Woolery / Early Sajak 'Wheel' episodes

[Kent Broyhill]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'126574\' date=\'Aug 7 2006, 08:56 PM\']

The official word, as per a representative of King World, is this: Woolery's version and some of Sajak's early years are gone for the same reason as ABC Password. It was the company policy to use and reuse the tapes, a practice which continued until the 80s.
Simply put, the masters ARE gone because they taped over 'em.

Wow...to me that's a bit of a shock that anything from the early '80s is gone, especially with all the talk we heard about 1978 over the years.  I guess you just never know what still might exist and what doesn't.
[/quote]

Ian was told in a letter he received from GSN, after writing in and asking what shows existed or not, that NBC stopped recycling videotape in 1978.  Therefore, he was informed that shows such as Battlestars and the last 2 years of the Marshall daytime Hollywood Squares were still in existance.   This conflicts with the information you got from the King World rep., so it looks like we never can be certain about what is still around!

[Ian Wallis]

Ian was told in a letter he received from GSN, after writing in and asking what shows existed or not, that NBC stopped recycling videotape in 1978. Therefore, he was informed that shows such as Battlestars and the last 2 years of the Marshall daytime Hollywood Squares were still in existance. This conflicts with the information you got from the King World rep., so it looks like we never can be certain about what is still around!

Not quite true.  I wasn't told in exact words that NBC stopped recycling in 1978 - that info was taken from several other places and was widely thought to be accurate on ATGS at the time of my writing; and I'm quite sure I heard Peter Marshall on a daytime talk show in the late '80s or early '90s say "...they're all gone, all but the last couple of years".

Shows like Battlestars were not talked about in the letter because GSN wasn't actively pursuing that library at the time; it was believed to still exist because it occured after the supposed tape erasure in 1978.  I did find out the status of several other shows - info which I've posted in the past - but some of that info would be different now with some of the stuff we now know still exists.

Still, with what's been found in the past couple of years, and the news that Chuck's Wheel was pretty well wiped out (which I now happen to believe), you can never tell for sure what still exists and what doesn't because new things are being discovered all the time.

[Tim L]

In relation to this when WKYC-TV 3 in Cleveland had it's 50th anniversary special in 1998,  There were some clips from the station's Westinghouse years..but not a lot from late 1965 when NBC took control of the station..Until 1978..There was ample clips beyond that date..

[TheFlea]

Still, with what's been found in the past couple of years, and the news that Chuck's Wheel was pretty well wiped out (which I now happen to believe), you can never tell for sure what still exists and what doesn't because new things are being discovered all the time.

--As far as what exists and what doesn't, I tend to take the view that we should say something is "lost" rather that "destroyed" or "wiped out".  Simply put, as Ian said, new things are discovered all the time, and we don't know what may exist in a vault somewhere.  Just look at the 1972-74 episodes of TJW--for years, we assumed they were gone forever, but we were wrong.  They ALL exist, and we were pleasantly surprised to discover this in 2000.  

Additionally, just because the networks no longer have copies of these shows doesn't mean they might not exist somewhere else.  For example, the 2/21/54 episode of What's My Line? is listed by G-T as "lost" and is not in GSN's archive.  Yet, the show is available on the public domain and can be purchased from Shokus Video.  The reason is because even though the master kinescope is gone, Lucille Ball, who was a guest panelist that week, had her own copy.

Unfortunately, a lot of lost shows may very well be gone forever.  We should never stop searching though and never give up trying to preserve these classics for future generations of fans.  

-Flea

[Jimmy Owen]

King World didn't get involved with WOF until 1983, so I'm not making the connection on how they would be an authority on something that happened in the '70s.  When WOF was first floated for once-a-week prime access syndication circa 1977, it was under the auspices of 20th Century Fox television.  I'm pretty sure they would not have a clue about this either.  Why not ask Merv?

[Ian Wallis]

For example, the 2/21/54 episode of What's My Line? is listed by G-T as "lost" and is not in GSN's archive. Yet, the show is available on the public domain and can be purchased from Shokus Video.

Along the same lines, sometimes episodes are "missing" even in libraries we know to exist.  Cases in point:  one of the first-week episodes of Tattletales from 1974 has never aired on GSN, so I think we can assume that it's missing from the Goodson archive.  Same thing for the second episode of the '76 version of Break the Bank.

I find it kind of odd that episodes like that would "disappear" to somewhere, but I guess when ownerships and storage locations changed over the years, it's easy for things to get misplaced, especially when dealing with thousands of tapes.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'129438\' date=\'Aug 28 2006, 11:21 AM\']

For example, the 2/21/54 episode of What's My Line? is listed by G-T as "lost" and is not in GSN's archive. Yet, the show is available on the public domain and can be purchased from Shokus Video.

Along the same lines, sometimes episodes are "missing" even in libraries we know to exist.  Cases in point:  one of the first-week episodes of Tattletales from 1974 has never aired on GSN, so I think we can assume that it's missing from the Goodson archive.  Same thing for the second episode of the '76 version of Break the Bank.

I find it kind of odd that episodes like that would "disappear" to somewhere, but I guess when ownerships and storage locations changed over the years, it's easy for things to get misplaced, especially when dealing with thousands of tapes.
[/quote]

On top of that, from what I read in that testimony about the G-T conversion project, some of the tapes were never properly stored--I believe I read that in some cases the tapes had been lying on loading docks and other open areas for years and years, encased but still not properly stored for optimal preservation.