an ...
s 1980-81 run, produced in Canada, only has between 33-40 "airable" masters remaining, in addition to several home recordings. The remaining master tapes are largely missing, or otherwise damaged beyond recovery. ''
Sale of the Century ''Sale of the Century'' (stylized as ''$ale of the Century'') is an American television game show that originally debuted on September 29, 1969, on NBC daytime. It was one of three NBC game shows to premiere on that date, the other two being th ...
s entire original NBC daytime run is gone, save for footage held in museum collections and a handful of clips used in specials. The 1973-74 syndicated version is presumed destroyed as well. The 1980s daytime version is presumed lost through July 12, 1988. No episodes of the daytime version prior to July 13, 1988 have ever aired on USA, GSN, or Buzzr, and the latter has never used any footage prior to that date on social media or in promotions. The July 1988 date was also cited by show staffer Mitt Dawson in a YouTube comment. The 1985-86 syndicated version exists in its entirety. The second version of '' Dream House'' (NBC, 1983–1984) has only a handful of episodes remaining; the show's master tapes were accidentally destroyed by a flood in 2013. The first daytime version of ''
Wheel of Fortune The Wheel of Fortune or '' Rota Fortunae'' has been a concept and metaphor since ancient times referring to the capricious nature of Fate. Wheel of Fortune may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Art * ''The Wheel of Fortune'' (Burne-J ...
'' (NBC, 1975–1989) is nearly destroyed through at least 1979, with a
King World King World Productions, Inc. (also known as King World Entertainment, King World Enterprises, or simply King World) was a production company and syndicator of television programming in the United States independently established in 1964 until acq ...
representative stating in August 2006 that creator Merv Griffin's production company continued reusing tapes into 1985. GSN aired one episode prior to the first cut-off point, a show from 1976 - as well as two shows prior to the 2nd cutoff point, Pat Sajak's debut as host in 1981 and Vanna White's debut as hostess in 1982. Both episodes were sourced from the
Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...
. Additionally, clips of a March 1978 episode were used for a c.-2004 ''Total Living'' interview with original host Chuck Woolery, branded with a then-current (for the interview) GSN logo - the episode Paley Center holds as well. Most other episodes of pre-1980 game shows are lost. With several exceptions, the majority of the Bob Stewart, Heatter–Quigley, Hatos–Hall, Ralph Andrews, Carruthers Company, Barry & Enright, Jack Barry, Ralph Edwards and Merv Griffin have been destroyed prior to 1980. Exceptions include ''
Pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...
'' (Stewart), '' PDQ'' which aired in syndication as well as many episodes of '' Hollywood Squares'' (Heatter-Quigley), the syndicated ''
Let's Make a Deal ''Let's Make a Deal'' (also known as ''LMAD'') is an American television musical comedy variety-game show that originated in the United States in 1963 and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The program was created an ...
'') (Hatos-Hall), '' The Joker's Wild'' and the 1970s syndicated '' Tic Tac Dough'' plus a few rare pilots and "cast aside" episodes. NBC and ABC continued wiping their game shows well into the 1970s; while ABC ceased in early 1978, NBC continued to wipe some shows into 1980, leaving much of their daytime game show content lost. CBS abandoned wiping these programs by September 1972, largely as a result of their collaboration with Goodson-Todman; as a result, even the network's shorter-lived games (such as ''
Spin-Off Spin-off may refer to: *Spin-off (media), a media work derived from an existing work *Corporate spin-off, a type of corporate action that forms a new company or entity * Government spin-off, civilian goods which are the result of military or gov ...
'' and '' Whew!'') still exist in their entirety. Incidentally, all three networks ended their wiping practices during the time Fred Silverman led their respective networks. As late as the late 1970s, American companies that syndicated game shows, such as Odyssey Productions, were more likely to wipe all their videotapes than the three networks were. The syndicated game show '' Dealer's Choice'', which ran throughout 1974 and 1975 in syndication throughout the United States, is believed to have been almost entirely destroyed. (In contrast, because syndication required dozens of copies of a given episode to be produced to be sent to individual stations, that also increased the possibility that "syndication prints" would survive by not being returned to the syndicator.)


News

Some early news programs, such as ''
Camel News Caravan ''The Camel News Caravan'' or ''Camel Caravan of News'' was a 15-minute American television news program aired by NBC News from February 16, 1949 to October 26, 1956. Sponsored by the Camel cigarette brand and anchored by John Cameron Swayze, i ...
'' on NBC, are largely lost. NBC neglected to preserve daily editions of the live two-hour morning program '' Today'' until the late 1970s; as a result, only scattered kinescopes and video segments chronicle the first quarter-century of the show's news coverage. Of the program's inaugural edition in January 1952, only the first half-hour and the last fifteen minutes exist for contemporary viewing. Moving images of Walter Cronkite reading the news in his studio every night for six years (1962–August 2, 1968) are mostly gone. Exceptions are his coverage of the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
in October 1962 and the November 1963 events in Dallas, Texas: the JFK assassination, the shootings of police officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Oswald and all three funerals, as well as his introduction of the Beatles and his criticism of the Vietnam War.
Douglas Edwards Douglas Edwards (July 14, 1917 – October 13, 1990) was an American radio and television newscaster and correspondent who worked for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) for more than four decades. After six years on CBS Radio in the 1940s ...
anchored the live five-minute segment ''The CBS Afternoon News'' five afternoons a week between 1962 and 1966. He started the segment immediately after the twenty-five minute broadcast of the Goodson-Todman game show ''To Tell The Truth''. Not one second from four years' worth of ''The CBS Afternoon News'' was preserved in any way. Studio shots of Peter Jennings inside his ABC studio during his first year there (1965) are also gone.
Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
has kept all evening national news telecasts since Monday, August 5, 1968. Only newscasts that lasted a half-hour were saved. During that era until the 1980s, all three networks continued featuring news updates that lasted five minutes or less and were inserted during commercial breaks. As late as the 1980s, very few were preserved. When anchorwoman Jessica Savitch appeared under the influence of drugs while anchoring ''NBC News Digest'' in 1983, total running time of one minute, NBC employees made no effort to preserve it. When her sudden death in a car accident, three weeks after the live telecast, made people curious about her appearance in the segment, it was discovered that an employee of an NBC affiliate had saved it without knowing its value. The affiliate was far away from New York City where Savitch worked. As of 1997, CBS had saved 1,000,000 videotapes of news reports, broadcasts, stock footage, and outtakes according to a report that year from the National Film Preservation Board. The same report added, "Television stations still erase and recycle their video cassettes", referring to local news programs. Many local stations contract with outside companies for archiving news coverage. The original
slow-scan TV Slow-scan television (SSTV) is a picture transmission method, used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures via radio in monochrome or color. A literal term for SSTV is narrowband television. Analog broadcast te ...
footage of the first human moon landing in 1969, believed to be of significantly higher quality than the standards-converted version broadcast on TV, is missing from
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
's archives. This, among other things, has led to many conspiracy theories about the landings, though both NASA and non-NASA authorities have repeatedly debunked any claims of foul play. See
Apollo 11 missing tapes The Apollo 11 missing tapes were those that were recorded from Apollo 11's slow-scan television (SSTV) telecast in its raw format on telemetry data tape at the time of the first Moon landing in 1969 and subsequently lost. The data tapes were use ...
.


Soap operas

Most US daytime soap opera episodes broadcast before 1978 have been lost. The status of episodes, however, varies significantly from show to show. Soaps produced by
Procter & Gamble Productions The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer h ...
, including '' Search for Tomorrow'', ''
Guiding Light ''Guiding Light'' (known as ''The Guiding Light'' before 1975) is an American radio and television soap opera. It is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the third longest-running drama in television in American history. ''Guiding Light'' a ...
'', '' As the World Turns'', '' The Edge of Night'', and '' Another World'' began preserving their episodes in 1978. A few scattered episodes, mostly black and white kinescopes, of these series exist from the 1950s, 1960s, and early to mid-1970s. The CBS soaps '' Love of Life'' and '' The Secret Storm'', as well as several short-lived shows, suffered the same fate. ABC's ''
One Life to Live ''One Life to Live'' (often abbreviated as ''OLTL'') is an American soap opera broadcast on the ABC television network for more than 43 years, from July 15, 1968, to January 13, 2012, and then on the internet as a web series on Hulu and iTunes ...
'' and ''
All My Children ''All My Children'' (often shortened to ''AMC'') is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970, to September 23, 2011, and on The Online Network (TOLN) from April 29 to September 2, 2013, via Hulu, Hulu Plus, and ...
'' were originally owned by their creator, Agnes Nixon, who chose to archive all episodes. However, early episodes of ''AMC'' were only saved as black-and-white kinescopes despite being produced and telecast in color. ABC purchased the shows in late 1974; different sources report that Nixon's archive was either lost in a fire or erased. A few black-and-white kinescopes of both series' early years exist, as well as a few color episodes. ABC began full archiving of these soaps at Nixon's insistence when they expanded from 30 minutes to an hour—''AMC'' in 1977, and ''OLTL'' in 1978. Most 1963–1970 episodes of ABC's longest-running ''
General Hospital ''General Hospital'' (often abbreviated as ''GH'') is an American daytime television soap opera. It is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the longest-running American soap opera in production, and the second in American history after '' ...
'' survive because the series was then owned by Selmur Productions. Few episodes from 1970 to 1977 were saved. ''
Ryan's Hope ''Ryan's Hope'' is an American soap opera created by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, airing for 13 years on ABC from July 7, 1975, to January 13, 1989. It revolves around the trials and tribulations within a large Irish-American family in ...
'' premiered in 1975, several years before ABC began saving all of its daytime programming, but exists in its entirety as it was originally owned by Labine-Mayer Productions. ''
Dark Shadows ''Dark Shadows'' is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network, from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinspo ...
'', created by Dan Curtis, which ran from 1966 to 1971, has the distinction of being one of the few soap operas to have nearly all of its original episodes preserved. As a result of kinescope, many earlier episodes of which the master film was lost are still available. However, episode #1219 was lost but reconstructed with an audio recording for home video release. The reconstructed episode included, ''Dark Shadows'' is at present the only soap opera to be released in its entirety on home video. It also stands as one of the only American soap operas to have reruns syndicated. Two long-running soaps have full archives: ''
Days of Our Lives ''Days of Our Lives'' (also stylized as ''Days of our Lives''; simply referred to as ''Days'' or ''DOOL'') is an American television soap opera that streams on the streaming service Peacock. The soap, which aired on the American television net ...
'', which premiered in 1965, and ''
The Young and the Restless ''The Young and the Restless'' (often abbreviated as ''Y&R'') is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City (not the real-life similarly-named Genoa City, Wi ...
'', which premiered in 1973. Both series were originally distributed by
Screen Gems Screen Gems is an American brand name used by Sony Pictures' Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. It has served several different purposes for its parent ...
. Though most soap operas made the transition from live broadcast to videotaping their shows during the 1960s, it was still common practice to wipe and reuse the tapes. This practice was due to the high cost of videotape at the time. While soap operas began routinely saving their episodes between 1976 and 1979, several soaps have saved recordings of most or all their episodes. ''
Days of Our Lives ''Days of Our Lives'' (also stylized as ''Days of our Lives''; simply referred to as ''Days'' or ''DOOL'') is an American television soap opera that streams on the streaming service Peacock. The soap, which aired on the American television net ...
'' has recordings of all its episodes; its first two episodes exist on their original master tapes, and were aired by SOAPnet in 2005. ''
The Young and the Restless ''The Young and the Restless'' (often abbreviated as ''Y&R'') is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City (not the real-life similarly-named Genoa City, Wi ...
'', ''
Dark Shadows ''Dark Shadows'' is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network, from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinspo ...
'' and ''
Ryan's Hope ''Ryan's Hope'' is an American soap opera created by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, airing for 13 years on ABC from July 7, 1975, to January 13, 1989. It revolves around the trials and tribulations within a large Irish-American family in ...
'' saved most of their episodes, despite the fact that they debuted during the 1960s and 1970s, before retaining tapes became common practice. Episodes of '' The Doctors'' began to be saved no later than December 4, 1967; this is where reruns of the series began when picked up by Retro Television Network in September 2014, and distributor
SFM Entertainment SFM Entertainment is an American television syndicator, film distributor, production company, and licensing firm established on September 29, 1969.
claims to have roughly 95% of the series' episodes intact in its library. Episodes of other soaps broadcast during the 1950s to 1970s do exist in different forms and have been showcased in various places online.
Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
started saving their shows around 1979. Very few pre-1979 color episodes of the Procter and Gamble-sponsored shows survive, with most extant episodes preserved as monochrome kinescopes. Exceptions include two episodes of '' The Guiding Light'' from November 1977 and another from 1973, which have been released on DVD. '' As the World Turns'' and '' The Edge of Night'' aired live until 1975, the year ''The Edge of Night'' moved to ABC and ''As the World Turns'' expanded from a 30-minute broadcast to one hour. Both shows began taping episodes in preparation for the move of ''The Edge of Night'' to ABC. ''The Edge of Night'''s ABC debut is believed to have survived. Overall, the number of surviving monochrome episodes recorded on kinescope outnumber color episodes for these programs. Agnes Nixon initially produced her series ''
One Life to Live ''One Life to Live'' (often abbreviated as ''OLTL'') is an American soap opera broadcast on the ABC television network for more than 43 years, from July 15, 1968, to January 13, 2012, and then on the internet as a web series on Hulu and iTunes ...
'' and ''
All My Children ''All My Children'' (often shortened to ''AMC'') is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970, to September 23, 2011, and on The Online Network (TOLN) from April 29 to September 2, 2013, via Hulu, Hulu Plus, and ...
'' through her own production company, Creative Horizons, Inc., and kept a complete archive of monochrome kinescopes until ABC bought the shows from her in 1975. When the network decided to expand ''All My Children'' from 30 minutes to a full hour in the late 1970s, Nixon agreed on the condition that the network would begin saving the episodes. ABC complied, and full hour broadcasts began on April 25, 1977. However, different sources indicate that a warehouse fire destroyed the vast majority of the early-1970s kinescopes, or that erasures of the episodes continued. As a result, a few early episodes from these early years survive.


Sporting events


National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the majo ...
(NFL)

As of 2011, 1968's
Super Bowl II The second AFL-NFL World Championship Game (known retroactively as Super Bowl II) was an American football game played on January 14, 1968, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. The National Football League (NFL)'s defending champion Green Bay P ...
is the only
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the gam ...
without any surviving telecast recording. A nearly complete color tape of Super Bowl I was discovered in 2005, but kept secret for nearly five years; portions of telecasts up through Super Bowl V are either missing or only exist in black-and-white. NFL Films, the league's official filmmaker, produced their own copies (at a higher quality than a live television broadcast could produce at the time) of the games for posterity. Super Bowl I was aired by both CBS and NBC (the only Super Bowl to be aired by two networks), but neither network then felt the need to preserve the game long-term; CBS saved the telecast for a few months and re-ran it as filler programming at least once before wiping it. A color videotape containing the first, second and fourth quarters of the telecast from WYOU (the CBS affiliate for Scranton, Pennsylvania, which was then WDAU-TV) was found in 2005 and is in the process of being restored. On January 15, 2016, the NFL Network re-aired the first Super Bowl, featuring audio from
NBC Radio The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (known as the NBC Red Network prior to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in operation from 1926 through 2004. Along with the NBC Blue Network it was one of the first tw ...
and most of the TV network broadcast and newly discovered NFL Films footage of the game.
Super Bowl II The second AFL-NFL World Championship Game (known retroactively as Super Bowl II) was an American football game played on January 14, 1968, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. The National Football League (NFL)'s defending champion Green Bay P ...
was aired exclusively by CBS and was long believed to have been erased, but it was later found that the entire telecast fully exists and rests in the vaults of NFL Films. Though NBC's telecast of Super Bowl III exists entirely in color, only half of the CBS broadcast ''
Super Bowl IV Super Bowl IV was an American football game played on January 11, 1970 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was the fourth and final AFL–NFL World Championship Game in professional football prior to the AFL–NFL merger taking e ...
'' broadcast does (the rest was preserved via Canadian simulcasts in black-and-white). The first three quarters of Super Bowl V broadcast by NBC Los Angeles' O&O station
KNBC KNBC (channel 4) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Corona- ...
exist, but the fourth quarter is missing, though the Mike Curtis interception and
Jim O'Brien Jim O'Brien may refer to: Sports Basketball * Jim O'Brien (basketball, born 1950), American coach for Emerson College, Ohio State and Boston College * Jim O'Brien (basketball, born 1951), American player for the New York Nets and Memphis Sounds *J ...
game-winning field goal were recovered via news highlights from CBC in Canada.
Super Bowl VI Super Bowl VI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Dallas Cowboys and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Miami Dolphins to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the ...
also exists in its entirety. It was not until
Super Bowl VII Super Bowl VII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Miami Dolphins and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Washington Redskins to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for ...
that a continuous archive was established, with all Super Bowl telecasts from that point onward existing in their entireties. Similarly, all of the telecasts of the NFL Championship Games prior to the Super Bowl are believed to have been lost, with all surviving footage of those games coming from separately produced film. The status of most regular season and playoff games from the early years of television up to the immediate years following the 1970 AFL–NFL merger are also unknown. Among the footage that has survived include at least some of NBC's coverage from the 1972 AFC Divisional Playoff game between the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Steel ...
and
Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Ra ...
that featured the
Immaculate Reception The Immaculate Reception is one of the most famous plays in the history of American football. It occurred in the AFC divisional playoff game of the National Football League (NFL), between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders (now La ...
, as well as the inaugural telecast of ''
Monday Night Football ''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, ...
'' from 1970 between the
Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conferenc ...
and the
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The ...
, though several ''Monday Night Football'' games in the ensuing seasons were lost. A 1974 game that featured
John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
being interviewed by Howard Cosell in the booth only survived due to a home video recording of the game; the game itself was wiped by ABC. CBS kept coverage of a 1978 matchup between the
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
and
Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team play ...
that would feature the now-infamous
Miracle at the Meadowlands The Miracle at the Meadowlands was a fumble recovery by cornerback Herman Edwards of the Philadelphia Eagles that he returned for a touchdown at the end of a November 19, 1978, National Football League (NFL) game against the New York Giants in Gi ...
, although the existence of many 1978 games on CBS by private collectors shows that the networks by that point started keeping recordings of regular season games. There are rare exceptions of CBS games from 1977 back, but by
1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 ...
the library of most teams is almost fully complete. The NFL had its own filmmakers, NFL Films, filming the game with its own equipment. Thus, preserving the telecasts on tape was not seen as a priority by the networks when another source was available – though the sportscasters' play-by-play comments, as a result, were lost.


World Football League

Most of the telecasts of the World Football League, which were syndicated nationwide by the TVS Television Network in 1974, were destroyed by TVS. (The ''ad hoc'' network refused to carry WFL games in 1975 after the league failed to sign star quarterback
Joe Namath Joseph William Namath (; ; born May 31, 1943) is a former American football quarterback who played in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons, primarily with the New York Jets. He played college fo ...
; with no national TV revenue, the league folded midway through the season.) Very little broadcast-quality footage survives; fragments of the
World Bowl The World Bowl was the annual American football championship game of the World League of American Football/NFL Europe. The World Bowl was played each year from 1991 to 2007 (except 1993 and 1994). The game was conceived as the final of the NFL-r ...
and playoffs have been saved, as have a few regular season games, including the league's inaugural national telecast (which as of 2000 existed only on a fourth-generation copy of a VHS tape). NFL Films compiled as much footage as it could find from the league for a 2000 episode of its series ''Lost Treasures'', which included segments from most of the broadcast-quality footage and home-recorded
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
s of very poor quality (mainly used as game film to assess performance) that serve as some of the only footage of the Charlotte Stars. The WFL did not have an in-house films division, but cinematographer Lewis Bice did shoot several highlight reels for promotions and television newscasts; when NFL Films found some of Bice's surviving work, they were surprised to see it was at or near their own quality.


The Rose Bowl

* 1958-
Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...
-
Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
: The early minutes of the first quarter, the entire halftime show and early moments of the third quarter, and the final 11 minutes of the game exist. * 1969-Ohio State-
USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses ** South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...
: The entire game is intact * 1970-
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...
-USC: The entire game is intact * 1971-Ohio State-
Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. S ...
: The 2nd quarter all the way to 49 seconds left in the game exist * 1972-Michigan-Stanford: The entire game is intact * 1973-USC-Ohio State: The entire game is intact * 1974-USC-Ohio State: Two minutes left in the second quarter all the way to the end of the game exist. Every Rose Bowl game since 1975 exists in their entireties.


World Series telecasts

All telecasts of all
World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the Worl ...
games starting in
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
( RedsRed Sox) are known to exist in full. What follows is the known footage of World Series telecasts prior to 1975: * 1952 (
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – Games 6–7 are intact. *
1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijiangs ...
(
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – Only the first half of Game 5 is known to exist. *
1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are kille ...
(
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – Only the last three innings of Game 2 are known to exist. Game 3 is intact minus the second and third inning. Game 5 (
Don Larsen Don James Larsen (August 7, 1929 – January 1, 2020) was an American professional baseball pitcher. During a 15-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he pitched from 1953 to 1967 for seven different teams: the St. Louis Browns / Baltimore O ...
's perfect game) is intact minus the first inning, and was aired on January 1, 2009, during the MLB Network's first broadcast day. * 1957 (
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Braves) – Game 1 is intact by way of a print from the United States
Armed Forces Radio and Television Service The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas. Headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, AFN's broadcast operations, which i ...
. Game 3 is intact, minus a snip of
Tony Kubek Anthony Christopher Kubek (born October 12, 1935) is an American former professional baseball player and television broadcaster. During his nine-year playing career with the New York Yankees, Kubek played in six World Series in the late 1950s ...
's second home run in the top 7th inning. Games 6 (most of the first six innings) and 7 reportedly exist as well. *
1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Ja ...
(
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
) – Game 7 (with Bill Mazeroski's series winning home run) was found intact on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
in December 2009 in the wine cellar of Pirates' part-owner
Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...
, who had the game recorded at his own expense. MLB Network aired it in December 2010. *
1961 Events January * January 3 ** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba (Cuba–United States relations are restored in 2015). ** Aero Flight 311 (K ...
(
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Reds) – Half-hour segments of Games 3 (the first two innings and the 9th inning), 4 (the 4th and 5th innings), and 5 (open and top of the 1st inning) are known to exist. * 1963 (
Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one ...
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – Game 3 is intact. *
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in for a full term ...
( Twins
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – All seven games were preserved by the CBC on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
. *
1968 The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – " Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * J ...
( TigersCardinals) – All seven games were preserved by the CBC on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
. ** It is likely the 1965 and 1968 Series were preserved by the CBC due to the Twins' and Tigers' proximity to Canada; the country would not get its own MLB team until the
Montreal Expos The Montreal Expos (french: link=no, Les Expos de Montréal) were a Canadian professional baseball team based in Montreal, Quebec. The Expos were the first Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise located outside the United States. They played in ...
began play in 1969. *
1969 This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon. Events January * January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco. * January 5 **Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to ...
( OriolesMets) – Games 1–2 were preserved by the CBC on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
, while Games 3–5 exist on their original color videotape from "truck feeds". * 1970 ( OriolesReds) – Games 1–4 were preserved by the CBC on
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
, while Game 5 exists on its original color videotape from the "truck feed". Color fragments of the first 4 games exist as well. *
1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses ( February 10, and August 6). The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history. Events J ...
( Orioles
Pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
) – Games 1–2 and 6–7 are intact, while Games 3–5 only partially exist and Game 4 (the first World Series night game) is near-complete. * 1972 ( A'sReds) – Game 4 is intact, along with nearly all of Game 5 and a fair chunk of Game 2. Fragments exist for Games 1, 3, and 6, while Game 7 was missing until it was found in September 2017 with the 7th inning to the end intact. * 1973 ( A'sMets) – Game 1 is intact, Game 2 is missing the last inning and a half (including both Mike Andrews plays), Game 3 is complete minus most of the 10th inning and the 11th inning, Game 4 is intact from the pregame show to the top of the 4th inning, and Game 5 has fragments of the first seven innings and the entirety of the last two innings. About 30 minutes of excerpts from Game 6 survive, while Game 7 cuts off with one out at the top of the 9th inning. ** While the last inning and a half of Game 2 is missing from the Major League Baseball/ NBC copy, the Andrews plays (totaling about 60 seconds of coverage) survived because, after the World Series, NBC put together a 20-minute presentation tape narrated by Curt Gowdy to submit to the
Peabody Awards The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
in order to get consideration for an award for their coverage by the committee; the tape includes the two Andrews plays with Gowdy and
Tony Kubek Anthony Christopher Kubek (born October 12, 1935) is an American former professional baseball player and television broadcaster. During his nine-year playing career with the New York Yankees, Kubek played in six World Series in the late 1950s ...
's calls and analysis of them. The presentation tape is held by the Peabody vault, creating a case where "reconstructing" a game in an incomplete format would require going to two different outlets. *
1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; ...
( A's
Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Broo ...
) – Games 1–4 are complete. Game 5 is near intact, but the top of the 9th inning is missing and only exists on the original radio broadcast.


League Championship Series telecasts

For the League Championship Series telecasts spanning from 1969 to 1975, only 2 games survived, one is Game 2 of the 1972 American League Championship Series (
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
) is known to exist; however, the copy on the trade circuit is missing the Bert Campaneris
Lerrin LaGrow Lerrin Harris LaGrow (born July 8, 1948) is an American former professional baseball pitcher, who played 10 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Detroit Tigers (), (–), St. Louis Cardinals (), Chicago White Sox (–), Los Angeles Dod ...
brawl. The other is Game 1 of the
1973 National League Championship Series The 1973 National League Championship Series was played between the New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds from October 6 to 10. New York won the series three games to two and advanced to the World Series, where they lost to the Oakland Athletics ...
that was covered by New York's then-called WOR-TV and it featured the game all the way up to 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th inning. There are some instances where the only brief glimpse of telecast footage of an early LCS game can be seen in a surviving newscast from that night. * Clips of Game 5 of the 1972 National League Championship Series featuring the then-
Cincinnati Reds The Cincinnati Reds are an American professional baseball team based in Cincinnati. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) National League Central, Central division and were a charter member of ...
announcer
Al Michaels Alan Richard Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television sportscaster currently working as the play-by-play announcer for '' Thursday Night Football'' on Prime Video and in an emeritus role for NBC Sports. He has worked on n ...
calling the two crucial plays of the game, the game-tying home run by
Johnny Bench John Lee Bench (born December 7, 1947) is an American former professional baseball player. He played his entire Major League Baseball career, which lasted from through , with the Cincinnati Reds, primarily as a catcher. Bench was the leader of t ...
and wild pitch bringing home George Foster with the series-clinching run, are available. * The last out of the
1973 National League Championship Series The 1973 National League Championship Series was played between the New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds from October 6 to 10. New York won the series three games to two and advanced to the World Series, where they lost to the Oakland Athletics ...
as described by Jim Simpson was played on that night's '' NBC Nightly News'', but other than that the entire game is gone. * All 3 scoring plays and the last out of Game 4 of the 1974 American League Championship Series was played on that night's '' CBS Evening News''. * On the day the
New York Mets The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. They are one of two major lea ...
and
Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...
wrapped up their respective League Championship Series in 1969, a feature story on the '' CBS Evening News'' showed telecast clips of the
ALCS The American League Championship Series (ALCS) is a best-of-seven playoff and one of two League Championship Series comprising the penultimate round of Major League Baseball's (MLB) postseason. It is contested by the two winners of the American ...
game (albeit with no original sound). This is all that likely remains of anything from that third game of the OriolesTwins series. While all telecasts of World Series games starting with
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
are accounted for and exist, the LCS is still a spotty situation through the late 1970s: * 1976 ALCS – Games 3 and 5 are intact, from the ABC vault. * 1976 NLCS – Game 3 is intact, albeit an off-air recording taped in the Portland market. Apparently, this copy is the only extant version because the ABC vault copy has no sound. * 1977 NLCS – Game 3 is intact, from the
Philadelphia Phillies The Philadelphia Phillies are an American professional baseball team based in Philadelphia. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) National League East, East division. Since 2004, the team's home sta ...
' local NBC affiliate. A copy is held by Major League Baseball, who also appears to have Game 4 as well. *
1977 ALCS The 1977 American League Championship Series was a five-game series played between October 5 and 9, 1977, between the Eastern division champion New York Yankees and the Western division champion Kansas City Royals. The games were played at Yan ...
– Game 5 is intact, with both the
WPIX WPIX (channel 11) is a television station in New York City. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, it is operated under a local marketing agreement (LMA) by Nexstar Media Group, making it a ''de facto'' owned-and-operated station and flagship of ...
and NBC versions existing through off-air recordings. ** Clips of these games may be seen in highlight shows such as ''
Yankeeography ''Yankeeography'' is a biography-style television program that chronicles the lives and careers of the players, coaches, and other notable personnel associated with the New York Yankees Major League Baseball team. The series is aired on the YE ...
''. It is believed that incomplete tapes of the ALCS exist. It is possible these games are not shown in part because the audio quality is poor. A common method of getting around such deficiencies would be to overlay a radio telecast or narration by a player or commentator where gaps exist. * 1978 ALCS – All four games ( ABC version) are intact via off-air recordings. * 1978 NLCS – Game 4 is intact, again from off-air recordings.


NBA Finals

* 1962: Celtics
Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Lakers play thei ...
— Only 24 minutes of Game 7's second half were aired on NBA's
Hardwood Classics ''Hardwood Classics'' is a television series that airs on NBA TV and features many of the greatest classic games recorded on videotape or film in National Basketball Association history. The show is produced by NBA Entertainment. During its earli ...
in March 2005. * 1963: Celtics–Lakers — Game 6 is intact. * 1964: Celtics– Warriors — Second half of Game 4 exists. *
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in for a full term ...
: Celtics—Lakers — only half of the second quarter and the early portions of the third quarter of Game 1 exist. *
1969 This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon. Events January * January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco. * January 5 **Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to ...
: Celtics–Lakers — only the entire 4th quarter of Game 7 exists. * 1970: Lakers– Knicks — Game 7 is intact. *
1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses ( February 10, and August 6). The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history. Events J ...
: Bucks
Bullets A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and con ...
— only nearly all of the second half of Game 4 exists. * 1972: Knicks–Lakers — Game 5 is intact with the exception of the last 3–4 minutes of the game * 1973: Knicks–Lakers — Games 1–4 are missing, while the entire Game 5 wasn't found until 2013 and some of which was shown in the ''
30 for 30 ''30 for 30'' is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This includes three "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series un ...
'' documentary ''When The Garden Was Eden''. *
1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; ...
: Bucks–Celtics — only the 4th quarter and 2nd overtime of Game 6 and the 4th quarter of Game 7 exist. *
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
: Bullets–Warriors — all 4 games are intact. * 1976: Suns–Celtics — all 6 games are intact. * 1977: 76ers–Trail Blazers — all 6 games intact. *
1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 ...
: Sonics–Bullets — Games 1, 5, 6 and 7 are intact. All NBA Finals games since 1979 exist in their entirety.


Preservation by institutions such as museums

Some museums and other cultural institutions, such as the
Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...
, have taken steps to discover and preserve old recordings previously thought to have been wiped or discarded, lost, or misfiled.


''General Hospital''

Virtually all episodes of ''
General Hospital ''General Hospital'' (often abbreviated as ''GH'') is an American daytime television soap opera. It is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the longest-running American soap opera in production, and the second in American history after '' ...
'', from its premiere in April 1963 through to August 1970, are archived at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
. The UCLA Film & Television Archive holds a large number of daytime television airings that were spared from the wiping practice. Also archived there are handfuls of episodes of each soap opera that was on the air from 1971 and 1973, including '' A World Apart'', '' Where the Heart Is'', and '' Return to Peyton Place''.


Vietnam


VTV - Vietnam Television

Lost programs of the national broadcaster
Vietnam Television Vietnam Television ( vi, Đài Truyền hình Việt Nam), or VTV, is the national television broadcaster of Vietnam. As the state broadcaster under the direction of the government of Vietnam, VTV is tasked with "propagating the views of the ...
(VTV) may be due to liquidation of tapes, scratched tapes, etc., but in most cases are due to the erasure of old tapes with new programs, so most of the previous programs on VTV in the pre-2000 period are very difficult to find. *''7 sắc cầu vồng'' (1997 - 1998) *''Câu lạc bộ bạn yêu nhạc'' (1996 - 1998) *''CKX'' (1990s) *''MTV'' (1996 - 2000) *''Nhà nông đua tài'' *''Những bông hoa nhỏ'' (1970 - 1997) *''Nốt nhạc tình yêu'' (1999 - 2000) *''Trò chơi liên tỉnh'' (1996 - 1998) *''Thể dục buổi sáng'' *''Từ ánh mắt đến trái tim'' (1999 - 2000) *''VKT'' (1989 - 1995)


Select list of TV programs with missing episodes


Recovery efforts

The public appeal campaign the
BBC Archive Treasure Hunt BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products (including ...
for the search for lost BBC productions has ended. The BBC still does accept materials and they can be contacted through the "Donating to the BBC Collection" page of the history on the BBC website. In 2006, a life-sized Dalek was given to anyone who found and returned one of the missing episodes of ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...
''. In December 2012, the ''
Radio Times ''Radio Times'' (currently styled as ''RadioTimes'') is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves ...
'' announced it was launching a hunt for more ''Doctor Who'' episodes in aid of the show's 50th anniversary, by publishing their own list of missing episodes and setting up a specific address which the public could email if they had any information. Nine lost 1960s episodes were discovered in storage at a television broadcasting station in Nigeria in 2013. Many lost UK TV broadcasts were found in the personal archives of comedian Bob Monkhouse after his death. The 1951 unaired pilot of the American sitcom '' I Love Lucy'' was long believed lost, but in 1990, the widow of actor Pepito Pérez (who played Pepito the Clown), found a copy. It has since been shown on television.


See also

*
Lost film A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress. Conditions During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy ...
*
Lost media Lost media are pieces of media that are nonexistent, missing, or unavailable to the general public. The term ''lost media'' primarily encompasses visual, audio, or audiovisual media such as films, television and radio broadcasts, music, and video ga ...
* List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts * ''Doctor Who'' missing episodes *
British television Apollo 11 coverage British television coverage of the Apollo 11 mission, humanity's first to land on the Moon, lasted from 16 to 24 July 1969. All three UK television channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, provided extensive coverage. Most of the footage covering the event ...
*
Missing Believed Wiped Missing Believed Wiped is an annual event hosted by the British Film Institute that screens previously "wiped" television material from the UK that has recently been recovered. Missing Believed Wiped was founded in 1993 by Dick Fiddy, who remains ...
*
Kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
*
Film preservation Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the wid ...


References


Further reading

*


External links


List of Lost TV
article category section on The Lost Media Wiki
The Museum of Television and Radio: "Lost" programsTelevision Obscurities – TV's Lost & Found: Television — Lost or Missing2014 BBC ''Treasure Hunt'' pageLost Shows (UK) search engine
TV Brain (formerly Kaleidoscope) website
British TV Missing Episodes IndexWiped News.Com - A news and features website devoted to missing TV, Film & RadioThe hunt for TV’s lost baseball treasuresTelevision Obscurities >> Television — Lost or Missing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lost television broadcasts Television terminology Television broadcasts