CrazyAboutTV.com - TV Forums

chikcrazy · Joined: 05 Dec 2012 Posts: 1

I've seen websites, were people are offering full seasons of obscure shows that were on tv for one of two years which probably were never in syndication or offered commercially. These shows don't show any logos like they were recently shown on any TV stations.

Since many of these shows were from the 50s or 60s prior to VCRs, where wuld be people find these shows?

In the early days of syndication, did small local stations receive programming on film. Are there stations around the country where old libraries of lost shows can be found?

Is this where people may be geting their copies?

CrazyAboutTV · Site Admin Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 1151

Many shows from the 50s are ones that were recorded on kinescopes. Those are 16mm films that were shot in the studio off of a video monitor. Often they were used to delay the broadcast of an east coast show for airing on the west coast 3 hours later.

Many other shows may never have been rebroadcast after their original airing either due to the fact that the potential audience was too small to be profitable or because no copies were made of the show except for the fore-mentioned kinescopes that were mostly destroyed after their initial use.

Most people are surprised to learn that the studios really didn't realize that anyone would ever want to watch a repeat of an old show. Desi Arnaz made a deal with CBS when he and his wife decided to produce "I Love Lucy" where they would own the rights to the films of the episodes. CBS executives had no problem with that and couldn't understand why Desi and Lucille Ball would want them. They made millions from those films which are still airing in repeats today, 60 years later!