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TV: 60 years ago

Entry posted by atari2600land October 11, 2009

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I was watching my I Love Lucy thing I bought yesterday and today. So far, three episodes have been watched: the unaired pilot, the one where Lucy thinks Ricky is trying to murder her, and the Vitameatavegamin one. I was watching and it began to strike me: TV sure has changed in the last 60 years. We've gone from black and white to color and now ("thanks" to the US Government) to digital, there were only 4 stations back then (if you count DuMont), now there are hundreds of them. You could actually watch TV and see a cigarette commercial. A typical season of a TV show had almost 40 episodes, and ran at 25 minutes long. To compare, a season of The Simpsons has only 20 or so episodes, and they're a few minutes shorter. And another thing struck me: Footage of people shown on TV 60 years ago actually has survived, and not only that, probably digitally remastered, too. That's really creepy when you actually sit down and think about it. I mean, I can watch what people had been doing 60 years ago. Most of the past day though, I spent sleeping and I also went to the pumpkin patch and got a green pumpkin to carve. Yes, I know I'm weird. For fun, I kept pointing at rotting pumpkin "carcasses" and saying "I want that one!" I wore my Halloween shirt, it's an orange shirt with a jack-o'-lantern face cut out (well, actually, the part that is "cut out" is black, but I think you knew what I meant.)

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EricBall 239

Posted October 13, 2009

Some old TV survives, but not a lot. I Love Lucy was shot on film (in front of a live audience) and the original film survived & was discovered to be digitized. But a lot of shows were live to air (and no record survives) or the videotapes were erased, reused, lost, damaged, or are no longer viable (the glue used to stick the magnetic material to the plastic tape ends up sticking the tape to itself or stops sticking).

There's also legal hurdles which have to be crossed. Who owns the rights and whether the rights included DVD rights. This is especially true if music was used, because those have their own rights. (This held up the DVD of Grease for years.) Untangling the rights and negotiating any missing rights can take time & money.

Finally, the DVD mastering process also has a cost (although it's probably a lot less than it was a decade ago). All of these costs may be more than the expected profit, so those shows won't go to DVD - even if they could.

Similar issues are faced by movies & shows which have been released on DVD. The cost of making a Blu-Ray may mean they will never be released again.