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Author Topic: Can Dream House be restored?  (Read 5130 times)

johnnya2k3

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Can Dream House be restored?
« on: July 28, 2018, 06:37:28 PM »
Five years ago, a flood in Don Reid’s house permanently wiped the entire run of Dream House, and since then, home video recordings of some episodes are all that exists.

But I’m sure somebody managed to salvage those masters and have kept them under lock and key all this time, and there are facilities all over the country that can be able to restore flood-damaged videotapes, as well as “baking” and digitizing them for generations to come. Look at Spin-Off and the CBS Joker’s Wild; they were thought to be gone forever until a remodeling at WCBS proved otherwise.

So hoepefully soon, we could be seeing all those lost episodes of Dream House in its pristine quality once again as was 35 years ago.

/Love to hear Johnny Gilbert read that slate in the same manner he’s done for years

Allstar87

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2018, 08:56:16 PM »
I don't think it was ever said the flood was five years ago...it's just that we first learned of the flood five years ago.

It's possible the tapes had been junked long before then.

SamJ93

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2018, 11:29:47 PM »
Even if the tapes were to be discovered...do you really think people are clamoring to see reruns of a rather mediocre game show that only lasted a year? Especially considering there are still several eps on the trading circuit/YouTube as you said, and there are still numerous other, superior game shows that are almost all completely gone AFAWK (the original Match Game and Sale of the Century come immediately to mind), I'm honestly not too broken up about this loss.
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jjman920

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2018, 11:43:30 PM »
Is there a reason the original Match Game is in such poor shape? Like, I know it being in color wasn't going to be saved because of wiping, but not even kinescopes? Given the care G-T took to preserve their CBS shows (particularly the panel shows), why wasn't the same done for some of their others, particularly their poor record at NBC? Did NBC not even want to do kinescoping?
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BrandonFG

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2018, 12:01:30 AM »
Even if the tapes were to be discovered...do you really think people are clamoring to see reruns of a rather mediocre game show that only lasted a year? Especially considering there are still several eps on the trading circuit/YouTube as you said, and there are still numerous other, superior game shows that are almost all completely gone AFAWK (the original Match Game and Sale of the Century come immediately to mind), I'm honestly not too broken up about this loss.
IIRC, the music reels were destroyed too, which included the show's second theme song. That was on my personal Holy Grail list, so I'm bummed that will probably never see the light of day. It was a very funky piece.
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RMF

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2018, 05:05:11 AM »
Is there a reason the original Match Game is in such poor shape? Like, I know it being in color wasn't going to be saved because of wiping, but not even kinescopes? Given the care G-T took to preserve their CBS shows (particularly the panel shows), why wasn't the same done for some of their others, particularly their poor record at NBC? Did NBC not even want to do kinescoping?

Goodson-Todman put energies into saving most of their primetime programs, starting in the summer of 1952, but seem to have been largely indifferent to doing the same with their daytime programs until 1972- note that there isn't that much in a relative way of the daytime run of the Cullen Price Is Right, almost nothing (as far as we can tell) of the daytime Beat The Clock, how few episodes seem to exist of Play Your Hunch (and that a good hunk of what does exist are primetime episodes), that it appears that nothing from Say When! is held by FremantleMedia, and that no one has found any footage from Snap Judgment.

Even the two main exceptions to this rule aren't that big of exceptions when we consider them in greater detail- the existing daytime episodes of Password are almost solely from the color run and were sold in syndication after the end of the run (and survive in the syndication copies, rather than as originally broadcast), and the existing daytime episodes of To Tell The Truth also seem to chiefly be from the color run and similarly were preserved with syndication in mind (though Goodson-Todman ultimately decided just to revive the series, meaning that these episodes do survive in original format).

Ultimately, then, it seems that the fact that so little exists of the original Match Game is not really something specific to NBC, and certainly not the product of NBC being unwilling to kinescope (there is a massive collection of NBC kinescopes at the Library of Congress, and I've seen kinescopes at both Paley Center and UCLA that have origins from NBC's reference collection), but, rather, reflects that Goodson-Todman weren't especially interested in saving daytime materials in that period unless they thought they could make money off of them later- and that, unlike with Password and To Tell The Truth, that day never came for Match Game.

tyshaun1

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2018, 08:36:24 AM »
Even if the tapes were to be discovered...do you really think people are clamoring to see reruns of a rather mediocre game show that only lasted a year? Especially considering there are still several eps on the trading circuit/YouTube as you said, and there are still numerous other, superior game shows that are almost all completely gone AFAWK (the original Match Game and Sale of the Century come immediately to mind), I'm honestly not too broken up about this loss.

I seem to recall the reason we found out the tapes were destroyed was because GSN was interested in acquiring the rerun rights to the show for a possible revival at one point.

Tyshaun

Jimmy Owen

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2018, 09:39:30 AM »
That's cool that Spin-Off exists, but if it's never shown again, why keep em?
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Dbacksfan12

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2018, 11:02:44 AM »
That's cool that Spin-Off exists, but if it's never shown again, why keep em?
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Jimmy Owen

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2018, 05:02:33 AM »
Thanks Mark.  Looking forward to seeing them someday.
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Ian Wallis

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2018, 08:41:59 PM »
It's great that new discoveries are being made all the time, but if they're never going to be seen, what's the point?  I hope nothing else ever gets erased, but it's been 20 years since Spin-Off was discovered and not a trace of it has appeared anywhere.  Would it have been better not knowing it still exists?

While I liked Dream House and was sorry to hear that it's gone, if neither GSN nor BUZZR is interested in running it, there's no point in trying to restore it.
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TLEberle

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2018, 11:30:30 PM »
Even if the tapes were to be discovered...do you really think people are clamoring to see reruns of a rather mediocre game show that only lasted a year?
I presume that for a format where an $89,000 house-and-land plot can be won every day that the ratings would have to be better than mediocre to hang on for fifteen months.

As to doing a revival, it seems like winning a home falls completely outside either the GSN paradigm of $500 becomes $5000 or the million-dollar game shows that had become en vogue. And given that the game is just toss-up and bonus with questions that would be laughed out of an NAQT read maybe they would have done well to either get just the name and do something else, or maybe give away a massive prize through something other than the Golden Doors.



« Last Edit: August 04, 2018, 01:28:58 PM by TLEberle »
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Jimmy Owen

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2018, 08:01:54 AM »
The original Ron Greenberg version was much more exciting.  Fast paced Q&A buzzer beater.
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tyshaun1

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2018, 09:48:00 AM »
Even if the tapes were to be discovered...do you really think people are clamoring to see reruns of a rather mediocre game show that only lasted a year?
I presume that for a format where an $85,000 house-and-land plot can be won every day that the ratings would have to be better than mediocre to hang on for fifteen months.


Yep. Dream House was more a victim of being the lead out from Wheel of Fortune after its ratings took off than its own ratings.

Tyshaun

Bob Zager

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Re: Can Dream House be restored?
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2018, 11:19:23 AM »
I recall reading an interview with Bob Eubanks, that NOT so many new homes were won on the show, and that Dream Furniture would've been a more appropriate title.

I believe another problem was winners' sometimes having problems acquiring land to build the new homes on, and making it more expensive for them.