The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: geno57 on February 03, 2007, 09:52:16 AM
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Saw something about this place on the tube recently. Pretty amazing, considering it's actually in Kansas City, Missouri, maybe 12 miles from where I live. Their website actually mentions that there are game shows stored down there. I had thought that these types of facilities were all in Utah or New Mexico.
http://www.huntmidwest.com/subtropolis/case_studies.html (http://\"http://www.huntmidwest.com/subtropolis/case_studies.html\")
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I've heard repeatedly Johnny Carson's post-1972 Tonight Show tapes are stored underground in Kansas.
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I once closed-captioned a newsmagazine-style employee video for Safeway that included a tour of their section of that complex. No game show videotapes, just rows and rows and rows of pallets of not-immediately-perishable supermarket items.
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I saw on some TV special about Johnny Carson that it's a salt mine in which his tapes are preserved...they said something about how the salt helps the preservation of the tapes.
They showed shelves and shelves of old masters, even at one point taking one off the shelf and reading the guest stars off the label.
The man in charge of that section of the mine also mentioned that there are some game shows among the tapes down there.
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That's all well and good, but if we can never see them, they may as well be erased.
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That's all well and good, but if we can never see them, they may as well be erased.
While I'm not hoping for anything else to be erased, I kind of agree with that statement. Even if every game show ever recorded still existed, if a network like GSN never airs them it doesn't do us a lot of good. Example: Spin-Off has recently been reported to exist - but has anyone here actually seen it since the discovery was made?
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[quote name=\'trainman\' post=\'145224\' date=\'Feb 4 2007, 02:26 AM\']
I once closed-captioned a newsmagazine-style employee video for Safeway that included a tour of their section of that complex. No game show videotapes, just rows and rows and rows of pallets of not-immediately-perishable supermarket items.
[/quote]
There are salt mines around Salina, KS that house these reruns. That's where the reruns of Carson are stored.
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[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'145996\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 03:45 PM\']
That's all well and good, but if we can never see them, they may as well be erased.
While I'm not hoping for anything else to be erased, I kind of agree with that statement. Even if every game show ever recorded still existed, if a network like GSN never airs them it doesn't do us a lot of good. Example: Spin-Off has recently been reported to exist - but has anyone here actually seen it since the discovery was made?
[/quote]
I just wrote GSN and asked them to consider adding Spin-Off to their lineup, even if it means running it overnight. They are indeed the only network where rerunning it would make any sense. But even if they never touch it, that doesn't mean it should be erased. God forbid!!!!! We've lost too many irreplaceable game show eps as it stands now. If only local stations could be convinced to rerun it the way they used to do with Password and You Don't Say!.
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[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' post=\'146034\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 06:25 PM\']
I just wrote GSN and asked them to consider adding Spin-Off to their lineup, even if it means running it overnight.
[/quote]
I have to ask.
What do you think the chances are of that letter having, well, any effect whatsoever?
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[quote name=\'cool245\' post=\'146037\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 09:50 PM\']
[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' post=\'146034\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 09:25 PM\']If only local stations could be convinced to rerun it the way they used to do with Password and You Don't Say!.
[/quote]
Local stations rerunning old sitcoms is one thing, but I highly doubt many (if any) will be interested in running a decades old game show.
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That ran for what, 13 weeks?
GSN won't even air the 70s "Squares" eps. So, again, why would they air an obscure blink-and-miss-it show, unless they do one of those Sunday overnight shifts.
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I don't want to offer any false hope for ever seeing "Spin-Off" again, but the 1976-77 Nicholson-Muir version of "Howdy Doody" came out some years ago on DVD, so at least those tapes were well-preserved.
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[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'146041\' date=\'Feb 16 2007, 12:15 AM\']
I don't want to offer any false hope for ever seeing "Spin-Off" again, but the 1976-77 Nicholson-Muir version of "Howdy Doody" came out some years ago on DVD, so at least those tapes were well-preserved.
[/quote]
I remember watching that version of HD in first run, and I always thought Nicholson-Muir did the original 50's episodes as well.
There were 2 good things about that 70's version, though:
1) No Crockpots were given away to the Peanut Gallery, and
2) Happy Harmony! (If you remember the show, you know what I'm talking about).
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'146036\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 09:46 PM\']
[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' post=\'146034\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 06:25 PM\']
I just wrote GSN and asked them to consider adding Spin-Off to their lineup, even if it means running it overnight.
[/quote]
I have to ask.
What do you think the chances are of that letter having, well, any effect whatsoever?
[/quote]
Well, I can't speak for DjohnsonCB, but I've written a few e-mails to GSN, and they've been surprisingly responsive. For example, I gently complained about the way a GSN bumper was being inserted into Collyer's "To Tell the Truth," and darned if they didn't tweak it. I also suggested that, since they'd abandoned the "Black & White Overnight" moniker, they might consider rerunning classic game shows in color - and what do you know, that's what we've been getting the past couple of months in the small hours of Monday.
(To go off topic, I once e-mailed Turner Classic Movies, suggesting they run a relatively obscure film I'd spotted on one of the other Turner networks, TNT or TBS, and I was fairly astonished when TCM did run it, some nine months later.)
Now, it's entirely possible that my e-mails had no effect whatsoever, and that what happened with GSN was just a happy coincidence. And I suppose if I were to write to GSN, pleading for five-morning-a-week reruns of the syndicated "What's My Line?" or "To Tell the Truth," that my request would fall on politely deaf ears.
But what's the harm in trying? (Think I'll start composing that e-mail ...)
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[quote name=\'MrBuddwing\' post=\'146047\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 10:07 PM\']
But what's the harm in trying? (Think I'll start composing that e-mail ...)
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Yes, absolutely. (Personally, my time is worth more to me.) I was just asking.
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'146051\' date=\'Feb 16 2007, 01:39 AM\']
(Personally, my time is worth more to me.)[/quote]
And that's why you spend it HERE? (I kid! I kid!)
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'146036\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 09:46 PM\']
[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' post=\'146034\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 06:25 PM\']
I just wrote GSN and asked them to consider adding Spin-Off to their lineup, even if it means running it overnight.
[/quote]
I have to ask.
What do you think the chances are of that letter having, well, any effect whatsoever?
[/quote]
Every Don Quixote has his own windmills.
I wouldn't mind seeing "Spin-Off" again.
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It seems to me that Nicholson and Muir were writers and producers at various points in time during the original run of "Howdy Doody," which was an in-house NBC production. One of their first projects as independent producers was a series of marionette interpretations of fairy tales with the puppeteers who'd worked on "Howdy Doody," sometime during the 60s (and I believe they were filmed in color, so they could pop up somewhere).
And speaking of Marilyn "Happy Harmony" Patch, there's a "WML?" from the early 60s where she appeared, younger and extremely cute, with an occupation of television children's show host. IIRC, it was on WHDH in Boston, then a CBS affiliate (of course, those who know such things know that the present has very little, if anything, with the old WHDH).
I tried to get info on what she has done since the "Howdy Doody" revival--all I could find is that she did a pilot for a kids series with some of the people who did "Howdy" after that show went bust. It didn't go anywhere. All I can assume that she's still alive, well and probably a grandmother by now.
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[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' post=\'146034\' date=\'Feb 15 2007, 09:25 PM\']If only local stations could be convinced to rerun it the way they used to do with Password and You Don't Say!.
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It will NEVER happen. Ever. They'd be more inclined to sell The Chamber reruns to syndication than they would Spin-Off.
And even if this was the older days where you'd actually do that...there's a difference between Password and You Don't Say! and Spin-Off. The other two weren't sent to the scrap heap after a few weeks.
(wasn't it 10 weeks, if that?)
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11 weeks - June 16th through August 29th. Would be a decent Game of the Week sort of thing to plug in the graveyard rarities thing.
-Jason
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[quote name=\'JasonA1\' post=\'146083\' date=\'Feb 16 2007, 03:16 PM\']
11 weeks - June 16th through August 29th. Would be a decent Game of the Week sort of thing to plug in the graveyard rarities thing.
-Jason
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Actually 12 weeks--the final show was September 5. September 1, Labor Day in 1975, was the one and only day I got to watch it on CBS.