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Shows from the 1980s & 1990s that are lost forever?

M

mleach

Maybe some of this is true, others a possible urban legend but a buddy told me last night that there are a number shows from the 1980s & 90s that were destroyed ( tapes erased, locked away, etc.. ).

He was saying that Alan Thicke had just about every episode of his infamous Thicke Of The Nite destroyed.
Yes the show was bad and maybe Thicke himself would love to see this show be erased, but still I can't see the tapes of this show being destroyed the same way a lot of the game shows from the 70s ( and prior ) were.

I also heard that Taco Bell and Pepsi-Cola, they themselves had all tapes of Dana Carvey's 1995 comedy show destroyed because that show was so bad. I have heard that Taco Bell was embarrised by that show but to purchase the tapes and have them destroyed? Sounds to far out there.

Is it possible that there are shows from the 80s & 90s which are really gone forever the same way so much of the shows from the 50s, 60s even 70s are?
 
I can think of a few shows that could fit the category since they haven't been in syndication in reruns since around 1995 or so. These aired in first-run syndication by the way.

Small Wonder (I miss this show)
Out Of This World (starred Maureen Flannigan and Donna Pescow played her mother, Doug McClure was also in it, I miss this show as well)
Munsters Today (with John Schuck and Lee Meriwether playing Herman and Lily Munster)
 
I doubt any shows from the late 70's on will be totally lost forever, unless the rights holder(s) choose to detroy the masters, as Thicke did. But even then, there is still the possibility of a home VCR copy surfacing (that's how a lot of shows' missing episodes have been resurrected in the U.K.) -- not broadcast quality, but a copy nonetheless. And any syndicated or networked show if that era was ultimately recorded somewhere on hundreds if not thousands of professional machines -- whether from capturing a satellite wild feed for later broadcast, or whatever -- how many of those might have been surreptitiously copied or saved is another wild card. So, truly, any show from that era probably still exists somewhere, in some format. How accessible or techincally useable that copy or copies may be is another matter.
 
Braves2005 said:
I can think of a few shows that could fit the category since they haven't been in syndication in reruns since around 1995 or so. These aired in first-run syndication by the way.

Small Wonder (I miss this show)
Out Of This World (starred Maureen Flannigan and Donna Pescow played her mother, Doug McClure was also in it, I miss this show as well)
Munsters Today (with John Schuck and Lee Meriwether playing Herman and Lily Munster)
Click to expand...
20th Century Fox owns Small Wonder (it was originally produced by Metromedia before Fox acquired them); Out Of This World and Munsters Today are both in NBC Universal's vaults. All three shows are still intact because they were still seen in reruns overseas well into the '90s.

But SM and OOTW were very hot in the mid- to late '80s because they were mostly seen back-to-back on Saturday afternoons (just like WWE Superstars/Wrestling Challenge). I remember KTVF here in Fairbanks showing them at 4:00 pm.

Jonathan Allen
 
WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 of Hartford aired "Out Of This World" while WTXX-TV (CW) channel 20 of Waterbury/Hartford aired "Small Wonder". WTXX-TV also aired the two main WWF(E) shows for several years. WHPX-TV (ION) channel 26 of New London, previously known as WTWS-TV (IND), would later air some of the WWF(E) stuff.

Getting back to WFSB-TV, they also aired "She's The Sheriff" with Suzanne Somers and the later updated version of "WKRP In Cincinnati" with Tawney Kitean, et al. That show would later go to WTXX-TV.
 
Programming form the 70s and 80s WAS THE BEST EVER!!!!

Totally destroying it would be stupid beyond werds!!
 
I think that most shows from the 80's or 90's will probably exist in some form or another, but there are probably a lot of them that are just sitting in vaults that may never be seen again because the companies that own them think there isn't any interest in them, which in many cases may be true. But there are also other shows that there may be a demand for that the companies that own them are demanding more money for them than any cable network is willing to shell out or they're unwilling to sell the rights to reruns altogether, so this pretty much has the same effect. On GSN's message board there are continually people who want to see repeats of The Price is Right, especially now with Bob Barker's retirement. However CBS is not allowing any reruns to be aired, even after Barker retires, so these may never be seen again, even though they do exist.

I personally think that copyright laws should be changed to where if the companies that own TV shows, music, etc. don't release the items they own in some form in a certain amont of time (Perhaps 10 or 20 years), whether it's on the air or some recorded form, that they lose their copyrights and the materials they're sitting on would go into the public domain.
 
anotherguy said:
On GSN's message board there are continually people who want to see repeats of The Price is Right, especially now with Bob Barker's retirement. However CBS is not allowing any reruns to be aired, even after Barker retires, so these may never be seen again, even though they do exist.
Click to expand...
Then how do you explain those '70s and '80s episodes of Soul Train they've been showing for months now? We thought they would never be seen again, but low ratings forced Don Cornelius to open the vaults.

Jonathan Allen
 
There is another show that seems to have been lost by many and should be seen again and that is Empty Nest which starred Richard Mulligan, Dinah Manoff, Kristy McNichol, and Park Overall, and was a spinoff of The Golden Girls, and Estelle Getty was a regular as Sophia during the last 2 seasons of the show from 1993 to 1995. I don't know why Buena Vista/Touchstone/Disney hasn't returned it to syndication or a station like Lifetime isn't showing it since it was a spinoff of The Golden Girls.
 
Out of this world was last seen on WUPA UPN 69 in Atlanta in the late 90s.
 
Not shows from 80s and 90s.

Shows from 50s and the 60s, yes.
 
johnnya2k6 said:
anotherguy said:
On GSN's message board there are continually people who want to see repeats of The Price is Right, especially now with Bob Barker's retirement. However CBS is not allowing any reruns to be aired, even after Barker retires, so these may never be seen again, even though they do exist.
Click to expand...
Then how do you explain those '70s and '80s episodes of Soul Train they've been showing for months now? We thought they would never be seen again, but low ratings forced Don Cornelius to open the vaults.

Jonathan Allen
Click to expand...

On my comments I meant that viewers wanted to see reruns of The Price is RIght on GSN, not CBS. I don't know if I was clear enough on that.
 
...I think the only material from the '80s that actually is lost may be some of the pro wrestling productions. You'll see a lot of technical glitches with the earlier tapes of "World Class Championship Wrestling" and "Championship Wrestling from Florida" that pop up on WWE 24/7; in fact, CWF was still using film for some of its interview segments in '80 and '81...
 
Braves2005 said:
I can think of a few shows that could fit the category since they haven't been in syndication in reruns since around 1995 or so. These aired in first-run syndication by the way.

Small Wonder (I miss this show)
Out Of This World (starred Maureen Flannigan and Donna Pescow played her mother, Doug McClure was also in it, I miss this show as well)
Munsters Today (with John Schuck and Lee Meriwether playing Herman and Lily Munster)
Click to expand...

"She's a smaaaaaaall wonder..." I miss this show, too. It was a childhood favorite of mine. My favorite character was Vicki the Robot. I had a crush on Vicki :-* :-[. BTW, the last time and place it aired was 1996 in Los Angeles, CA, on Fox affiliate KTTV Channel 11. I hope this show is not lost forever. To quote Bonnie Brindle, the neighbor, "No na na no no no!" That would break my heart :'(. If it's not lost, I hope that it comes out on DVD, because I think that there's even a better chance of that than of its ever being on TV again.
 
mleach said:
I also heard that Taco Bell and Pepsi-Cola, they themselves had all tapes of Dana Carvey's 1995 comedy show destroyed because that show was so bad. I have heard that Taco Bell was embarrised by that show but to purchase the tapes and have them destroyed? Sounds to far out there.

Is it possible that there are shows from the 80s & 90s which are really gone forever the same way so much of the shows from the 50s, 60s even 70s are?
Click to expand...

If that's indeed what happened to the tapes of the Taco Bell/Diet Pepsi/Mug Root Beer/etc. Dana Carvey Show, that's a shame, I thought that show was brilliant and subversive. Of course, there wouldn't be much of an audience for it in reruns anyway, considering the scant number of episodes and also the fact that many of the skits were very topical and would be dated as hell now.
 
"Thicke Of The Night" Video Tapes

mleach said:
Maybe some of this is true, others a possible urban legend but a buddy told me last night that there are a number shows from the 1980s & 90s that were destroyed ( tapes erased, locked away, etc.. ).

He was saying that Alan Thicke had just about every episode of his infamous Thicke Of The Nite destroyed.
Yes the show was bad and maybe Thicke himself would love to see this show be erased, but still I can't see the tapes of this show being destroyed the same way a lot of the game shows from the 70s ( and prior ) were.
Click to expand...
I taped EVERY episode of "Thicke Of The Night", however I now have only 21 episodes today in very poor EP mode. And this includes the very first episode from 1983. Maybe I should sell them on ebay?
 
If Pepsico was embarrassed over the Dana Carvey show, it wasn't over poor quality or failing to bring the funny...The show was fall on the floor funny, but maybe too hot for network TV. (The skit that got the most attention was the one where Carvey was impersonating Bill Clinton and unbuttoned his shirt so he could nurse some puppies. The lost scenes from "The Wizard of Oz" were good, too..."If I Only Had An Ass".)
 
I was pleasantly surprised the other day to see Nell Carter's comedy "Gimme A Break!" on my local Fox affiliate (WLOV-West Point, MS) after a (presumably) early finish or rain cancellation of Sunday's NASCAR race. I had not seen that show on television in years. It may have been an old tape from their vault, though, because there were a couple of noticable tape creases on the playback, particularly at the beginning.

The two eps that ran: When Joey Lawrence makes his first appearance as the orphan, um, Joey...and an episode from later on in either that season or the next when the youngest girl is protesting the razing of a historic spanish school (and the father, Chief Kaninsky arrests the whole family for trespassing).
 
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