zlacker

>>thunde+(OP)
I'm surprised there aren't more full tapings of 90's television available, as in entire blocks of broadcasting with all the commercials intact. That was how most recording would have happened, and with the start of TV Land the networks should have been able to predict there'd be a market for it in 30 years.

>>boombo+CI
It might be apocryphal but I vaguely remember reading an article from the late-90s or early-00s where television executives were shocked that people wanted TV box sets. The logic was ... Why would people want to watch reruns? Whole swaths of soap opera episodes were totally lost, the masters being taped over, occasionally found in a box in some remote TV station.

I have a small personal project of cataloging all the movies that played on television in the 90s. There are tons of television shows that are not only not available on DVD or VHS but also seemingly no one has it. Double goes for cartoons, tons just totally unavailable. It is sad.

>>Leonar+uk2
In many cases the original contracts on the shows didn't anticipate all the later viewing options. So to release the shows in a different format you have to get the actors, writers, music, etc all renegotiated.

Hence shows were wiped in the past (since they could never be shown again) and even surviving shows can't be released without a lot of work.