TV shows on film
 

I have a couple of Bewitched episodes on 16mm film. These are reruns... even worse, they are the later shows with Darrin #2. So, it's safe to say they are from the early 70's. Even has the commercials in them.

Curious... if video tape has been in use since the 1950's, then why would they be putting episodes of a show from 1970 on film? When you were watching that afternoon rerun of Samantha, were you really watching it from film? Or was it from tape?

In the 70's and well into the 80's, Television stations still used film chains
to air rerun TV shows and movies from 16MM, Networks were still airing
from 35MM air prints. Some stations would sometimes purchase a library of movies,
while most TV shows were on a bicycle schedule. The print would be sent on to the next station after airing. Remember, most ads were still being
run from film.
Transferring TV movies and episodic shows began in the late 70's when the
First Rank Cintel flying spot scanners came to the US. These would be transferred to U-matic or One inch tape with some color correction, but as I said, most stations were still using film chains. The shows transferred to
tape would also be bicycled. But film was still widely used by local stations.

I transferred thousands of TV episodes and movies from the early 80's till
the early 90's, usually in four different languages. Sometimes the source
was the original 35MM air print complete with commercials or the 35MM
Fine Grain master or the 16MM syndication print. On a few shows, the
original cut negative was used.

when digital broadcast tape came out in the late 80's and the public was
now used to and demanding better quality,many of these transferred again.
And when high def telecines became reality in the late 90's, and popularity
of tv shows on DVD, transferred again and the sources were usually the best that could be obtained, 35MM fine grains or negatives or new low-con
or interpositive prints of the negatives, with full color correction and dirt
and scratch repair.

There is a alot more to this, but that is the basics of it.

One other thing, most all network episodic shows from the 50's. 60's, 70's, 80,s
and 90's were shot on film. Game shows and variety shows were taped.
Beginning in the 70's, some shows were taped, ie All in the Family, Maude, Sanford
and Son etc, but most were still shot on film until recently.

It's kind of sad that a lot of classic shows in the 70's were shot on tape, they didn't look all that great then and lack the high definition of film when put on DVD, forget about Blu Ray discs of those shows, it would be pointless.
Shows today are done Digitally and in HD and they look fantastic.

I can remember as a small kid in the 60's occasionally seeing a film break on the air, followed quickly by the Stand by for technical difficulties sign, this was probably more of an issue on the small independent stations rather than the networks.

Come to think of it the Stand By sign was quite a common thing back then due to equipment malfunctions, it's unheard of today.

I remember KTTV(11) had a lot of "Standby" issues. Of course that was long before Fox came along.

Shows like "Three's company" were video taped and look awful. I've been watching shows on Netflix like "The Rockford files" and "Quincy" and those were obviously filmed and look spectacular

So you were from So Cal?

I do remember one station in particular seemed to have a lot of trouble, can't remember if it was KTTV but that sounds about right.

I miss the locals though, corny as they were it was fun to watch the local celebrity programs like Tom Hatten & Ben Hunter ("Hunter's College of Obscure Knowledge"), Hobo Kelly on Channel 13 and Metro News 2 on 11 and of course non stop Cal Worthington commercials!

I was born in Downey and lived there(LA area) for my first 38 years I used to watch Hobo Kelly on KCOP at my Grandma's on their Admiral color roundie

Ever notice the dents the animals left on the cars on those Cal Worthington commercials?

Ortho: Thanks for that insight. I had thought tape would have been more common at that point in time. But now that I think about certain shows, I can see how tape really didn't look that good back then and obviously film was the better choice.

Yes, I remember the "stand-by" screens. I didn't see them often, but I did see them.

I have an episode of "Movin' On" on 16mm film. Love watching it. I am also looking for other episodes of that show. let me know of any for sale!.

I remember the slide when CBS had technical difficulties, there was a drawing of a cameraman shrugging his shoulders, looking at us while a repairman with his butt in the air was "working" on the camera and tossing out all sorts of parts, tubes, etc.

Nowhere...here you go but a bit small. Saw this many times working for a CBS affiliate all through the 70's.

I remember watching a NBC movie at home (on my Caufield) in the late 70's when they started the movie with reel #2 after their grand opening montage. It ran about 20 minutes and abruptly went to a trouble slide. The stand-by slide came up and the announcer came on to tell us that the movie would begin again and the late local new would be delayed.

The discussion of film vs. tape quality reminds me that we had a short piece of "Murder She Wrote" on 35mm film to use in the early HDTV tests, but we had to give up on it for several reasons:

1) The film grain was terrible (and we had no high-definition processors to clean it up). CBS subsequently required all new shooting to be on slower fine-grain film;

2) Angela Lansbury's wrinkles became visible, and we had no way to fix them;

3) The shots were framed for 4x3, and the dialog didn't make sense when you couldn't see that the bad guy was holding a gun on Angela L, below the 16x9 frame.

Any one of these problems was sufficiently distracting that the material could not be used for subjective tests of HD.

From what I've heard, this is something that most TV/movie stars DO NOT like about hi def.

Regarding Angela... that's A LOT of wrinkles!! :D

It was a hint untaken....

I remember in the early fifties when the feed bringing network shows down to southeast Texas would go flooey, the card put up on the screen said "Cable Trouble." The ladies upset at missing their show would say, "Why don't they just fix that cable for once and for all."

I've noticed that some of the filmed shows I'm seeing on MeTV/AntennaTV look really great-I think Kojak, for instance, is amazing. When I was a kid my favorite station was WTTG/5 from DC, known for lots of cartoons throughout the day. That "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" really got a workout! Sometimes it seemed like it got used at least once a day. All those old reels of short films, I guess. I wonder if they were still using DuMont equipment? Back then I use to think that there was an announcer sitting there at the station the whole time, ready to do that announcement live as needed...how do I know he really wasn't?

My one filmed TV episode is a copy of My Little Margie, plus a reel previewing the new CBS shows for the fall of 70 as I recall. Film did hang on a long time. I've read that when our area got a new station in 1980 (WMDT) they were a real pioneer in the use of videotape; the competition was still using all film for news gathering.

don't forget that 16mm films were used as back up at the affiliates of a network like abc for example , they were run at the same time the network feed was coming in incase they lost the feed they could switch to the 16mm and keep the show airing , saw it happen a few times , 16mm telecines were at stations everywhere so sending film was the easier way , back in the day a lot of back up prints had the commercials removed and then sent out in syndication or reruns if you prefer on local stations so the films were recycled , tape being inferior and bigger and small independent stations not being equipped to handle it , all had 16mm equipment.
mike