TV's Lost Airings

From the advent of the TV until the late 50's, a number of shows were broadcast live, meaning they didn't record the episode then broadcast it later: they actually acted like it was a play. Some are amusing to watch when you see someone mess up; you'd never see that today! Through this time, however, there was a growing sentiment to have shows recorded and broadcast later, that way one could fix the mess ups and redo the messed up scenes. Many shows went from live to recorded very quickly as the 50's ended. There was a problem with recorded shows: the tapes. What was the broadcast company going to do with all those tapes? Tapes weren't cheap, so from the first recorded telecasts in the 30's/40's through the late 70's, a process of tape wiping went rampant through the television industry.

There wasn't a sense that things aired on TV were useful beyond their original airdate, so when the tapes were put into storage. These tapes weren't cared for in a way they would be today. Instead, the tapes had the original broadcast on them until they needed another tape. The TV company would simply wipe over the original broadcast on the tape, then reuse the tape for the next show. It's essentially like taking a VCR tape, recording a show on it, then once you don't need it anymore, you record over it. This meant that an incredible amount of classic TV airings have been lost to time, having only been shown once.

At the time, there was no such thing as a re-run (a great example is when Marty McFly went back to 1955 and said he saw an episode of the Honeymooners on a re-run, and the kid said "What's a re-run?"). Shows aired once, then that was it. Now, we have re-runs on TV, we have Netflix and Hulu to watch series, we can watch shows on TV channel's websites, we can watch series on dvd and blu ray, or we can just download them or watch them from the cloud. We are not used to there being only one copy in existence, and it being erased. The problem is that the TV corporations didn't realize that there might be historical value in this early broadcasts. Some moments from history have been lost, as well as great moments in television history have been lost.

This issue isn't solely an American TV issue because the practice of wiping tapes happened all over the world. Terry Gilliam, member of Monty Python, has said that in the 70's, the BBC said it was going to erase all of the TV show of the Monty Python's Flying Circus, so he bought up every episode to save them, and today they still exist in their entirety from it. But many other broadcasts (even well known ones) weren't so lucky.

Here's a short list of some of the most well-known TV airings that have been completely, mostly, or partially lost:

• 106 episodes from 1960's airings of Doctor Who
• the debut broadcast of Ed Sullivan in 1948
• no episodes of the Vampira Show survived
• most Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from 1962-72 were taped over
• 1968's Super Bowl II
• many episodes of soap operas before 1978 have been lost, in some case whole series have been lost
• the original NASA broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing is missing from NASA archives
• most gameshows from the 70's and before don't exist anymore (only 24 Jeopardy! episodes from 1964-75 exist; only episodes from 1968, 1971-76 of Hollywood Squares exist from the period of 1966-81; Wheel of Fortune episodes from 1975-79 are said to be destroyed; and only 11 episodes of the Match Game during 1962-69 exist)
• many episodes of music shows such as Ready Steady Go and Top of the Pops are lost, most notably including nearly all recordings of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett and the Beatles last live TV performance in 1966

By 1978, the practice of wiping old tapes was for the most part ended in Europe and the US. There have been some instances where copies of old shows have been destroyed, usually because of conflict of ownership. There are still old "lost" episodes of shows that seem to appear. A mostly complete copy of Super Bowl I showed up a couple years ago, and old Doctor Who episodes continue to be discovered every so often. A massive hunt is underway for Doctor Who episodes since 2013 is the 50th anniversary of the series' beginning. However, some shows were just completely erased or never saved in the first place, and still others were lost due to improper storage techniques. This isn't solely a TV problem, since some films have been lost also, but the TV industry thought of itself as a totally disposable medium until they learned what they had by the late 1970's. Sadly, it was already too late for a number of shows.