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Lost television broadcasts aretelevision programs that were not preserved after their original airing, rendering them permanently unavailable for bothpublic and private screening. Because of this, they are considered a form oflost media, particularly affectingtelevision shows orfilms that aired before the widespread use ofhome video recording anddigital archiving.[1] A significant portion ofearly television programming was never recorded, largely because recording equipment was unavailable or the content was considered to have littlemonetary orhistorical value.[2]
Wiping and junking arecolloquial terms for actions taken byradio,television, production andbroadcasting companies to erase or destroy oldaudiotapes,videotapes, andkinescopes. Although the practice was once typical, especially in the 1960s and 1970s,[3] wiping is much less common today.[4]
Commercial stations created their own programs, but the majority of locally produced original programming was funded by the government-ownedAustralian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). By June 1964, ABC had produced 185 of the 212 plays, all 31operas, and 90 of the 95 ballets shown on Australian television in that period.[5]
Although many important ABC programs from these early days were captured askinescopes, most of this material was later lost or destroyed. In a 1999 newspaper article on the subject, authorBob Ellis recounted the story of a large collection of kinescopes of early ABC drama productions and other programs, including some of the first Australian Shakespeare television productions and the pioneering popular music showSix O'Clock Rock. Learning that the ABC planned to dispose of these recordings,Bruce Beresford (then a production assistant at the ABC) arranged for a friend to pose as a silver nitrate dealer, and the anonymous collector purchased the films for a nominal cost. Subsequently, the collector occasionally rented some of the recordings out to schools for a small fee. However, the daughter of one of the actors involved (Owen Weingott), recognized her father from a Shakespeare production and told him about it. Assuming that ABC still owned the print and was making money out of these recordings without compensating the actors, Weingott lodged an official complaint. Commonwealth police descended on the illegal collector, but he was warned that they were coming, and in a panic, he destroyed almost all the material he possessed.[6]
No footage is known to exist of the Melbourne version ofTell the Truth.[7]
TheNational Film and Sound Archive holdings of 1950s-era shows include several episodes of the 1957 discussion seriesLeave It to the Girls,[8] most of the 1958–1959 soap operaAutumn Affair,[9] and several episodes of the comedy game showThe Pressure Pak Show.[10]
From 1968 to 1969,Rede Tupi produced new episodes of thetelenovelaBeto Rockfeller by recording over previous episodes; as a result, few of the older episodes survived. After the closure of TV Tupi in 1980, the 536 tapes at its São Paulo studios were transported to a warehouse in the São Paulo municipality ofCotia. They were left to deteriorate there until being recovered by theCinemateca Brasileira in 1985 and subsequently restored byTV Cultura in 1989. Only two Rede Tupi–owned and operated stations are known to have any preserved videotapes;TV Itacolomi's archives are now owned byTV Alterosa, the Minas Gerais affiliate ofSBT in Belo Horizonte. In contrast, almost all ofTV Piratini's material was lost in a fire in 1983, two years after the building of the extinct station was occupied byTVE-RS, the statewide public television station inRio Grande do Sul. The few surviving TV Piratini tapes are stored at the Hipólito José da Costa Communication Museum inPorto Alegre, which are in a heavily deteriorated state.[11] Additionally, a number of tapes at the Rede Tupi studios inUrca,Rio de Janeiro, were later found to have been significantly degraded byvinegar syndrome, so they were unable to be migrated to a modern format. However, part of the library of Rio de Janeiro TV Tupi studios was founded in 2005 at the headquarters ofRadio Tupi and later donated to theBrazilian National Archive, which signed an agreement withGlobo in 2007 to preserve the material.[12][13]
The Brazilian public television networkCultura has preserved many old programs and has one of the most complete archives among Brazilian television networks. Despite having suffered a fire in 1986, this fire did not reach the station's archives.[12]
After the bankruptcy ofManchete in 1999, most of the collection was seized at the station's studios inRio de Janeiro until it was included in the bankruptcy estate and later auctioned by the Brazilian courts, which caused part of the library to be lost.[12] However, sometelenovelas (such asPantanal) had reruns by some television networks (such asSBT andBand).[14]
TheCanadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has rarely wiped programs it has produced. As a result, the CBC now maintains a nearly complete archive of all programming it produced that was recorded.[15] One exception was the 1953–54 science‑fiction seriesSpace Command, of which only one out of 150 episodes are known to survive.[16] However, the whole series was kined for distribution to stations across Canada. The CBC has also said that the 1984–93 music video series,Video Hits, no longer exists in their archives.[17]
During the1973 coup, the military burned a large portion of the publicly ownedTelevisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) archives between 1969 and 1973.[18]
Canal 13 (formerly Catholic University of Chile TV) also had programs whose records are lost or never existed because they were only broadcast live. AlthoughSábado Gigante began in 1962, it only had recorded programs or fragments since the early 1970s. Popular live sitcomEl litre 4916, broadcast between 1963 and 1965, was not recorded and no episodes survive.[19]
Thefirst edition of theEurovision Song Contest in 1956 was broadcast live on radio and television, but only a partial audio recording of a radio transmission has survived from the original broadcast, with an independently filmed clip of the winner's reprise as the only video available. Theninth edition in 1964 was rumored to have been recorded on tape byDR, the Danish broadcaster and that edition's host nation, but was later destroyed in a fire.[20] However, DR later stated that a recording was never made in the first place, as no tape machines were available at the time.[21] Another recording of the contest was thought to have existed at theFrench television archives,[22] but it has since been revealed that this is not the case.[23] The1967 edition of the Italian Sanremo Music Festival, which was broadcast at the time, was long believed a lost media, due to the suicide ofLuigi Tenco; a partial registration was rediscovered in 2017.
Most Flemish youth series from the 1950s were not preserved:Bolletje en Bonestaak (1955),Jan zonder Vrees (John the Fearless, 1956),Schatteneiland (Treasure Island, 1957),Reis om de wereld in 80 dagen (Around the World in 80 Days, 1957), andProfessor Kwit (1958). The seriesManko Kapak (1959) is an exception and survives on kine.[24] Only three of the 12 episodes of the Flemish courtroom drama seriesBeschuldigde sta op from the 1960s to 1980 survive.[25]
In 1997, the Czech Television studio archive inOstrava experienced a devastatingflood. The flood destroyed 30,000 news film shots, 6,000 films, 2,000 video tapes, 9,000 scripts, 10,000 photographs, half of the sound archive and the costume department and the props warehouse.[26]
In Finland, the law on the archiving of TV programs came into effect in 1984. In 1981, Finland held a televised competition to select their musical entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. The only live performance from their semi-final round is of theLeevi and the Leavings, which was discovered in a private collection recorded on a VHS cassette. The original tape fromYle (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) containing all fifteen acts is lost, although all acts that qualified for the final round are available online.[27][28] The majority of these annual competitions held between 1961 and 1984 are now lost.[29]
TheRepublic of Ireland was a latecomer to television, withTelefís Éireann being established at the end of 1961. Although early news broadcasts were recorded onkines, almost all broadcasts up until 1977 are lost. Of the soap operaTolka Row (1964–68) only the last episode survives, while almost all the early episodes ofThe Late Late Show (1962–present) are lost. Even when shows were sent abroad —The Riordans was sent to Australia for rebroadcast — the tapes were often sent back to Ireland and recorded over, as they were so expensive.[30][31]
The 1970s Dutch TV seriesThe Eddy-Go-Round Show hosted by Eddy Becker, despite featuring high-profile guests, is reported to have been largely erased by the broadcaster it aired on.[32] However, a short section featuring Swedish pop groupABBA performing "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" was later uncovered on a tape recorded by a home viewer. An additional episode was later uncovered as the host had kept a copy himself and was later re‑broadcast on a Dutch cable channel in 2012.[33]
Yugoslav Radio Television (JRT) practiced wiping until the 1970s when it gained access to newer and cheaper methods of recording, which allowed it to regularly archive programming.
Of the original 1973Doraemon, 31 segments are now considered lost. The show only lasted for 26 episodes — it was interrupted due to the dissolution of the production studioNippon TV Video, which sold off many of the show's reels in an effort to avoid bankruptcy. Twenty-three segments/episodes are known to have survived, two of which have no audio.[34]
All episodes ofOsamu Tezuka's animeBig X are reportedly lost, except for episodes one, eleven, and 40–59. Only episodes 37 and 38 ofSpace Alien Pipi survive, along with the opening and ending theme. Certain episodes ofPerman are lost, while some have picture but no audio.[35]
Most episodes of the Children's puppet showHyokkori Hyōtanjima, running from 1964 to 1969 onNHK for total of 1,224 episodes, were reportedly wiped after the broadcast. The tapes were reportedly reused for other programs since video tapes were costly. Six episodes have resurfaced from black-and-white kinescopes, as well as 2 color episodes.[36]
Additionally, viewer home recordings also exist and are the only source of video for some shows.[37]
The Center for Media Psychology Research Pakistan website gives a different story, stating that after the switch to color broadcast, the recording medium in the 1970s was the one-inch spool format which recorded sound and electronic moving pictures as a combined stream on a magnetic recording medium. However, the one-inch magnetic spool containing all old archives was eventually lost.[38]
Drama and entertainment output was studio-based and followed the tradition of livetheatre andradio drama.[39]
The Sunday Night Play (a major event in the 1950s) was performed live in the studio. On following Thursdays, because telerecording was then of insufficient broadcast quality, another live performance was broadcast, the artists returning to perform the play again.Black Limelight is a stage play that was adapted for British television three times, with each version being lost. These include a 1952 version as part ofSunday Night Theatre, which was broadcast live and not recorded,[40] a 1956 version as part ofArmchair Theatre[41] and a 1962 version as part ofBBC Sunday-Night Play.[42]
Madhouse on Castle Street, a 1963 BBC teleplay starring a then-unknownBob Dylan, is considered lost. It was erased in 1968, and despite attempts by theBritish Film Institute to recover it, a telerecorded copy has still not been found as of 2020[update].[43]
As of 2023, 97 black and white episodes of the BBC science-fiction seriesDoctor Who are not known to survive, all from the tenures of the first twoDoctors,William Hartnell andPatrick Troughton (seeDoctor Who missing episodes). Audio recordings survive for all of the lost episodes and have been released commercially by the BBC. Several episodes of some serials, includingThe Invasion,The Reign of Terror,The Power of the Daleks andThe Ice Warriors (all episodes only surviving in audio form), were reconstructed using animation for DVD releases.[44]
The BBC wiped many editions ofNot Only... But Also, starringPeter Cook andDudley Moore from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cook and Moore reportedly offered to pay for the cost of preservation and buy new videotapes so that the old tapes would not need to be reused, but this offer was rejected.[45] Sometelerecordings of the black and white episodes survive, but the completed programs on color videotape of the 1970 series were wiped. As a result of this, the only surviving color sketches are the16 mm film inserts.
There is lost material in all genres — as late as the early 1990s, a large number of videotaped children's programs from the 1970s and 1980s were irretrievably wiped by the BBC archives on the assumption that they were of "low priority", without consulting the BBC children's department itself.[46]
Episodes of the pop music chart showTop of the Pops from its first decade were either wiped or, if transmitted live, not recorded.The Beatles' only live appearance onTop of the Pops in 1966, performing the single "Paperback Writer" is believed to have been wiped in a clear-out in the 1970s. An off-air recording of 11 seconds of footage made on an 8 mm film camera was discovered in April 2019.[47]
Live sporting events such as the1954 FIFA World Cup also suffered from significant gaps in coverage and preservation. The BBC, which broadcast select matches in the United Kingdom, relied on coverage provided by the transnationalEurovision Network. As a result, coverage of the 1954 tournament was incomplete. The BBC live broadcast selected matches such as the Hungary's 8–3 group stage victory over West Germany. But other games, like England's match against Switzerland, were only shown as highlights days later. Additionally only the second halves of two quarter-finals and one semi-final were broadcast live, as were parts of thefinal between West Germany and Hungary. Competing priorities within theEurovision Network also meant certain matches were not broadcast at all, such as one semi-final being omitted in favor of an "Agricultural Parade" in Copenhagen. No complete recordings of the tournament are known to exist today.[48][49]
Since the establishment of an archival policy for television in 1978, BBC archivists and others over the years have used various contacts in the UK and abroad to try to track down missing programs. For example, allBBC Worldwide customers — broadcasters around the world — who had bought programs from the corporation were contacted to see if they still had copies that could be returned;Doctor Who is a prime example of how this method recovered episodes that the corporation did not retain. At the turn of the 21st century, the BBC established itsArchive Treasure Hunt, a public appeal to recover lost productions, which has had some success.[50]
The BBC also has close contacts with theNational Film and Television Archive, which is part of theBritish Film Institute and its "Missing Believed Wiped" event which was first held in 1993 and is part of a campaign to locate lost items from British television's past. There is also a network of collectors who, if they find any programs missing from the BBC archives, will contact the corporation with information — or sometimes even the actual footage. Some examples of programs recovered for the archives areDoctor Who,Steptoe and Son,Till Death Us Do Part,Dad's Army,Letter from America,[51]The Likely Lads, andPlay for Today.
The original (unbroadcast) black-and-white recording of the premiere episode of the British seriesUpstairs, Downstairs (1970–1975) does not exist in any form, with the possible exception of a few stills and the location footage which features at the start of the transmitted shot-in-color rerecording of the episode. The original recording took place on 13 November 1970, and was in monochrome, owing to a dispute with studio technicians, the so-calledColour Strike, who refused to work with color recording equipment as part of a work to rule. The following five episodes were also recorded in monochrome, before the dispute ended with the recording of episode 6 in colour on 12 February 1971. After the entire thirteen-episode season run had been recorded, it was decided to rerecord the first episode in colour to gain the highest possible audience for its first UK transmission and to help with overseas sales. The re-recording took place on 21 May 1971, and the series' UK debut was on 10 October 1971.[52]
It emerged in September 2010 that more than 60 recordings of BBC and ITV drama productions originally sent for broadcast in the United States by thePBS stationWNET (which serves New York City andNew Jersey) had been found at theLibrary of Congress.[53]
In 2006, a life-sizedDalek was given to anyone who found and returned one of the missing episodes ofDoctor Who.[54] In December 2012, theRadio Times announced it was launching a hunt for moreDoctor Who episodes in aid of the show's 50th anniversary,[55] by publishing their own list of missing episodes[56] and setting up a specific address that the public could email if they had any information.[55] In 2013, a Nigerian television broadcasting station announced the discovery of ten 1960s episodes, but only later released nine.[57] Philip Morris, who discovered all ten episodes, speculated that the tenth episode was stolen and sold for a profit before it could be returned to the UK.[58]
Live broadcasts in Britain are still not necessarily kept, and wiping of material has not ceased. According to writer and broadcasterMatthew Sweet, there are "big gaps in the record of children's television of the Nineties."[59]
In theUnited States, major broadcast networks engaged in the practice of wiping recordings of both daytime and late-night shows until the late 1970s. Daytime shows, such assoap operas andgame shows, most of which had been taped, were erased because they were perceived as not having continuing commercial value (due to the volume of episodes, rerun syndication of such programming was rarely undertaken). In the early 1970s, the passage of theFinancial Interest and Syndication Rules barred the networks from syndicating their own archived programming; intended to encourage more local and independent content, it had the unintended consequence of prompting the networks to discard tapes that syndication companies had no interest in distributing (especially those in black and white).[60]
Most of the earliest Americanmechanical television programs of the early 1930s, includingThe Television Ghost,Piano Lessons, and variety shows byHelen Haynes andHarriet Lee, are considered lost, as no methods existed to preserve them. Only promotional pictures of the shows still exist.[61]
Hosting sequences (nearly always featuring celebrities) were sometimes made for telecasts of family films, such as for the first nine telecasts of MGM'sThe Wizard of Oz by CBS from 1956. It is not known if the sequences made for Oz survived, since they have not been seen since 1967. One hosting sequence from that era, oneEddie Albert made for the 1965 CBS telecast ofThe Nutcracker, starringEdward Villella,Patricia McBride, andMelissa Hayden, was included on the DVD release of the program and has survived.[62]
The first live sporting event broadcast byESPN was the first game of the 1979 Softball World Series in men's professional slow-pitch softball. Roughly twenty years later, the manager of the Kentucky Bourbons, losers in the series, contacted ESPN about acquiring a copy of that game and was told that this was the only lost broadcast in the network's history. However, it was later found that the owner of the series-winning Milwaukee Schlitz had previously purchased a copy of this broadcast, and still had the tapes in his possession. The tapes were produced and eventually became the centerpiece of anE:60 episode that aired as part of the network's 40th anniversary celebration in 2019.[63]
The Paul Winchell Show, also known asThe Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show was a children's show hosted by ventriloquist and voice actorPaul Winchell onMetromedia Television'sKTTV inLos Angeles. All of the episodes are said to have been lost after station management vindictively erased tapes in 1970 in retaliation after Winchell refused Metromedia's syndication deal[64][65] and Winchell's offer to buy the tapes for $100,000. Winchell sued Metromedia in 1986 and was awarded $17.8 million, in total for the value of the tapes and in damages against Metromedia. Metromedia subsequently appealed to theSupreme Court, but lost.[66]
Among the 50 recorded episodes ofThat Was the Week That Was, on NBC from 10 November 1963 to May 1965,[67][68] only a few survive in video form, yet audio episodes survive onacetate disc.[68] The first-season black-and-white episodes were preserved on kinescope film; the surviving color episodes of the second and final season were recorded in the then-standard two-inch colorquadruplex videotape format. ThePaley Center for Media has copies of some seven episodes, including the hour-long pilot. Also, scripts of all shows survive, both in the NBC Collection at theLibrary of Congress and in the papers of executive producerLeland Hayward at the New York Public Library. Amateur audio recordings of all or nearly all episodes also survive.[69]
The 1951 unaired pilot of the American sitcomI Love Lucy was long believed lost, but in 1990, the widow of actor Pepito Pérez (who played Pepito the Clown) found a copy. It has since been broadcast on television.[70]
The second version ofDream House (NBC, 1983–1984) has only a handful of episodes remaining; the show's master tapes had been destroyed by a flood by 2013.[71]
A number of stories about regular people, such asThe Medicine Music Show with Tommy Scott: The American Trail (1978–1983) were lost en masse during the transition from film to video, although the Tommy Scott episode managed to evade being lost to time.[72]
As of 1997, CBS had saved 1,000,000 videotapes of news reports, broadcasts, stock footage, and outtakes according to a report that year from theNational Film Preservation Board. The same report added, "Television stations still erase and recycle their video cassettes", referring to local news programs.[73] Many local stations contract with outside companies for archiving news coverage.
The originalslow-scan television footage of thefirst human moon landing in 1969, believed to be of significantly higher quality than the standards-converted version broadcast on TV, is missing fromNASA's archives.[74][75]
The Young and the Restless,Dark Shadows, andRyan's Hope saved most of their episodes, despite the fact that they debuted during the 1960s and 1970s before retaining tapes became common practice. Episodes ofThe Doctors began to be saved no later than December 4, 1967; this is where reruns of the series began when picked up byRetro TV in September 2014, and distributorSFM Entertainment claims to have roughly 95% of the series' episodes intact in its library.[76] However, the episodes from the final two years ofThe Doctors are now believed to be lost.[77] Episodes of other soaps broadcast during the 1950s to the 1970s do exist in different forms and have been showcased in various places online.
Super Bowl I was aired by bothCBS andNBC (the only Super Bowl to be aired by two networks), but neither network then felt the need to preserve the game long-term; CBS saved the telecast for a few months and re-ran it as filler programming at least once before wiping it. A color videotape containing the first, second and fourth quarters of the telecast fromWYOU (the CBS affiliate forScranton, Pennsylvania, which was then WDAU-TV) was found in 2005 and is in the process of being restored.[78] OnJanuary 15, 2016, theNFL Network re-aired the first Super Bowl, featuring audio from theNBC Radio Network and most of the TV network broadcast and newly discoveredNFL Films footage of the game.Super Bowl II was aired exclusively by CBS and was long believed to have been erased, but it was later found that the entire telecast fully exists and rests in the vaults of NFL Films.[79]
All telecasts of allWorld Series games starting in1975 (Reds–Red Sox) are known to exist in full.[80] What follows is the known footage of World Series telecasts prior to 1975:
| name | date | description |
|---|---|---|
| The Adventures of Twizzle | 1957 | Every episode of the series is believed to be lost forever except for the first episode. |
| Audrey and Friends | 2002 | A British children's show that aired on5'sMilkshake! andShake! blocks, of which only the pilot, some screenshots, and part of the episode "Away" have resurfaced.[83] |
| Baffle | 1973–1974 | American word-guessing game show. Only three out of 100 episodes still exist. |
| Barley Charlie | 1964 | Australia's third-eversitcom. Out of the 13 episodes produced for the series, only 3 are available. |
| The Bear Bryant Show | 1958–1982 | One of the firstcollege football coaches' shows; over 250 episodes were made duringBear Bryant's tenure at theUniversity of Alabama. Early episodes were aired live and not recorded; videotape began to be used in the 1970s, but was routinely wiped. Less than a third of the run, 77 episodes in all, survives. |
| The Beagles | 1966–1967 | Total TeleVision's last cartoon show, of which only one color episode is known to exist whilst two others are sourced from kinescopes. Despite all the show's negatives having been found in a warehouse in the 1990s, their whereabouts remain unknown due to Joe Harris' passing in 2017. All that remains outside of this material are various animation cels alongside the show's soundtrack. |
| Beat the Clock | 1950–1958 | From March 1950 to July 1952, no live broadcasts of the show were preserved with two exceptions: one episode from October 13, 1951, and another from January 5, 1952. The first one is a "public domain" episode, the second exists at thePaley Center for Media in New York City. The show was not regularly preserved until August 1952, and that is when the earliest known episodes of the show in GSN's catalog begin. |
| Beulah | 1950–1953 | Only seven episodes have survived. |
| Block 13 | 2000–2003 | The last episode of season 3, "Finale", originally broadcast in November 2002, is partially lost. Parts of it are on YouTube.[84] |
| Camel News Caravan | 1948–1956 | An early news program, most of the episodes of the program are believed to be lost to time. |
| Captain Video and His Video Rangers | 1949–1955 | Almost entire run destroyed after theDuMont Television Network ceased to exist; 26 episodes remain. |
| Cavalcade of Stars | 1952–1957 | Popular variety series; dozens of episodes were destroyed in the 1970s. |
| Coke Time with Eddie Fisher | 1953–1957 | Many episodes have been lost, although some (such as one starringFlorence Henderson) have survived. The series was simulcast. All or most of the episodes only survive in audio form. |
| Countdown | 1974–1987 | Numerous episodes including the first episode between 1974 and 1978, were accidentally erased by ABC in the late 70s. |
| Criswell Predicts | 1950s | No material of this Los Angeles–based program exists outside of a re-creation that was made for the filmPlan 9 from Outer Space. |
| Curiosity Shop | 1971–1973 | The majority of the pilot episode (aired in prime time) and series finale exists, while the second episode is held at UCLA's archives; most other material from the series is presumed lost. |
| Doctor Who | 1963–present | Ninety-seven episodes produced as part of the first six seasons are currently lost due to theBBC's policy of erasing and reusing video tapes to save on production costs. All of the missing episodes survive as homemade audio recordings, and some are believed to still exist astelerecordings that were created for international broadcasts of the series. Reconstructions of various episodes have also been created from the surviving audio, ranging from slideshows of recovered stills to digitally animated remakes Every episode produced from 1970 onwards has been properly archived, and the series otherwise continues to be widely distributed. |
| Dollar a Second | 1953–1957 | Only two episodes have survived. A third kined program exists in the J. Fred & Leslie W. MacDonald Collection of the Library of Congress. |
| Doorway to Fame | 1947–1949 | One of the first "talent shows" aired on United States television, only two episodes survive. |
| Dream House | 1983–1984 | Only a small number of episodes are known to survive after the original tapes were destroyed in a flood. |
| Emmerdale Farm | 1972–present | AnITV strike in late 1981 resulted in six episodes set to be broadcast in November and December 1981 not being aired at all. ITV had never shown these episodes and they are believed to have been wiped. |
| Family Affairs | 1949–1950 | None of the six episodes of this, the first[85]television serial remain, as they were not archived by theBBC. |
| Faraway Hill | 1946 | No footage, stills, or scripts survive from this program, which was the first soap opera aired on American television. |
| Gambit | 1972–1976 | More than 1,000 episodes appear to be lost. |
| The Good Night Show | 2005–2016 | Several episodes and segments appear to be lost. |
| The Goldbergs | 1949–1956 | Only the last two seasons survive intact, with the CBS and NBC runs being largely lost. |
| Hour Glass | 1946–1947 | No footage remains of U.S. television's first network variety show, but audio recordings and some still photographs do. |
| In Melbourne Tonight | 1957–1970 | Hundreds of episodes no longer exist. |
| It's Alec Templeton Time | 1955 | One of the last DuMont series. Although Alec Templeton was a celebrity of some note, no episodes exist of the televised version of his program. |
| Jeopardy! | 1964–1975 | Whilst the current syndicated version of the show is largely archived, less than 1% of the original Art Fleming episodes are still in existence. |
| Joy Junction | 1979 | Almost all episodes of theChristianchildren's series are lost due to the show airing no reruns and being pulled from broadcasting.[86] Meanwhile, it has been discovered that theventriloquist Ronald Brown, one of the cast members ofJoy Junction, had desires tokidnap,rape andcannibalize young children, and also possessedchild pornography, children's underwear and photos of deceased children. This discovery led Brown to get the attention of the police in 1998 and later get arrested in 2012 to later be sentenced to 20 years in prison.[87][88][89] |
| Jul og Grønne Skove | 1980 | One of the later examples of lost TV shows, this was a Christmas calendar originally broadcast on Danish television byDR. Half of the 24 episodes were wiped some time in the mid-80s, as were many of DR's productions made before 1987, where DR made an agreement with "Statens Mediesamling" to archive all future productions. |
| The Let's Go Show | 2007–2008 | Thirty episodes have been confirmed; the songs from the first two episodes, "Safari" and "The Moon" and quick clips from the episodes "Park" and "Library" have resurfaced, as has audio from a ballet-related episode, though the rest of the series is lost, despite there being lyric pages for the songs, some of which have been uploaded onSoundCloud, and behind-the-scenes footage on Facebook of the "Concert" and "Fiesta" episodes. Additionally, there are five unconfirmed episodes - "Wild West," "Beach," "Baseball," "Slumber Party," and "Parade," listed on composer Tim Burns'ASCAP account. |
| Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade | 1953–present | Of all parades that were telecast on NBC before 1981, only two are known to have survived in their entirety; several others are only known to survive in the form of audio recordings. In addition, a large majority of CBS' telecasts are presumed lost as well. |
| Mama | 1949–1957 | The vast majority of the episodes produced of this series no longer exist. |
| Mary Kay and Johnny | 1947–1950 | Almost completely destroyed. The show was originally broadcast live and not recorded, but began using kinescopes in 1948. Many episodes from the latter period still existed as late as 1975, but only one complete 1949 episode (in the Paley Media Collection; see their web catalogue) and a few seconds from the show's last few episodes still exist today. |
| Melodies and rhythms of foreign pop | 1977–1984 | Soviet TV music show, dedicated to the international rock and pop music. Out of 59 episodes, broadcast by Channel 1 from 1977 to 1984, only one episode of 1982, dedicated to the memory ofJoe Dassin, survived in the archives. |
| Mindreaders | 1979–1980 | Only around two episodes are known to survive, even though wiping had been largely phased‑out by the "Big Three" United States networks at the time. |
| Mio Mao | 1971–2006 | Early 1971–1977 episodes are lost and one survives, see the page's list of episodes. |
| Newsweek Views the News | 1948–1950 | A prime-time public-affairs program featuring editors ofNewsweek magazine discussing current events; only two episodes survive. |
| Number 96 | 1972–1977 | Most of the black and white episodes were destroyed by the Ten Network as they were deemed not as marketable as the colour episodes. |
| Opera Cameos | 1953–1955 | One of several "cultural" programs aired by theDuMont Television Network as counter-programming, only eight episodes survive of the 50+ episodes produced. |
| The Pinky Lee Show | 1954–1955 | Few episodes of this critically acclaimed TV series have survived. |
| Puttnam's Prairie Emporium | 1988–1990 | The master tapes were reportedly wiped by CKCK-TV in the early 1990s. A single episode (an outtakes and bloopers special), and a few minutes from one other are known to survive. |
| Queen for a Day | 1956–1964 | Almost every episode of this popular TV series was destroyed. |
| Rocky King Detective | 1950–1955 | Original negatives were dumped into Upper New York Bay in the 1970s. |
| The School House | 1949 | Only one episode has survived from early 1949 of this DuMont show, featuring Wally Cox (flubbing his lines in a live DuMont TV set commercial) and Arnold Stang with musical performances set in a high school classroom. |
| Sale of The Century | 1969–1973 1983-1989 | Only two audio recordings from the show's original NBC run are known to have survived. In addition, many episodes from the Reg Grundy revival are missing as well. |
| Sara and Hoppity | 1962–1963 | The master tapes are believed to have all been lost or destroyed. The pilot version of the first episode ofSara & Hoppity was discovered in a 16 mm print along with the 16 mm film reels of all 39 episodes ofSpace Patrol in possession ofRoberta Leigh in the late 1990s. One other episode is known to have been found, while only one minute of silent footage from another was found. |
| Search for Tomorrow | 1951–1982 | Thousands of episodes of this series no longer exist due to wipes done by CBS. However, the J. Fred & Leslie W. MacDonald Collection of the Library of Congress has three kinescopes from 1953, one from 1954, and 39 from May to August 1966. |
| Sense and Nonsense | 1954 | Only one episode survives of this WABD series. |
| Sixpenny Corner | 1955–1956 | The only soap opera ever made byAssociated-Rediffusion, and the first British serial to be broadcast on a non-BBC channel is believed to have been completely destroyed. |
| Snap Judgment | 1967–1969 | A game show believed to be completely wiped from the NBC archives. |
| Starlight | 1936–1949 | The first ever variety show transmitted anywhere in the world, andBBC's first ever program. BBC did not have access to means of recording until late 1949, so no footage is known to exist of this show today. |
| The Match Game | 1962–1969 | Approximately eleven NBC network episodes survive out of the 1,752 episodes produced.[90] |
| The Magnificent Marble Machine | 1975–1976 | An American game show hosted byArt James; only two episodes still exist. |
| The Tammy Grimes Show | 1966–1967 | All surviving episodes are sourced from black and white kinescope copies. The fifth, titled "The Great Charge Account War", was not broadcast on ABC due to its cancellation and has not been seen by the public. |
| The Television Ghost | 1931–1933 | As the show was broadcast at such an early point in television history, no footage of any episode is believed to exist. |
| The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson | 1962–1972 | Only thirty-three 1962–1972 episodes have survived erasure byNBC. |
| Vic and Sade | 1949, 1957 | One TV episode (from the 1957 run) exists, out of ten produced. Much of the preceding radio program is also missing. |
| Young Talent Time | 1971–1988 | Almost all early episodes were erased by theTen Network. |
| Student Canteen | 1958–1990 | ThePhilippines' first noontime variety show. There are still many episodes, including when the show has aired onABS-CBN andRPN, which considered to be lost. |
| Eat Bulaga! | 1979–present | The Philippines' longest-running noontimevariety show. There are still many episodes from 1979 to 1981, including when the show was still produced by Production Specialists, Inc., which considered to be lost. |
| VariousCNN broadcasts | 1980–present | Although CNN does keep extensive footage and news coverage, copies of programming with original presenter links (i.e. the newsreader) are rarely kept. |
Just confirmed that all 395 episodes from 1983/84 Dream House videotape masters were destroyed in a flood with production materials/music.
television's first serial "Family Affairs" made its appearance
