OT -- question about Susan Lucci tribute

[FifthBrother]

I'm not old enough to remember what TV was like in 1971, but I found it odd that the first episode in Soapnet's Susan Lucci tribute on Saturday was in black-and-white. Wasn't all network TV in color by 1971? Or were the soaps still B & W?

I thought maybe Soapnet broadcast the episode in B & W to make it seem even older than it really was.

[CarlD]

good question. I thought all tv was in color as well by then, i know it went to mainly color for prime time shows around 1965.

not sure why either. did catch a clip of Erika talking to her mother ( in black and white), interesting.

[David_L]

To save money, ABC aired (and saved) the shows in black and white kinescopes. Basically what it was was they'd point a camera at a monitor showing whatever they were taping. So that's why they were still in B&W in 1971.

David

[Sid Fairgate]

I figured it was a budget issue since many shows had long since switched to color beginning around the mid 60s.

That filming technique of pointing the camera at the monitor is horrible! I caught a black and white episode during the Lucci special, and everything looked so fuzzy and out of focus. Shows like Dick Van Dyke, I Love Lucy, and Andy Griffith looked much better in black and white, even though they were filmed ten to fifteen years before the 1971 AMC episodes. Thank God they did away with that technique and went to color.

[David_L]

That's because those shows were all saved on film. I Love Lucy I believe was the first to do that, because Desi didn't want to air low quality kinescopes to the west coast. CBS said "Fine, you'll have a bunch of useless film sitting around doing nothing." LOL, he had the last laugh. Most soaps and game shows (that were saved) were saved on kinescopes. I don't believe many AMC episodes exist though, sadly.

David

[ChrisSumnerMatheson]

David - A complete set of All My Children episodes exists. This has been confirmed by ABC, but the first year is only available on kinescopes which are low quality and in black and white. When they originally aired, they were in color, but the color eppys weren't saved, only in kinescope.

Lots of soaps starting saving their episodes in the 70s, but before then, they'd only save an episode if an actor wanted it. They do exist though, WoST.org is proof of that. I've seen episodes of GUiding Light and As the World Turns from the 50s!

[Unregistered]

No, not all of AMC's episodes exist. ABC only started saving all their soaps around 1978.

AMC has ALWAYS been broadcast in color -- but a few early episodes were saved on B&W kinescope. Very few AMC episodes before 1978 still exist.

[David_L]

Yeah, I'd highly doubt that AMC exists fully. That's more wishful thinking then anything. ABC probably says that to save face.

David

[ChrisSumnerMatheson]

David - I just remembered wrong, ABC would have no need to "save face" on something like that. I posted a thread on another board, and they say, Dark Shadows is the oldest daytime soap with a full set of episodes.

[David_L]

Ah, no prob CSM. But there's a lot of rumors of what does and doesn't exist, and sometimes even the company's don't even have their facts straight. Sometimes, companies don't even know what exists, and they'll find a ton of episodes of a certain show out of nowhere. I believe you're right on Dark Shadows though, the only one that doesn't exist is one episode, but an audio copy does exist of that episode, so they "re-created" it for home video and DVD purposes (with still photos and the audio).

David