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Question About Old Kinescope

M

MR5229

There's a performance of the song "To Know Him is to Love Him" by the Teddy Bears recorded on B&W kinescope that's available on youtube, but the picture quality isn't too good. The performance was on the Perry Como Show in 1958 or 1959, and from what I have read, the Perry Como Show was originally filmed entirely in color. My question is, does anyone know if there is a copy of the performance that exist in the original color (videotape) or is the kinescope the only version left?
 
MR5229 said:
There's a performance of the song "To Know Him is to Love Him" by the Teddy Bears recorded on B&W kinescope that's available on youtube, but the picture quality isn't too good. The performance was on the Perry Como Show in 1958 or 1959, and from what I have read, the Perry Como Show was originally filmed entirely in color. My question is, does anyone know if there is a copy of the performance that exist in the original color (videotape) or is the kinescope the only version left?
Click to expand...

Considering how few late 50's color videotapes still exist (you can probably count them on the fingers of one hand), the answer is,with 99 44/100% certainty: no, the tape is almost assuredly long gone. The only late 50's color videotapes I've heard of that have survived are the An Evening with Fred Astaire special, the 1958 dedication of WRC-TV's new studios (including a speech by then-President Eisenhower), and the 1959 "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Khruschev. These tapes were initially preserved and later restored (with great effort and expense) because of their cultural significance. (Actually, in the case of the Astaire special, it was initially preserved for repeat broadcast over the next few years. In fact, while the show originally was broadcast on NBC, when it was repeated on CBS in early 1965, the tape was actually fed by NBC because CBS could not play the tape, which was recorded in an early non-standard incompatible format!)

There's also the final Howdy Doody from 1960, which I believe was preserved as a color tape, plus I have seen on PBS a couple of Ernie Ford shows from late 1960 or early 1961 (his monologue referencing the then-recent election of JFK) on color tape. These few tapes are probably most of what survives in color from the first five years of the videotape era.
 
It's very unlikely that the color videotape exists. By one scholarly survey, only 21 color videotape shows have been saved from the 1950s. No Perry Como shows are on that list, though though the list is not considered exhaustive. Who knows what's hiding in the basements of corporate sponsors, attics of stars' homes...

It was difficult to make a color kine of a color show that looked good.

Videotape was not seen as an archiving medium; it was originally meant as a re-transmission medium, for time delay. So the tapes (about $300 dollars per, back then) were used again and again, as an economy measure. Jeff Kreines wrote in The dawn of tape:transmission device as preservation medium:

"Another force working against videotape as a medium for long-term retention arose from technical issues of the time. For one, the earliest videotape recorders put into use by the networks were, in fact, prototypes. As such, their hand-built record and play- back heads were unique, and not compatible with one another-a tape recorded on one machine could only be played back on that machine. If a show had to be held for a long time-say, five weeks, when Arthur Godfrey went on vacation--CBS stored the heads with the tapes and hoped for the best.
Yet another critical factor in the disappearance of the earliest television tape material lay in the tape itself. From the start, two-inch quad tape proved very difficult to manufacture. "The establishment of sources of supply for video tape has been a bit of a problem--to put it mildly," wrote CBS's Howard Chinn in summer 1957. In addition to requiring much higher tolerances than audiotape, videotape was subjected to much greater physical stress. The video heads that rotated at more than 14,000 revolutions per minute, with pressure on the tape of approximately a thousand pounds per square inch, tended to remove small amounts of the binder that held the oxide particles to the tape. If enough of this binder built up on the drum on which the heads were mounted, the tape could be cut in half as it moved past...
It wasn't just that the networks could tape over programs--in the early years, they often had to, if they wanted to take advantage of what videotape had to offer. The very quality of videotape that can make today's archivists despair-its reusability-was perhaps its chief virtue to early users."
 
Rob Jason said:
It's very unlikely that the color videotape exists. By one scholarly survey, only 21 color videotape shows have been saved from the 1950s.
Click to expand...

Rob, do you have a link to that list, or can post it here? Cos I'm shocked that even that many exist from the 50's. I wonder how many of them have actually been restored, versus how many may physically "exist," but haven't been played in half a century!

Rob Jason said:
No Perry Como shows are on that list, though though the list is not considered exhaustive. Who knows what's hiding in the basements of corporate sponsors, attics of stars' homes...
Click to expand...

The problem, of course, being that even if a rare tape is sitting in an attic or vault somewhere, it may or may not even be playable due to deterioration or obsolescence. (IIRC, in the case of the Astaire special, they had to either build or modify a unit using the original specs and schematics in order to play it.)
 
The problem, of course, being that even if a rare tape is sitting in an attic or vault somewhere, it may or may not even be playable due to deterioration or obsolescence. (IIRC, in the case of the Astaire special, they had to either build or modify a unit using the original specs and schematics in order to play it.)
Click to expand...

http://www.quadvideotapegroup.com/EiesnhowerQuadRestoration.htm

This page provides the explanations of how the Astaire & Eisenhower WRC dedication tapes were copied from '50s era quad tapes.
 
It's sad to hear that barely any color videotape from the 50's/early 60's exists anymore. Especially because from looking at early color TV samples from youtube, the picture quality was pretty good considering that it was the era when TV technology was still budding and growing. The picture quality is just as good as late 80s/early 90s TV. But it also does make sense, as apparently the scarcity and the price of early videotape made archiving impractical. It's somewhat amazing also less than 10 years after the introduction of color videotape, technology had advanced enough where some shows/programs were being archived in color, yet some shows still weren't archived until the mid-70's.
 
These two cutting-edge technologies...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidfire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_recovery

...show great promise for restoring/reconstructing old color tape productions even when the tape no longer exists!

The former is a procedure that processes decent-quality kinescopes (or telerecordings, as they are known in the U.K.) to give them that distinct videotape "look." The latter are processes for recovering color when some remnant of the color information (though not the actual visual color) has been preserved in a B/W videotape or telerecording. (A process vastly different from mere "colorization.")

The two technologies were recently used in the U.K. to restore the pilot episode of Are You Being Served?, which heretofore had existed only as a B/W telerecording. Commentary on the U.K. TV forums indicates that the result is stunning, and virtually indistinguishable from an original color videotape.

Alas, these processes are both complex and expensive, and will likely be used only for a few especially significant productions for which sufficient interest and capital can be raised for restoration. Still, pretty amazing stuff.
 
Given that they were still wiping out and re-using tapes into the early 60s before they finally figured out the value of reruns and clip shows It's hard to imagine much of anything existing before about 1964-65 except a few evergreen specials or historical events. They even lost the video of the premiere of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show from October 1, 1962 (what a mistake)....only a fragmentary audio track of that show, and a number of 1962-63 season Tonight Show episodes, exist today...
 
All these old TV signals are still out there expanding into outer space. Eventually someone will invent a spaceship that will be able to go FTL, get ahead of these signals and record them...and we will have them once again...of course by then, you and I will have been dead for centuries.
 
YEKIMI said:
All these old TV signals are still out there expanding into outer space. Eventually someone will invent a spaceship that will be able to go FTL, get ahead of these signals and record them...
Click to expand...

And they'll be syndicated via kinnies and 16mm reduction prints
to all those non-interconnected stations out in the Milky Way
for airing two light weeks late. Or at least a "light day behind." ;)
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
YEKIMI said:
All these old TV signals are still out there expanding into outer space. Eventually someone will invent a spaceship that will be able to go FTL, get ahead of these signals and record them...
Click to expand...

And they'll be syndicated via kinnies and 16mm reduction prints
to all those non-interconnected stations out in the Milky Way
for airing two light weeks late. Or at least a "light day behind." ;)
Click to expand...

"Programs may be pre-recorded for broadcast at their regularly scheduled time in your intergalactic time zone..."
 
anotherguy said:
I also just found a copy of the tape with President Eisenhower:

http://www.youtube.com/user/oldtvhistory#p/u/5/QKqHZcXvUAs

This was just posted on You Tube yesterday! Could this be as a result of this discussion?

Update: The entire program is here:

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/news/watch/v191020606nr3MbJG#
Click to expand...
This is really cool. This stuff was just restored. I've been searching for this; glad it's out there now for all to enjoy.

Notice the B & W cameras used outside WRC's studios -- but, that's videotape, too. That might make this the second oldest B & W videotape on record...First, being The Edsel Show from 10/13/57 -- with Frank Sinatra. Anyone who has a copy of CBS's 75th anniversary show has a clip of that.
 
Speaking of not being able to play old tapes.....

In the late 1990s or early 2000s, I can't pinpoint the date, NBC-TV had a big special program with all kinds of old clips. On the day after the program, Sam Rubin (KTLA-TV Los Angeles), ran a clip of the NBC Peacock, and then teased, "guess what station helped NBC with their anniversary program?"

As it turned out the old copy of the Peacock was on a tape for which NBC couldn't play. So, NBC called KTLA early on a Sunday because KTLA had the machine that would play the tape. The guy to run the machine was on the golf course, but he came in turned on the old machine and made a copy for the NBC telecast.
 
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