Fantastic Shows and Where to Find Them?

 This is intended to be a short little post.


I'm thankful that most shows from Back There are incredibly easy to find. Influential shows like The Jack Benny Program, Life of Riley, Mister Peepers among others are easily found on Youtube or the Internet Archive. However, many shows are still under the iron fist of the original proprietor. I'm not entirely against this, but what I really want to know is, why the inconsistency? The first two seasons of The George Burns and Gracie Allen show were done lived to tape, and afterwards the show was filmed. The taped seasons are easily found, but the filmed seasons are protected. At first I thought it was the filming process which made the show protected, but the Jack Benny show was filmed in its final few seasons, yet those episodes are just as easily found as well.


Giving this more thought, shows like I Love Lucy, Burns and Allen, Lassie, etc, were run by independent companies, just like most shows are today. shows like Jack Benny and Mister Peepers weren't, and were most likely entered into the public domain shortly after ending. Then again, shows like Twilight Zone weren't made by a separate company, and Dragnet was, yet TZ is copyrighted, and Dragnet isn't. It's confusing.


Anyway, this was just a small, stream of consciousness type post. I just find it annoying that I can only (legally) see I Love Lucy when it airs on cable, otherwise spend 26.99 for 10 episodes from a show made so long ago, "Gaylord" was a common first name.


I'm not paying money for a show in which half the cast is dead.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Steve Allen: Extemporaneous Entertainment

Image
 Steve Allen is the most influential man you've never heard of. For over 50 years, he's been a mainstay of radio and television, delighting audiences and fuming sponsors and networks with his off-the-cuff, spur of the moment antics and increasingly inventive ideas for new shows an new laughs. He was a quick thinker on his feet, and he was truly a man who walked so many future entertainers could run. Purportedly, Steve wasn't a big fan of Elvis,  and believed him to be just a flash in the pan. I don't doubt this,  Steve wasn't a huge fan of new things. Stephen Allen was born in 1920, and joined into radio shortly after the second world war. After achieving success there, he moved on to the rising medium of television, where he truly gained fame through his many shows and appearances, most notably his first hosting of the Tonight Show, a new idea meant to be juxtaposed against the already existing Today Show. Though Steve Allen's Tonight Show didn't last as lo...
Read more

Band Leaders: Vintage Rockstars

Image
 Jazz is possibly one of the longest surviving musical genres, rivaling the nursery rhyme. Jazz and its many variants have been around since vaudeville, and to this day still remain a hit. I'm here to talk about a few pioneers in this long-lasting genre, as well as many others. Introducing the band leader, who commanded orchestras and were as well known by themselves as they were as part of a group. They were conductors, songwriters, singers, musicians, they were jacks of all trades and excelled in their field. I liken them to the rockstar of their day, though the genre and the time period may be different, they were just as big. Here's just a sample of three of these stars. Cab Calloway seen here on stage in his trademark "Zoot Suit" Cab Calloway. Cabell Calloway is a man of many firsts. He was the first African American to have a nationally syndicated radio show, which he did alongside Bing Crosby, and his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher," Was the fi...
Read more

Early Television: The Dawn of a New Era

Image
Where to even begin with television? Without sounding like a wikipedia page, the concept of television has been around since the 1800s. However, any version with even a minute resemblance to television now, only came to be in the 1920s. Television broadcasts became commonplace post World War II. For the sake of this editorial, we shall be discussing television from 1950 onward.  After being on radio since 1932, Jack Benny went on to do television for 15 years, with a five year overlap between the TV and radio shows. Well! Television was a completely new media. Interesting to the consumer, but rather daunting for show business. They were now being asked to combine the production scale, time and effort required for film-making, with the regularity and recurring cast members of radio. For some, this was not an issue. Jack Benny, for instance, made his journey into television as early as 1950. Quiz shows also came out of the woodwork at alarming speeds.  Bud Collyer's Beat the Clo...
Read more