The Doctors Discussion Thread

[te.]

Their best bet would be a FAST platform as a lot of them host fairly random stuff and they won't necessarily pay for more than it's viewed. If they went through all the trouble of digitizing it they might as well take the meager dollar they can get at this point rather than try and sit out for some dream deal that'll go tits up again.

Another alternative is to do what Bold and Beautiful does and put it up on YouTube with ads - again, not highly profitable but putting up a soap opera from 60-40 years ago was never going to be.

[Liberty City]

 

[All My Shadows]

NBC needs their ass KICKED!! If they had the tapes of the last two years, I absolutely guarantee they were wiped. It’s insane to think of this still happening as late as 1982, but they were still wiping their daytime game shows as late as 1985-1986, including big hits like Sale of the Century.

[vote4llama]

Man the first half of that tweet had me doing the happy dance and then I saw the second half.  That's devastating.  They've had years to say something so what gives?

[jam6242]

That's a shame but I'm still happy about finally getting the 1980 episodes.

[j swift]

That's a bizarre story.  It's like buying a car and finding out five years later that it doesn't have a radio.  Reading the entire story makes it more believable, but it is remarkable.

[Chris B]

This whole thing has become so irritating. I also find it bizarre the final two years are missing and they just discovered this. Pre-Covid when they announced the app, they said they would be uploading the black and white episodes as app exclusives. Of course that never happened, now this. 
 

How do you let this many tears go by without making sure you have the contents of the show you licensed?

[jam6242]

Pretty sure they were doing it piecemeal.  I'm FB friends with the person who does the captions and she was always getting the episodes only a few weeks before they aired.  Remember they are a small organization.  And the tapes were in a different state.

[DRW50]

Is there any way NBC might still have kept some copies (not that we will be seeing them)?

There used to be some 1981/1982 episodes online...not sure if they still are. 

[Chris B]

Those last two years were the one I was looking forward to the most. I wanted to see Althea’s return and Harding Lemay’s run. Such sad news. 

[~bl~]

I am disappointed about this as they should have and would have known when they digitized the last group when some of them were posted and then hidden again. I would not be surprised if some old episodes that are missing still existed somewhere though we won’t see them. BTW WHAT cast members does this mean we won’t see?

[DRW50]

Jean LeClerc and Nancy Stafford, among others. We also won't be seeing any of Ivie, the singer at Luke Dancy's club who declares her love for him at the end of the show - that was one of the things I was hoping to see the development of (if there was any).

As @Chris B mentioned, we also won't see Althea's return, which is a real shame.

Edited July 11, 2023 by DRW50

[Paul Raven]

Very disappointing news.

The chance to see how the show handled those final years and some controversial stories-the plague,the Adrienne aging story etc.

Also unknown actors/characters that appeared.

The only hope now  is that episodes might pop up from home taping, copies made by actors/crew.

Or scripts as we are seeing with other shows.

[Jdee43]

Stunning!! I was expecting this to be the case for the 1963-67 episodes, not the 1980-82 ones!! But hearing the story, it does make sense. NBC brought the show, and, I presume, was no longer required to send copies of episodes to Colgate-Palmolive.

Sounds like Colgate never bothered to inventory what they had; they just assumed that they had everything! Did they forget that they had sold the show to NBC at the end?!

Here's hoping 1981 and 1982 episodes will pop up on youtube from time to time from home recordings, and when they do, that Retro TV won't be overly aggressive in taking them down!

I wonder what this means for the 1963-67 episodes?? Assuming they have them, if they don't meet broadcast standards, is that the same as not meeting streaming standards?? I would love for them to put whatever they have on streaming, no matter the quality. If they did have the episodes, though, you'd think by now they'd have done something with them, like put up Elizabeth Hubbard's first episode or something. The two 1963 episodes they had on the site came from the Paley Center for Media. The Paley Center also has a 1966 episode; maybe that will come to the site one day. 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Jdee43

[Vee]

Someone out there is likely to have a lot of this material, especially when it gets close to an end. Some fan, crewmember, whoever always does. The question is whether we'll ever see them.