3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

I wonder if any other countries kept archives of soaps they broadcast; archives that P&G in the USA wiped. AW was hugely popular in Canada.

I think it was @saynotoursoap who said, in so many words, not to believe the standard line that all the old soaps are gone forever and that it was very possible for other countries to have old episodes in their archives.

Edited August 4Aug 4 by Khan

I have always said based on the anecdotes re: actors' kinescopes, etc. alone that there is more out there than we know. This year alone proves that.

53 minutes ago, Khan said:

I think it was @saynotoursoap who said, in so many words, not to believe the standard line that all the old soaps are gone forever and that it was very possible for other countries to have old episodes in their archives.

It wouldn't shock me. "Lost" Dr. Who episodes turned up in a Nigerian TV station years ago. Who would have predicted that?

I'm  hoping, just not holding my breath

Edited August 4Aug 4 by vetsoapfan

11 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

ABC archives starting from 1977 would be great. It's a safe bet that they kept material from at least 1979 onwards, anyway. The famous courtroom scenes from OLTL (Karen Wolek on the witness stand) exist. I remember an ABC researcher once, when talking about finding footage for a GH anniversary special, saying he really had to dig around to find the lovely scene of Laura and Scotty under the Christmas tree, which was probably 1977 or 1978 (I don't remember for sure). In the end, if Nixon said it was 1977, I'd believe that that is when the tapes started being saved. 

The Doctors should be added to your list too, fortunately. So with DAYS, Y&R, B&B, RsH, DS and TDrs, we are lucky to have almost-complete archives in existence of several soaps. And even with all the others, having tapes from the late 1970s is a treat, even though the genre would soon implode in the 1980s. 

When preparing to air Ryan's Hope on SoapNet, Claire Labine said they had missing episodes from their collection, and ended up getting copies from Ireland (where the show had also been broadcast). I wonder if any other countries kept archives of soaps they broadcast; archives that P&G in the USA wiped. AW was hugely popular in Canada.

I guess we have to continue hoping that more stuff will be brought out by private collectors.

AMC was on CBC relatively early on in the 1970s (Edge of Night was also aired here on CBC at the time at least in 1977 as my mom watched it when she was on maternity leave with my older bro.)  

I thought at least one full colour 1977 AMC episode had been aired on a SoapNet marathon but right now off the top of my head the earliest two they have reaired are Tom and Erica's wedding from Fall 1978 and shortly afterwards Tom discovering that Erica is on the pill.  

 

Honestly, I fear that when All My Children got cancelled, all those tapes just ended up dumped in some storage warehouse and forgotten. Decades of episodes—thousands of hours of storytelling—possibly sitting in unlabeled boxes, slowly deteriorating. It’s heartbreaking to think about how much TV history and cultural legacy might be lost like that. I hope they’ve been properly archived or digitized… but I’m not holding my breath.

I've always been of the belief that, per Agnes's request, ABC starting saving AMC just ahead of its April 1977 expansion to the hour, so in my mind, the wishful thought is that it starts in fall 1976. Phoebe's funeral had those great clips of Phoebe with early Brooke (post-Elissa Leeds, so not too too early) and with early Myrtle, and those had to have been from the last few months of the 30-minute show.

Literally no video footage of the show from 1971-1977 has popped up anywhere, and that drives me absolutely nuts. I thought we would have gotten at least a clip or two of AMC from that era before we would have ever gotten a full Secret Storm - in color - from the same era.

4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Honestly, I fear that when All My Children got cancelled, all those tapes just ended up dumped in some storage warehouse and forgotten. Decades of episodes—thousands of hours of storytelling—possibly sitting in unlabeled boxes, slowly deteriorating. It’s heartbreaking to think about how much TV history and cultural legacy might be lost like that. I hope they’ve been properly archived or digitized… but I’m not holding my breath.

I can't say for certain, it's just a hunch. But many production companies and networks did digitise most or all their inventory. Even if it wasn't highly prized. So the chances aren't zero. It became standard practice for many companies to do everything. Whether ABC have done this, I have no idea.

13 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Honestly, I fear that when All My Children got cancelled, all those tapes just ended up dumped in some storage warehouse and forgotten. Decades of episodes—thousands of hours of storytelling—possibly sitting in unlabeled boxes, slowly deteriorating. It’s heartbreaking to think about how much TV history and cultural legacy might be lost like that. I hope they’ve been properly archived or digitized… but I’m not holding my breath.

Like the Ark in an unlabeled box at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Edited August 5Aug 5 by janea4old

41 minutes ago, janea4old said:

Like the Ark in an unlabeled box at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Yes, LOL.

19 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

AMC was on CBC relatively early on in the 1970s (Edge of Night was also aired here on CBC at the time at least in 1977 as my mom watched it when she was on maternity leave with my older bro.)  

Yes, I remember watching TEON and AMC on the CBC. Luckily for soap fans, the audio of CBC television was available on radio (in the 1970s, anyway), and if we had to be out of the house, we could listen to those soaps while we were away.

19 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

I thought at least one full colour 1977 AMC episode had been aired on a SoapNet marathon but right now off the top of my head the earliest two they have reaired are Tom and Erica's wedding from Fall 1978 and shortly afterwards Tom discovering that Erica is on the pill.  

One poster on Facebook argues with people endlessly, when anyone writes that Y&R has preserved its archives. He says he worked as an extra or something on the show back in the day, and has inside confirmation that all the tapes from the beginning have been wiped. As for the tons of flashbacks that have been used over the decades, he claims those are just individual scenes which TPTB saved, because they knew they would need to re-air them them 10, 25, 50 years later. This makes no sense, but it's pointless to argue with someone who needs to be right to feel important.

As for AMC, TEON, or any other soap, I guess we are never going to know for sure about what has survived, until we see it for ourselves (like in the surprising case of The Doctors).

1 hour ago, vetsoapfan said:

Luckily for soap fans, the audio of CBC television was available on radio (in the 1970s, anyway), and if we had to be out of the house, we could listen to those soaps while we were away.

Depending on where you lived in the USA, and if your analog VHF tv station was "channel 6", you could listen to that channel 6 broadcast on FM radio stations that picked up that channel.  I remember listening to soaps on the car radio FM station that corresponded with the nearest Channel 6 -- if you were near enough to pick up that radio band.    Usually preferred to watch on TV but we'd listen on the radio if we were out on errands.   According to wikipedia, this possibility existed for channel 6 analog VHF stations until 2009.  But I don't remember being able to do this after the 1970s.

3 hours ago, janea4old said:

Depending on where you lived in the USA, and if your analog VHF tv station was "channel 6", you could listen to that channel 6 broadcast on FM radio stations that picked up that channel.  I remember listening to soaps on the car radio FM station that corresponded with the nearest Channel 6 -- if you were near enough to pick up that radio band.    Usually preferred to watch on TV but we'd listen on the radio if we were out on errands.   According to wikipedia, this possibility existed for channel 6 analog VHF stations until 2009.  But I don't remember being able to do this after the 1970s.

By the end of the 1970s, I had splurged on two VCRs, so between those and an audio-only tape recorder I had used before the advent of Beta and VHS, I could record everything I wanted at home, and did not need to listen to the CBC soap broadcasts on the radio anymore. But I really appreciated the ability to do so before I bought my VCRs.

VCRs really made soap fans' dreams come true!

1 hour ago, vetsoapfan said:

VCRs really made soap fans' dreams come true!

They sure did, especially during vacations! I remember those days setting the VCR and getting at least a week's worth of episodes on a tape while we were gone on vacation. Or, we'd take blank tapes and find a VCR where we traveled and made sure we could tape and watch throughout. So funny how important soaps were back then that we went to all that trouble and couldn't miss a single episode!

13 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

They sure did, especially during vacations! I remember those days setting the VCR and getting at least a week's worth of episodes on a tape while we were gone on vacation. Or, we'd take blank tapes and find a VCR where we traveled and made sure we could tape and watch throughout. So funny how important soaps were back then that we went to all that trouble and couldn't miss a single episode!

The 1970s gave us the halcyon years of most soaps, IMHO; so many of the shows were on fire and impossible to miss!

I wonder how many fans feel as invested in daytime TV today, considering the genre's decimated state. Does anyone even care if they miss an episode these days?🤔

1 minute ago, vetsoapfan said:

The 1970s gave us the halcyon years of most soaps, IMHO; so many of the shows were on fire and impossible to miss!

I wonder how many fans feel as invested in daytime TV today, considering the genre's decimated state. Does anyone even care if they miss an episode these days?🤔

Personally, I hate missing an episode, but I'm probably an outlier. I think they assume people might miss an episode or jump in/out, which is why they can be so repetitive sometimes. And the constant reminder in dialogue over who is related to who. It bugs me, but I get it.