[BC] Destroying history

[Scott Fybush]

DHultsman5 at aol.com wrote:

> It is hard to imagine the amount of archiving that the TV networks must be  
> doing now since old programming is worth so much and we have so many cable  
> outlets for the old shows.  I understand that NBC has lost many programs  that 
> were kinescoped in a film warehouse fire many years back.  Just think  how old 
> the stuff is on TV Land.

So much was simply dumped in the days before TV Land and the rest of the 
cable networks came along to make it valuable again.

Here's Edie Adams testifying before Congress in 1996 (via my friend 
Clarke Ingram's excellent DuMont website at 
http://members.aol.com/cingram/television/dumont5.htm):

> I don't know what happened to the (Ernie Kovacs) CBS
> shows, but have recently learned what happened to the
> DuMont shows. That's the early Jackie Gleason
> shows, including the original Honeymooners, Captain
> Midnight (she probably meant Captain Video -ed.) and
> the Kovacs specials. Well, they were taken care of in a
> most unique and swift fashion.
> 
> In the earlier '70's, the DuMont network was being
> bought by another company, and the lawyers were in
> heavy negotiation as to who would be responsible for
> the library of the DuMont shows currently being stored
> at the facility, who would bear the expense of storing
> them in a temperature controlled facility, take care of
> the copyright renewal, et cetera.
> 
> One of the lawyers doing the bargaining said that he
> could "take care of it" in a "fair manner," and he did
> take care of it. At 2 a.m. the next morning, he had
> three huge semis back up to the loading dock at ABC,
> filled them all with stored kinescopes and 2" videotapes,
> drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took
> them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of
> Liberty and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay.
> Very neat. No problem.

One hopes this would not happen today.

s