Ernie Kovacs / Jack Benny broadcasts?

[Jhammes]

(This is quasi-semi Benny related)

Ernie Kovacs was on the 01/25/59 Jack Benny Program: so,
would there be other television broadcasts with these two, or is
this the only one?

No doubt Ernie would have come back during the 1960's weekly
Benny shows or specials, had it not been that fatal 1962 car crash.
They both had a sense of the absurd, though Kovacs was definitely
more "out there".

Jack Benny had the Marquis Chimps on numerous occasions.
I can see the following set up: Jack being unable to arrange for
the chimps to appear, but assuring the audience they will enjoy
this emergency "back-up": one of Kovacs signature creations.

Ernie Kovacs (live kinescope)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvBBi7vc2Ak

[Jhammes]

Did some homework... the writers won an Emmy for the 01/25/59 episode.
The Emmy Awards, then as now, brought together a Who's Who of television.
So, should there be a surviving kinescope, the 1959 Emmy show would have audience shots of, among others, Ernie Kovacs, Edie Adams... and Jack Benny...and his writers? Poor Mary was pretty much a recluse at this point.

BTW...did you know Ernie's sign off was "It's been real"? I still hear people say that, and NEVER knew where that came from! Part of the strange, understated world of Kovacs, as his shows and specials were ANYTHING but real.

[Yhtapmys]

Did some homework... the writers won an Emmy for the 01/25/59 episode.
The Emmy Awards, then as now, brought together a Who's Who of television.
So, should there be a surviving kinescope, the 1959 Emmy show would have audience shots of, among others, Ernie Kovacs, Edie Adams... and Jack Benny...and his writers? Poor Mary was pretty much a recluse at this point.

Weren't they past the kinescope stage in 1959?

Even if anyone bothered recording this at the time, it could have been chucked out like all kinds of TV moments we'll never see again.

Yhtapmys

[Jhammes]

>>Weren't they past the kinescope stage in 1959?

Well, yes and no. Wikipedia can be iffy, but this entry seems pretty
accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope

I think your right...video, or kinescope, so much was thrown out to
"save shelf space" or "save tape". Seriously, how much would it
have cost the network to buy another shelf

[Frank Nelson]

The networks taped over most of their kinescopes and early videotapes. Even Jack wasn't as big of a cheapscape as the networks!

[Sy]

The networks taped over most of their kinescopes and early videotapes. Even Jack wasn't as big of a cheapscape as the networks!

A single reel of videotape costing $300 would be thousands in today's money and networks could not afford spending on the grand scale they enjoy today. The mind-set was to view TV as a "disposable" medium where shows were rarely repeated so there was little incentive to archive anything. Of course, there was no lucrative home video market.

Tapes were reused repeatedly in most cases but Kinescopes were films so they often survived but had inferior picture quality compared to videotape.

"Forgotten" videotapes are occasionally found in warehouses or private homes. The Judy Garland shows from the 1960s survived in very good quality and are now available on DVD. Unfortunately, these happy events are few and far between!