The official Johnny Carson website now features a searchable database of the existing 3,300 hours of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, which aired from 1962 to 1992. There’s a catch: at the moment the database is only available for those hoping to license clips for commercial purposes. You can, however, watch a video that depicts the database in action and a press release announcing the database can be found at the Wall Street Journal. The database will eventually be opened to the general public as well, according to Frazier Moore of The Associated Press, who quotes Jeff Sotzing (president of Carson Entertainment Group and Johnny Carson’s nephew) as saying “in the near future, we’ll offer them the ability to search and select from the full library of shows.”

According to an article in The Los Angeles Times by Matea Gold, the database is complete from roughly 1973 to 1992. NBC recorded over the video tapes from 1962 to 1972 and only the occasional black-and-white kinescope footage is available from those early years. Here’s how Deluxe Archive Solutions went about digitization the Carson library, per Gold’s explanation:

The video footage was trucked securely from where it had been stored in an underground salt mine in Kansas to a facility in Burbank, where a high-speed “tape robot” transferred each tape to a digital format. Then a team of transcribers logged more than 1 million words of dialogue and tagged each show by key word, guest and musical number.

It took nine months to get through those 3,300 hours. According to Gold, during the digitization process some original video footage believed to have been recorded over was uncovered, including “a famous 1973 clip of Carson pretending to eat dog food during a live Alpo commercial after the dog refused the meal, before thought to exist only in grainy kinescope.”

The Johnny Carson website will be hosting a rotating block of video clips from the show and a variety of DVD compilations have been released with more in the works. Once the database is open to the general public I’m sure fans of Carson and his version of The Tonight Show will have a field day searching for their favorite interviews and jokes. According to the demonstration video, users only get a limited number of minutes of streaming per month, so its unlikely full episodes will be viewable any time soon. That’s understandable. This database is a huge step forward for access. It’s one thing to have a collection preserved properly (in a salt mine, no less) but making it available to the public is even better.

Mr. I. Magination premiered as a local New York City children’s program on Sunday, April 24th, 1949 at 6:30PM on WCBS-TV. Paul Tripp created the series, wrote the episodes and served as host. The series was produced by Worthington Minor, Norman Pincus and Irving Pincus and directed, at least initially, by Hugh Rogers. In addition to Tripp, regulars included Ted Tiller, Joe Silver and Ruth Enders, who was married to Tripp. Each episode took viewers on a trip to Imagination Land, where historical events were re-enacted using children in the pivotal roles and minimal sets.

After five weeks on WCBS-TV, Mr. I. Magination expanded to three additional CBS stations in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington and shifted to 7PM. It likely continued to expand to additional stations as time went by. For the purposes of this guide I’ve decided to arbitrarily call the Sunday, September 25th, 1949 broadcast the end of Season One, when in fact that series never took a break and continued airing new episodes through June of 1950 before taking the summer off. Beginning with the October 2nd, 1949 episodes the series moved back to 6:30PM, likely as part of the overall plan for the 1949-1950 season on CBS.

Of the 23 episodes that were broadcast from April to September of 1949, three are known to exist, including the very first episode. That’s remarkable, considering the fact that it only aired on one station. The Paley Center for Media has three episodes, including the premiere, as well as eleven episodes without air dates. UCLA’s Film and Television Archive also has a copy of the premiere episode. The Peabody Awards Collection has one other episode. The Library of Congress and the Museum of Broadcast Communications do not have any.

I’ve compiled this guide from television listings in The New York Times, which do not include episode titles. The episodes appear to be named after the historical character depicted. The episode at the Peabody Awards Collection featured Robin Hood so that’s what I’ve called it.

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I wrote about CBS Playhouse earlier in the week and I’m happy to report that all 12 episodes are held by various television archives, although no single archive has all 12. The Peabody Awards Collection holds ten of the twelve episodes, UCLA’s Film & Television Archive has nine and The Paley Center for Media has six, many of which are in two parts. The Peabody Collection has the only copy of “Secrets” and UCLA the only copies of “My Father and Mother” and “The Day Before Sunday.” For some of the other episodes, copies exist at all three institutions. I could find no record of the Museum of Broadcast Communications or the Library of Congress having any of the episodes.

Several of the episodes held at UCLA’s Film & Television Archive are in bad shape; “Appalachian Autumn” has “tracking problems,” for example, while “Sadbird” has a “very poor recorded image” and “Shadow Game” has “totally faded color” plus a “thick black scratch down left side of frame from 22-48 minutes into film.” It should be noted that for many of the episodes UCLA has multiple copies and some may be in better shape than others. There are seven different copies of “My Father and My Mother,” at least one of which is in black and white. Both the Paley Center for Media and the Peabody Collection also have copies of “Shadow Game” and hopefully theirs are in better shape.

The Library of Congress does have four books relating to CBS Playhouse but I’m not sure what they are. Two are for “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” one of which is said to be 103 pages with illustrations. There is another book for “The Final War of Olly Winter” said to be 93 pages, plus sheet music for Aaron Copland’s theme or “signature” for the program.

Recall that last month it was reported that 208 episodes of General Electric Theater, all hosted by Ronald Reagan, had been found in the General Electric/NBC Universal archives and restored and were to be presented to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Today it seems yet another episode of the series has been found. Titled “The Dark, Dark Hours,” the episode aired on December 12th, 1954. Featured was actor James Dean in one of his later television roles, playing a young man who forces Reagan’s character, a doctor, to treat his friend. According to John Meroney, writing in The Atlantic, the episode was “unearthed” by scriptwriter/actor Wayne Federman (who currently writes for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) who is working on a retrospective of Reagan’s television work. Federman edited the 23-minute episode into the following six-minute video:

The Atlantic does not mention where the episode was found but according to this YouTube video, which was posted on April 15th, it “was recently discovered in Europe,” suggesting that has nothing to do with the restoration of the other 208 episodes found in the General Electric/NBC Universal. The episode was mentioned during this evening’s installment of The CBS Evening News; an CBS News article can be found here.

I’ve written a brief overview of NBC’s long-running Kraft Television Theatre — which ran from 1947 to 1958 — and the status of its hundreds of episodes, which you can read here. Because the show ran year-round, I initially considered each season to run from May to May (in other words, the first season would have run from May of 1947 to May of 1948). However, I eventually decided to align my status guides with various episode guides available online: TV.com, the Internet Movie Database and the Classic TV Database.

Completed Status Guides

Season	Air Dates	Published
Season One	May 7th, 1947 – September 15th, 1948	May 16th, 2009
Season Two	September 22nd, 1948 – September 14th, 1949	September 26th, 2009
Season Three	September 21st, 1949 – September 20th, 1950	January 9th, 2010
Season Four	September 27th, 1950 – September 5th, 1951	February 7th, 2010
Season Five	September 12th, 1951 – September 24th, 1952	March 30th, 2010

The fifth season of Kraft Television Theatre premiered on September 12th, 1951 with the 227th episode of the series and ended on September 24th, 1952 with the 279th episode. Coverage of the Republican National Convention pre-empted the series on July 9th, 1952 while coverage of the Democratic National Convention pre-empted the series two weeks later on July 23rd. The Classic TV Database has an episode titled “The Intruder” airing on Tuesday, July 22nd, 1952 but listings in The New York Times and other newspapers indicate that additional convention coverage was shown that day. An episode titled “The Intruder” did air in July of 1953, however.

At least one source gives the name of the October 24th, 1951 episode as “Interference” while most sources call it “Intolerance.” Also, according to one source, the August 27th, 1952 episode was originally supposed to be “Mr. Barry’s Etchings,” with Geoffrey Lumb and Leola Thatcher. Instead, “The Small Hours” with Lauren Gilbert and Grace Kelly was broadcast on that date. “Mr. Barry’s Etchings” was shown the following week on September 10th. The Library of Congress holds twelve episodes in its collection. UCLA’s Film & Television Archive, Museum of Broadcasting and The Paley Center for Media do not have any episodes from this season in their collections.

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In this week’s DVD Tuesday I mentioned that there is an episode from the second season of Hawaii Five-O that hasn’t been seen since its original broadcast, leading jb to ask in the comments why the episode is missing from the DVD release. The episode, titled “Bored, She Hung Herself,” was aired on Wednesday, January 7th, 1970, the 16th episode of the second season and the 41st episode overall (or 39th, depending on whether the pilot is counted as two episodes or not). Reportedly, it has never been shown again, not in repeats on CBS and not in syndication.

Still from Hawaii Five-O Episode “Bored, She Hung Herself”

The following is from the Quick FAQ at the Hawaii Five-O Home Page:

No one at CBS or Paramount has offered a direct explanation as to why this is so. According to Mrs. Leonard Freeman (wife of the late creator of the show), speaking to some fans at the 1996 Five-O convention, someone tried the hanging technique depicted in the show (supposedly yoga-related, but more like autoerotic asphyxiation) and killed themselves. As a result, the show was not rebroadcast and never included in any syndication packages. As far as the DVD set is concerned, including this episode would have necessitated having a 7th DVD with one episode (or spreading 25 episodes over 7 DVDs), which would result in extra expense for Paramount as far as packaging was concerned.

A disclaimer located on back of the Season Two DVD noted that “the second season episode ‘Bored, She Hung Herself’ aired only once and is not included in this set.” Here‘s an August 3rd, 2007 article from the Honolulu Star Bulletin about the Season Two DVD release that mentions the missing episode.

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The Associated Press is reporting that the 208 episodes of General Electric Theater hosted by Ronald Reagan have been restored and will be presented to Nancy Reagan today as part of the actor-turned-politician’s 100th birthday celebration. From The New York Times:

The 1954-1962 “General Electric Theater” tapes, most believed to be damaged or lost, were recently uncovered in the General Electric/NBC Universal archives. They were restored to broadcast quality for use in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

[...]

“The opportunity to represent GE back in the 1950s, and the encouragement he received from the employees he met along the way, really launched Ronnie’s career in public service,” Mrs. Reagan said in a statement released Wednesday. ”I know he would be honored by this tribute.”

GE CEO Jeff Immelt plans to deliver the tapes to Mrs. Reagan at the library Wednesday evening. General Electric is sponsoring the Ronald Reagan Centennial festivities with $15 million.

In addition to the episodes of General Electric Theater, GE is helping to renovate the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; it will eventually feature a new General Electric Theater that “will focus on Reagan’s career in radio, television and film.” The Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration, a two-year event, will culminate in February of 2011. Reagan was born February 6th, 1911. Here‘s a press release announcing GE’s sponsorship of the celebration.

General Electric Theater premiered on CBS on Sunday, February 1st, 1953. It wasn’t until September 26th, 1954 that Reagan began his stint as host, which would last until the series went off the air in September of 1962 (the final new episode was broadcast on June 3rd, 1962). According to TV.com and the Internet Movie Database a total of 300 episodes were broadcast during its nearly ten years on the air. The program’s entry in the Museum of Broadcast Communication’s Encyclopedia of TV (1st edition) puts the number at just 200, which can’t be right given that 208 featured Reagan as host. Regardless of how many episodes were produced, one would hope that those not involving Reagan have or will also be restored and perhaps eventually made available to researchers and other interested parties.

The VIII Olympic Winter Games, more informally known as the 1960 Winter Olympics, were played in Squaw Valley, California from February 18th through 28th, 1960. They were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast on television in the United States. They were not, however, the first Olympic Games to be seen on television. That distinction goes to the 1936 Summer Olympics, played in Berlin and shown via closed circuit television. The 1948 Summer Olympics were broadcast by the BBC but only to sets within range of Wembley Stadium in London. It wasn’t until 1960, however, that viewers in the United States were able to see the Olympics on television, through a combination of taped and live events. CBS broadcast 13 hours of coverage (at least according to this CBS At 75 time line over the course of 11 days. Sports reporters Chris Schenkel and Bud Palmer were joined by former Olympians Dick Button and Art Devlin, plus CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, to cover the games.

Jack Gould, writing for The New York Times, had this to say about the opening ceremonies:

The formality of opening the games admittedly was not conducive to exciting TV: even Vice President Nixon was allotted only one sentence. But C.B.S. missed what could have been story of more than passing interest. Some close-ups of the sports representatives of the world, as well as a better description of the setting at Squaw Valley, Calif., could have been informative.

Instead there was the familiar manifestation of television’s preoccupation with television’s role in reporting the news. Walt Disney was presented before the cameras; Lowell Thomas and Art Linkletter were there and the C.B.S. reporters were painstakingly introduced. Even Mrs. Andrea Mead Lawrence, the last skier to carry the Olympic torch, was revealed as a C.B.S. aide. [1].

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