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Oldest Extant Off-Air VHS/Beta Tape You Have

Even more Dallas-area tapes came to my door today. Unfortunately, almost all the tapes were minus ads. Those tapes had Dawson's Creek, The OC, several Animal Planet programs, etc. Only the ones with ads are listed, and there's not many. I got 30 tapes, and 23 were without ads! :(

Tape 1 - Several episodes of "The Mole", an ABC reality game show with Anderson Cooper pre-AC360 as host. All episodes were taped off KXXV-25 Waco, TX in 2001 and include original commercials.
Tape 2 - Mix of 2004 programming: half of an "Extra!" episode taped off KXAS-5 Dallas on 2/5/04 with ads; episode of "Friends" (where Joey is on "Pyramid") off KXAS MINUS ads, Will & Grace KXAS minus ads; then most of the 2nd half of a college basketball game, Texas vs. Baylor taped off FSN on 2/10/04 with ads. Following this is a short clip of "When the Bough Breaks" taped off Lifetime, a short clip of a Phoenix/Toronto NBA game off TNT, a short clip of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone taped off MoreMax, and finally ends up on WMAX (Women's Max) with the last 90 minutes of "The Color Purple," "Beautiful Girls" and "The Rat Pack" with "Next on Wmax" promos between each movie, from 2/10/04.
Tape 3 - "The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry" taped off CBS/KXII-12 Sherman minus ads; episode of A&E Biography minus ads; followed by several hours of TNT programming from November 2003 - Judging Amy, Law & Order, Charmed etc. with commercials.
Tape 4 - Another tape with two episodes of "The Mole", taped off KXXV-25 Waco with commercials.
Tape 5 - "Whose Line is It Anyway" original broadcast taped off WFAA-8 Dallas in early 00s minus ads; several hours of MTV from around 2002 with commercials - includes a show called "Taildaters," an episode of TRL and others.
Tape 6 - Andy Griffith Biography special taped off The Biography Channel in the late 90s/early 00s minus ads; episodes of Emergency! taped off TV Land, some with ads, some without; episode of Hill Street Blues off TV Land with ads, episodes of Rhoda, Family Affair, Petticoat Junction (B/W) and Ironside also taped off TV Land, some ads, some without
Tape 7 - A few "Adam-12" episodes, some I Dream of Jeannie, etc. taped off TV Land in 1999, some with ads and some without.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
Even more Dallas-area tapes came to my door today. Unfortunately, almost all the tapes were minus ads. Those tapes had Dawson's Creek, The OC, several Animal Planet programs, etc. Only the ones with ads are listed, and there's not many. I got 30 tapes, and 23 were without ads! :(

Tape 1 - Several episodes of "The Mole", an ABC reality game show with Anderson Cooper pre-AC360 as host. All episodes were taped off KXXV-25 Waco, TX in 2001 and include original commercials.
Tape 2 - Mix of 2004 programming: half of an "Extra!" episode taped off KXAS-5 Dallas on 2/5/04 with ads; episode of "Friends" (where Joey is on "Pyramid") off KXAS MINUS ads, Will & Grace KXAS minus ads; then most of the 2nd half of a college basketball game, Texas vs. Baylor taped off FSN on 2/10/04 with ads. Following this is a short clip of "When the Bough Breaks" taped off Lifetime, a short clip of a Phoenix/Toronto NBA game off TNT, a short clip of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone taped off MoreMax, and finally ends up on WMAX (Women's Max) with the last 90 minutes of "The Color Purple," "Beautiful Girls" and "The Rat Pack" with "Next on Wmax" promos between each movie, from 2/10/04.
Tape 3 - "The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry" taped off CBS/KXII-12 Sherman minus ads; episode of A&E Biography minus ads; followed by several hours of TNT programming from November 2003 - Judging Amy, Law & Order, Charmed etc. with commercials.
Tape 4 - Another tape with two episodes of "The Mole", taped off KXXV-25 Waco with commercials.
Tape 5 - "Whose Line is It Anyway" original broadcast taped off WFAA-8 Dallas in early 00s minus ads; several hours of MTV from around 2002 with commercials - includes a show called "Taildaters," an episode of TRL and others.
Tape 6 - Andy Griffith Biography special taped off The Biography Channel in the late 90s/early 00s minus ads; episodes of Emergency! taped off TV Land, some with ads, some without; episode of Hill Street Blues off TV Land with ads, episodes of Rhoda, Family Affair, Petticoat Junction (B/W) and Ironside also taped off TV Land, some ads, some without
Tape 7 - A few "Adam-12" episodes, some I Dream of Jeannie, etc. taped off TV Land in 1999, some with ads and some without.

-crainbebo
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Speaking of Anderson Cooper, here's an interesting personal note. A friend of mine from college used to work as a production assistant for AC's ill-fated syndicated daytime talk show Anderson Live. He later went on to work as a booker for Inside Edition and is now an associate producer for ABC News. Small world.

Also, I don't recall TV Land ever airing Hill Street Blues reruns. I'll bet that was before my local cable company picked up the channel.
 
Picked up several more tapes from one of the local flea markets a couple of weekends ago.

TAPE 1: Four or five instructional videos on coaching pee-wee baseball, copied from rental tapes; the rest of the tape consisted of about 90 minutes of music videos and two late-night infomercials (one for Feed the Children and the other for Ronco) on VH1 in April 1992 with commercials...Among the music videos shown were "Jump" by Van Halen, "Broken Arrow" by Rod Stewart, "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton, "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, etc.

TAPE 2: Part one of Christopher Columbus (CBS miniseries) taped from WJKW (now WJW) in Cleveland on 5/19/1985 with commercials--most were IBM commercials, as they were the network's sole national sponsor for the miniseries; last 30 minutes or so of a USFL football game taped from WEWS in Cleveland on 4/7/1985 with commercials and first few minutes of TV5 Eyewitness News at 6:00 (Bill Younkin and Obie Shelton at the anchor desk); last few minutes of another USFL game taped from WEWS in March 1985 with a few ads

TAPE 3: Partial episode of World Class Cuisine, full episodes of Great Chefs and The Popular Mechanics Show, and partial episode of Weekday Wings, taped from the Discovery Channel in June 1996 with commercials; last few minutes of Dirty Dancing (1987) with final performance of "Time of My Life" and all of Footloose (1984) both copied from rental tapes

TAPE 4: Several episodes of Mr. Bean taped from WVIZ in Cleveland in May 1997, promo blocks found after two episodes, one of which leads up to the start of The Metropolitan Opera Presents Andrea Chenier

Also five more tapes of Dark Shadows reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel taped between August and November 1995, all with commercials, including several local ads from the Columbus area shown via Coaxial Cable (now Time Warner Cable). One tape also includes a partial episode of Friday the 13th: The Series on the Sci-Fi Channel in November 1995, also with commercials.
 
Apparently "Hill Street Blues" was on TV Land, in 1999 it aired weeknights at 4AM ET/3AM CT. So the recording was likely time-shifted, with commercials of course.
I do also have to make a correction; my MTV tape was from September 2003. One of the TRL videos was "Hey Ya!" by Outkast, and that was not in the Hot 100 until that year. Too bad it couldn't have been 1983 MTV! I actually don't have any of the 1980s MTV in my collection, just a couple of "Beavis & Butthead" tapes from the mid 1990s with ads. Those I got about 3 years ago.
Finding VH1 from the early 1990s is rare as well. Good find! Apparently that must have been taped by a baseball coach...wonder if he showed the tape (the "how-to-coach" part, not the VH1 part!) to future T-ball/little league coaches.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
Apparently "Hill Street Blues" was on TV Land, in 1999 it aired weeknights at 4AM ET/3AM CT. So the recording was likely time-shifted, with commercials of course.
I do also have to make a correction; my MTV tape was from September 2003. One of the TRL videos was "Hey Ya!" by Outkast, and that was not in the Hot 100 until that year. Too bad it couldn't have been 1983 MTV! I actually don't have any of the 1980s MTV in my collection, just a couple of "Beavis & Butthead" tapes from the mid 1990s with ads. Those I got about 3 years ago.
Finding VH1 from the early 1990s is rare as well. Good find! Apparently that must have been taped by a baseball coach...wonder if he showed the tape (the "how-to-coach" part, not the VH1 part!) to future T-ball/little league coaches.

-crainbebo
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What I found interesting about that VH1 tape is that many of the network idents in between the music videos at that time resembled what a jingle on a radio station would have sounded like back in the day.
 
Scott2013 said:
I've never had one of those C-band satellite dishes, so I know a little about how they work, but not so much on what's available on them. I'm not sure if people who subscribed to C-band dishes in their homes were able to access the Classroom Channel's nightly feeds of documentaries and Channel One News or not. I can remember a couple of my history teachers in middle school screening tapes of Classroom Channel documentaries in class. I also remember my science teacher from my freshman year of high school showing us a tape that started with a few seconds of a Classroom Channel test pattern and program schedule from 1991, but was taped over with a Cable in the Classroom program on the Discovery Channel circa 1994. And of course, I also remember the daily broadcasts of Channel One News being shown on all of our school's classroom TVs through a connection to a VCR in the school library.

In regards to finding home movies on these tapes, I recently found something similar to one on the tape I mentioned before that contained an episode of CMT Crossroads and the UPN special WWF Divas: Sex on the Beach. The tape started with a couple of videotaped speeches made by a former student of Amherst Steele High School in Amherst, Ohio, along with a school news production anchored by the same guy. Throughout the compilation, a few graphics and lower-thirds appeared on screen, which indicated that portion of the tape was likely compiled and edited using a more professional video editing system for its time (1997). One of the graphics was a countdown sequence with the words "Amherst City Cable" printed on the screen. Amherst City Cable is a community access channel available on what is now Time Warner Cable. They must have been the ones who edited these clips. Then after those clips were the CMT Crossroads episode and the WWF Divas special, both from 2002.
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i remember having one of those C-band satellite dishes and i would pick up NFL games and ABC college football regional games that were not seen in my area when i was younger
 
Wild feeds! Wish I had one. C-Band satellites were a treasure trove of who knows what. Especially all the syndicated feeds on the Telstar satellites...where legendary shows like "Babylon 5" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" were fed to stations...with black spots for commercials. I don't think I have any home-recorded tapes that were off a C-Band dish at all.

-crainbebo
 
yep remember all the syndicated feeds on satellite such as "On Scene: Emergency Response", NFL games and college football games like ABC's games since ABC sometimes would do up to six regional games at one time and when NBC would do two baseball times at one time was a good alternative to a antenna
 
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NBC was mainly on Ku-band by the late 1980s, but I suppose you received the NBC baseball games via the PT24 feeds of KCNC Denver and WNBC New York. All of the Denver stations were on C-Band by 1987 or 1988.
 
i also used to get the Optus satellites from Australia which meant lots of rugby league and afl games with rugby league i would get the channel nine backhauls and before that channel ten uninterrupted feeds
 
crainbebo said:
NBC was mainly on Ku-band by the late 1980s, but I suppose you received the NBC baseball games via the PT24 feeds of KCNC Denver and WNBC New York. All of the Denver stations were on C-Band by 1987 or 1988.
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i remember one time watching a backhaul of the oilers raiders game in 1988 and the zebras were calling a lot of infractions and Ray Scott and Joe Namath getting on the referees during the breaks and the game ran so long it preempted Rags to Riches i also might add this was while NBC's regular crews were at the olympics
 
I suppose the summer Olympics that were held in Korea. I have a tape of the WINTER Olympics closing ceremony taped off ABC/KSTP Minneapolis that winter (with ads), but nothing from NBC's Summer coverage. I believe the '88 Winter Olympics in Calgary would be ABC's last Olympics broadcast.
The Denver Big 5 (KCNC/KWGN/KMGH/KDVR/KUSA) were on the Satcom F1 later C1, and with a small fee could be seen nationwide. I believe KRMA (PBS) was also in that set at one time. A few other Big-3 affiliates were also uplinked, for a while WRAL Raleigh for CBS, before it turned into WSEE Erie (with the "One Caribbean Weather" segments instead of local news), KOMO Seattle (ABC) was also uplinked onto Spacenet 4 for Pacific time PT24 in the mid 90s.

-crainbebo
 
during the 1988 olympics i saw a a lot of feeds from Seoul nbc cbc bbc and Australian backhauls same thing with the winter games lots of abc ctv and bbc backhauls
 
A major update...
I have purchased the Honestech box to post my tapes to YouTube. Should arrive next week. I have an account created, called "VHSgoodiesWA". When the converter arrives, I will start posting commercials/promos/newscasts/etc periodically. Not all the time, but occasionally, mostly on weekends. Most of my tapes are a wide range of TV markets...a lot of Seattle, but lots of San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Knoxville TN, some Yakima, etc. as well. Lots of vintage TNT (during infancy) and TBS (dating back to around 1988, maybe 87) and some vintage HBO to post as well from 1984. This is going to be lots of fun!

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
A major update...
I have purchased the Honestech box to post my tapes to YouTube. Should arrive next week. I have an account created, called "VHSgoodiesWA". When the converter arrives, I will start posting commercials/promos/newscasts/etc periodically. Not all the time, but occasionally, mostly on weekends. Most of my tapes are a wide range of TV markets...a lot of Seattle, but lots of San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Knoxville TN, some Yakima, etc. as well. Lots of vintage TNT (during infancy) and TBS (dating back to around 1988, maybe 87) and some vintage HBO to post as well from 1984. This is going to be lots of fun!

-crainbebo
Click to expand...

I am looking Forward to your channel
speaking of which, I need to hook up my Dazzle to convert that tape I mention
a few post up
 
Went to a local rummage sale in Yakima and grabbed two more tapes!

Tape 1 - the movie "Love's Unfolding Dream," taped 12/15/2007 from Hallmark Channel with commercials. SP mode so this is the only contents on the tape.
Tape 2 - "Air Bud" taped off Disney Channel in 1998, tape begins with a jumble of previous recordings including "The Price is Right" and credits to "60 Minutes"; about 30-40 minutes of "Mighty Ducks" taped off Disney Channel; partial episode of "Touched By An Angel" taped 10/5/1997 from KIMA-29 (CBS) with commercials, very beginning of a Cosby (1997) episode taped off KIMA with a few ads including a brief legal ID mentioning a channel 7 translator in Nile, WA; that cuts to the last half hour or so of "The Wind and the Lion" (1975) taped off TNT late one night in 1997 with ads, many direct-response; followed by "Billy the Kid vs. Dracula" (1966) taped off TNT in 1997 with ads. May be more but I don't think so. All of the commercials on this tape will be posted on YouTube very soon.

-crainbebo
 


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