[Dave A]

Reinhart,

It is a regretable history of archiveing with formats at hand at the time as they thought to save the programs for possible replay later. They did archive but diluted the quality each time as the archive formats were lesser specs than the originals every time.

Kinescope film copies are for another time.

In the beginning. The old quad (2") tapes recorded a fairly good representation of the cameras of the day but "garbage in...garbage out" did apply to those recordings. Cams so so, recording good. I would love to see a quad recording of a modern analog camera but that train left the station. And the quad tapes were expensive so as other formats came along, copies were made to archive and free up the quad tapes (and storage space) but the new formats were lesser quality by large jumps.

EIAJ was the first. BW at first and then color through the late 60's to the mid-70's and not usually a broadcaster archive format. 3/4" color cassettes were next in broadcasting in the mid-70's that the broadcasters used daily. VHS and Beta take up the rear at the time but not in broadcasting as a rule. Just some lucky recordings that have survived by engineers and collectors. 1" helical came along just in time in the late 70's and may be the best of the archives if copied from the original quad.

And then there is the deterioration of all of these tapes in these formats which can strike any of the tape formats.

What we see today is more of a circumstance of good fortune that the tape survived and still plays many generations of copying later.