Wiping Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies , in which old audiotape s , videotape s , and telerecording s ( kinescope s ) , are erased , reused , or destroyed . The practice was prevalent during the 1960s and 1970s , although it is now less common since associated storage costs have decreased , and especially since the advent of domestic audiovisual playback technology ( e . g . videocassette and DVD ) , with broadcasters and production houses realizing both the economic and cultural value of keeping archived material for both rebroadcast and potential profits through release on home video . Australia . Australian broadcasters did not gain access to videotape - recording technology until the early 1960s , and as a result nearly all programs prior to that were broadcast live - to - air . Very little programming survives from the earliest years of Australian TV ( 1956 – 1960 ) as kinescope recording to film was expensive , and most of what was recorded in this way has since been lost or destroyed . The Australian Broadcasting Corporation ( ABC ) erased much of their early output . Much of the videotaped ABC program material from the 1960s and early 1970s was erased as part of an economy policy instituted in the late 1970s , in which old program tapes were surrendered for bulk erasure and reuse . This policy particularly targeted older programs recorded in black - and - white , leading to the loss of many recordings made before 1975 , when Australian television converted to color . The ABC continued erasing older television output into the early 1980s . Programs known to have been lost include most studio segments from the 1960s current affairs shows " This Day Tonight " and " Monday Conference " , hundreds of episodes of the long - running rural serial " Bellbird " , all but a handful of episodes of the early - 1970s drama series " Certain Women " , an early - 1970s miniseries of dramatizations based on Norman Lindsay ' s novels , and nearly all of the first 18 months of the weekly pop - music show " Countdown " . Many episodes of popular Australian commercial TV series are also lost . In the 1970s , Network Ten had an official policy to reuse tapes ; hence , many tapes of " Young Talent Time " and " Number 96 " were wiped . To this day , Network Ten still only keeps some of its programming . Other notable casualties from the Ten archive include hundreds of episodes of the Melbourne - based pop music shows commissioned and broadcast by ATV - 0 Melbourne in the 1960s and early 1970s – " The Go ! ! Show " ( 1964 – 1967 ) , " Kommotion " ( 1964 – 1967 ) , " Uptight " ( 1968 – 70 ) , and the " Happening 70s " series ( 1970 – 1972 ) . The Nine Network discarded copies of some of their programs , including the popular GTV - 9 series " In Melbourne Tonight " hosted by Graham Kennedy . Though it ran five nights a week from 1957 – 1970 , fewer than 100 episodes are known to survive , and many of the surviving episodes are edited prints made for rebroadcast across Australia . Early episodes of " Hey Hey It ' s Saturday " do not exist because the program was broadcast live and did not begin videotape recordings until a number of years later . Brazil . From 1968 - 1969 , TV Tupi produced new episodes of the soap opera " Beto Rockfeller " by recording over previous episodes ; as a result , few episodes survive . Rede Record also lost much footage from the 1960s due to wiping , fires , and deterioration ; most of the MPB music festivals no longer exist , and the sitcom " " has only one surviving episode , featuring Pelé . Rede Globo lost the first 35 broadcasts of both " Fantástico " and " Jornal Nacional " , in addition to many segments of their other soap operas , as a result of wiping . Canada . The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation never practiced wiping , and maintained a complete archive of all programming that was recorded . The CTV Television Network has admitted to wiping many programs during the 1970s . Because of Canadian content requirements , the need for Canadian - produced programming led to more preservation of the shows they produced , and even extremely poorly received programs ( such as the infamous " The Trouble with Tracy " ) were saved and rerun for several years after their cancellation . Furthermore , Canadian rebroadcasts have been a source of some broadcasts that are otherwise lost in the United States and the United Kingdom . Japan . Several Japanese broadcasters , including NHK and TBS , practiced wiping . Mexico . Due to its multiple studio facilities , namely its Chapultepec and San Angel studio s , Televisa preserved most of its scripted series for broadcast years after the preserved programs had ended their original runs . Some Televisa programs , however , were lost not due to wiping , but due to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake . United Kingdom . BBC . The BBC , the United Kingdom ' s first public service broadcaster , had no archival policy in place until 1978 . Much of the Corporation ' s output between the 1930s and 1980s has been lost . Rationales behind this policy include : Technological . The BBC ' s television service dates back to 1936 and was originally a live medium . The hours of transmission were very limited and the bulk of the programming was transmitted either live from the studio , or from outside broadcast ( OB ) units ; film was a minor contributor to the output . When the first television broadcasts were made , there were two competing systems in use . The EMI electronic system ( using 405 lines ) competed with the Baird 240 - line mechanical television system . Baird adopted an intermediate film technique where the live material was filmed using a standard film camera mounted on a large cabinet which contained a rapid processing unit and an early flying spot scanner to produce the video output for transmission . The pioneer broadcasts were not , however , preserved on this intermediate film as the nitrate ( celluloid ) stock was scanned while still wet from the fixer bath and never washed to remove the fixer chemicals . Consequently , the film decomposed very soon after transmission ; none are known to have survived . No studio or OB programmes from 1936 – 1939 or 1946 - 1947 have survived because there was no means of preserving them . Historical ' firsts ' from this era , the world ' s earliest television crime drama " Telecrime " ( 1938 – 39 and 1946 ) or " Pinwright ' s Progress " ( 1946 – 47 , the world ' s first regular situation comedy ) , only remain visually as a handful of still photographs . The earliest recording method for television was telerecording , which involved recording the image from a special television monitor onto film with a modified film camera . Early examples made by this method include the first two episodes of " The Quatermass Experiment " ( 1953 ) , transmitted live while simultaneously telerecorded . The visual quality of the second episode ' s recording was considered so poor ( a fly entered the gap between the camera and monitor at one point ) that the remainder of the series was not recorded . Although Quadruplex videotape recording technology was utilised in the UK from 1958 , this system was expensive and complex ; recorded programmes were often erased after broadcast . The vast majority of live programmes were never recorded at all . Videotape was not initially thought to be a permanent archivable medium – its high cost and the potential reuse of the tapes led to the transfer of programme material to film via telerecording whenever sales of overseas screening rights were possible or preservation deemed worthwhile . The recycling of videotapes , coupled with savings made on the storage of the bulky 2 " tapes , enabled the BBC to keep costs down . Cultural . Drama and entertainment output was studio - based and followed the tradition of live theatre . Conventional filmmaking was only gradually introduced from the 1960s . " The Sunday Night Play " ( a major event in the 1950s ) was performed live in the studio . On Thursday , because telerecording was of insufficient broadcast quality , another live performance followed , the artists returning to perform the play again . Today , most programmes are pre - recorded and it is relatively inexpensive to preserve programming for posterity ; even so , the BBC Charter makes no mention of any obligation to retain all of them . Rights . All television programmes have copyright and other rights issues associated with them . For some genres of programmes – such as drama and entertainment – the actors , writers , and musicians involved in a production all have underlying rights . In the past , these rights were defended rigorously – permission could even be denied by a contributor for the repeat or re - use of a programme . Talent unions were highly suspicious of the threat to new work if programmes were repeated ; indeed , before 1955 Equity insisted that any telerecording made ( of a repeat performance ) could only " be viewed privately " on BBC premises and not transmitted . If telerecordings were made of a work and that work was then acquired by another party , then the recording had to be destroyed – this happened in 1955 when 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to " Anastasia " and the 1953 BBC telerecording of the play had to be destroyed ( although the lostshows . com website states that recordings of both performances still survive ) . At this same time , agents would demand that programmes be wiped so that they could never be repeated ; currently , actors are almost invariably paid to sign away these rights to the producing company . Colour television . The introduction of colour television in the United Kingdom from 1967 meant that broadcasters felt there was even less value in retaining monochrome recordings . Such tapes could not be re - used for colour production , so they were disposed of to create space for the new colour tapes in the ( quickly becoming full ) archives . The increased cost of colour 2 inch Quadruplex videotape ( approximately £1 , 000 per tape at today ' s prices ) meant that companies still often re - used the tapes for efficiency . Negative attitudes to a programme ' s value also persisted . For these reasons , many programmes survive only as monochrome film recordings , if at all . Significant wiped programmes . High - profile examples of programme losses include many episodes of " Doctor Who " , " The Wednesday Play " , most of the seminal comedy series " Not Only But Also " , all of the 1950s televised Francis Durbridge serials ( further , the first two serials were never recorded ) , the vast majority of the BBC ' s Apollo 11 Moon landing studio coverage , all but one of the 39 episodes of " The First Lady " , and all 147 episodes of the soap opera " United ! " . There are many gaps in many long running BBC series ( " Dixon of Dock Green " , " Hancock ' s Half Hour " , " Sykes " , " Out of the Unknown " , and " Z - Cars " ) . The first acting appearance of musician Bob Dylan , in a 1963 play entitled " The Madhouse on Castle Street " , was erased in 1968 . There is lost material in all genres – as late as 1993 , a large number of videotaped children ' s programmes from the 1970s and 1980s were irretrievably wiped by Adam Lee of the BBC archives on the assumption that they were of " no use " , without consulting the BBC children ' s department itself . Other lost material . Virtually the entire runs of the Corporation ' s pre - 1970s soap operas have been lost . In the 1950s and 1960s , the BBC soap operas " The Appleyards " , " The Grove Family " , " Compact " , " The Newcomers " , " 199 Park Lane " , and " United ! " produced approximately 1 , 200 episodes altogether . As of today , both " United ! " and " 199 Park Lane " have no episodes in the archives while only one episode of " The Appleyards " , three episodes of " The Grove Family " , and four episodes each of " Compact " and " The Newcomers " are extant . Also vulnerable to the Corporation ' s wiping policy were programmes that only lasted for one season . " Abigail and Roger " , " The Airbase " , " As Good Cooks Go " , the 1960 adaptation of " The Citadel " , the 1956 adaptation of " David Copperfield " , " The Dark Island " , " The Gnomes of Dulwich " , " Hurricane " , " For Richer . . . For Poorer " , " Hereward the Wake " , " The Naked Lady " , " Night Train To Surbiton " , " Outbreak of Murder " , " Where do I Sit ? " , and " Witch Hunt " have all been wiped with no footage surviving while four out of seven episodes of the paranormal anthology series " Dead of Night " were wiped . An edition of " Hugh and I " ( " Chinese Crackers " ) , starring Hugh Lloyd , Terry Scott , John Le Mesurier and David Jason was located by Kaleidoscope Publishing in 2010 in the archives of ' UCLA , and bought to general public attention in February 2011 . Finding missing BBC programmes . Since the establishment of an archival policy for television in 1978 , BBC archivists and others over the years have used various contacts in the UK and abroad to try to track down missing programmes . For example , all BBC Worldwide customers who had bought programmes from the Corporation in the past were contacted to see if they still had copies which could be dubbed for the archives ; " Doctor Who " is a prime example of how this method recovered episodes that the Corporation did not hold themselves . At the turn of the 20th to 21st century , the BBC established its Archive Treasure Hunt , a public appeal to recover lost productions which had some successes . The BBC also has close contacts with the National Film and Television Archive , which is part of the British Film Institute and their " Missing Believed Wiped " event which was first held in 1993 and is part of a campaign to locate lost items from British Television ' s past . There is also a network of collectors who , if they find any programmes missing from the BBC archives , will contact the Corporation with information – or sometimes even the actual episode ( s ) . Some examples of programmes recovered for the archives are " Doctor Who " , " Steptoe and Son " , " Dad ' s Army " , " Out of the Unknown " , " The Likely Lads " , and " Play for Today " . For many years the pilot episode of " Are You Being Served ? " survived only in black and white , appearing in this form on the 2003 DVD release of the show . In 2009 , a colour version was reconstructed when it was realised that the black and white film reel had actually recorded sufficient colour information as a dot crawl pattern to allow the colour to be recovered . Early episodes of the pop music - chart show " Top of the Pops " were wiped or never recorded when broadcast " live " , the last edition that was wiped from the BBC archives dates from 8 September 1977 . There are only four complete " TOTP " episodes surviving from the 1960s , while many otherwise - missing episodes survive only as fragments . Only two episodes still exist of " The Sandie Shaw Supplement " ( a music - variety show hosted by the singer ) recorded in 1967 . ITV . The BBC was not alone in this practice – the commercial companies that formed its main rival ITV also wiped videotapes and destroyed telerecording s , leaving gaps in their archive holdings . The state of the archives varies greatly between the different companies ; Granada Television holds a large number of its older black - and - white programmes , the company having an unofficial policy of retaining as much of its broadcast material ( albeit by telerecording ) as possible despite financial hardship in its early years . This includes the entirety of the soap opera " Coronation Street " which is now held at the Yorkshire Television archive , which itself possesses largely intact archives ( although some early colour shows from the late 1960s and the early 1970s such as the entire output of the drama " Castle Haven " , the first two series of " Sez Les " and the children ' s variety show " Junior Showtime " are missing and believed wiped ) . The former ITV company Thames Television also has a significant library . These cases tend to be the exception , however ; the former nature of the ITV network , in which private independent companies were awarded licences to serve geographical areas for a set period of time , meant that when companies lost their licences their archives were often sold to third parties and became fragmented – and / or risked being destroyed ( ownership and copyright remained with the production companies rather than with the network ) . The archive of networked programmes made by Southern Television , for example , is now owned by the Australian media company Southern Star Group ( no connection ) – but Southern ' s regional output is in the hands of ITV plc , whilst the few surviving tapes of Associated - Rediffusion belong to many different organisations ( the majority of Associated - Rediffusion ' s tapes were recorded in monochrome and therefore deemed of no use upon the arrival of colour broadcasting ; as such they were disposed of by their successor Thames Television ) , although in recent years there have been occasional discoveries such as a 1959 episode of " Double Your Money " and the remaining missing episode of " Around the World with Orson Welles " , found by Ray Langstone in 2011 . Many master tapes belonging to ATV have since deteriorated due to bad storage and are unsuitable for broadcasting . In particular , the ATV version of the popular soap " Crossroads " is missing 2 , 850 episodes of its original 3 , 555 . Also often largely lost are quiz shows ; few editions exist of the 1970s version of " Celebrity Squares " with Bob Monkhouse , or Southern ' s children ' s quiz " Runaround " . Further , responsibility for archive preservation was left to individual companies . For example , ITV has no record of its live coverage of the 1969 Moon landings after the station responsible for providing the coverage , London Weekend Television , wiped the tapes . Of the 96 British inserts to the 1980s franchised Anglo - American / Canadian children ' s show " Fraggle Rock " , only 12 are known to exist as the library of the British producer ( TVS ) has been sold and subsequently split up . In recent years , the trend of preserving material has started to change . The archives of Westward Television and Television South West are now held in trust for the public ( The South West Film and Television Archive ) whilst changes in legislation mean that dismissed ITV companies must donate archives to the British Film Institute . However , the change of ITV from a federal structure to one centralized private company means that changes of regional companies in the future seems highly unlikely . Most material from the 1960s also only survive as telerecordings . Some early episodes are also believed to be damaged or in poor quality , whereas much of the output of other broadcasters – such as many early episodes of " The Avengers " ( shot in the electronic studio rather than on film ) produced by Associated British Corporation – have been destroyed . Recovery of missing programmes . Since the BBC library was first audited in 1978 , missing programmes or extracts on either film or tape are often found in unexpected places . An appeal to broadcasters in other countries who had shown missing programmes ( notably Australia , New Zealand , Canada , and Africa n nations such as Nigeria ) produced " missing " episodes from the archives of those television companies . Episodes have also been returned to broadcasters by private film collectors who had acquired 16mm copies from various sources . Copies of several compilations from the British 1960s comedy " At Last The 1948 Show " , held by many to be a forerunner of " Monty Python ' s Flying Circus " , were discovered in the archives of the Swedish broadcaster SVT , to whom the producers Rediffusion London had sold them upon the companies ' loss of its broadcasting licence ( the master tapes , along with much of Rediffusion ' s programming , having been wiped or disposed of by their successor Thames Television ) . Off - air home audio recordings of various television programmes have also been recovered , at least preserving the soundtracks to otherwise missing shows , and some of these ( particularly from " Doctor Who " ) have been released on CD by the BBC following restoration and the addition of narration to describe purely visual elements . Tele - snaps , a commercial service of off - screen shots of programmes often purchased by actor s and television director s to keep a record of their work in the days before videocassette recorder s , have also been recovered for many lost programmes . Preservation of the current archive . Advances in technology have resulted in old programming being transferred to new digital media , where they can be restored or ( if they are damaged or otherwise cannot be restored ) kept from decaying further . In the United Kingdom , the archives of both the BBC and those available of ITV , along with other channels , are being switched from cumbersome 2 - inch quadruplex videotape to digital format . This is an extensive and expensive process and one that will take many years to complete . United States . In the United States , the major broadcast networks also engaged in the practice of wiping recordings until the late 1970s . Many episodes were erased , especially daytime and late - night programming such as daytime soap opera s and game show s . The daytime shows , almost all of them having been taped , were erased because it was believed at the time that nobody wanted to see them after their first broadcast . The success of cable television networks devoted to reruns of these genres proved that this was not the case , as the large number of episodes that were required for a daily program made even a short - run game show an ideal candidate for syndication . By this time , however , the damage had already been done . Hosting sequences . Hosting sequences on videotape , nearly always featuring celebrities , were sometimes made for telecasts of family films , notably for the first nine telecasts of MGM ' s " The Wizard of Oz " . It is not known if those made for " Oz " survived since they have not been seen since 1967 . One hosting sequence from that era that does survive is the Eddie Albert one made for the 1965 CBS telecast of " The Nutcracker " , starring Edward Villella , Patricia McBride , and Melissa Hayden . It has even been included on the DVD release of the program . Ernie Kovacs . Many of Ernie Kovacs ' videotaped network programs were also wiped . During different times as comedian , writer , and performer Kovacs had programs on all four major television networks ( ABC , CBS , DuMont , and NBC ) . After Kovacs ' death , the networks wiped many programs . Kovacs ' widow Edie Adams obtained as many programs and episodes as she could find , donating them to UCLA ' s Special Collections . Soap operas . Though most soap operas transitioned from live broadcast to videotaping their shows during the 1960s , it was still common practice to wipe and reuse the tapes . While soap operas began routinely saving their episodes between 1976 and 1979 , several soaps have saved recordings of most or all their episodes . " Days of our Lives " has recordings of all its episodes . The first two episodes of " Days of our Lives " exist on their original master tapes , and were aired by SOAPnet in 2005 . " The Young and the Restless " , " Dark Shadows " and " Ryan ' s Hope " saved most of their episodes despite the fact that they debuted during the 1960s and 1970s , before retaining tapes became common practice . Episodes of other soaps broadcast during the 1950s to 1970s do exist and have been showcased on various websites . Procter and Gamble started saving their shows around 1978 . Very few pre - 1978 color episodes of the Procter and Gamble - sponsored shows survive , with most extant episodes preserved as monochrome kinescopes . In addition , a number of 1970s shows recorded by viewers using early VCR technology have surfaced on a number of websites in recent years . " Search for Tomorrow " , which aired from 1951 – 1986 , is a quintessential example of a soap opera that was wiped . While scattered episodes from the 1950s and 1960s survive on kinescopes , many episodes from the 1970s were erased after their broadcasts in order to shoot more episodes , due to the high cost of videotapes at the time . In many cases , at least a decade is missing . All episodes of " Search for Tomorrow " < nowiki > ' s < / nowiki > run on NBC ( from 1982 to 1986 ) are believed to be intact and were rerun on the USA Network in the late 1980s . " As the World Turns " and " The Edge of Night " aired live until 1975 , the year " The Edge of Night " moved to ABC and " As the World Turns " expanded from a 30 - minute broadcast to one hour . Both shows began taping episodes in preparation for the move of " The Edge of Night " to ABC . " The Edge of Night " < nowiki > ' s < / nowiki > ABC debut is believed to have survived . Overall , the number of surviving monochrome episodes recorded on kinescope outnumber color episodes for these programs . Many black - and - white episodes of " Guiding Light " survive as kinescopes ; although the quality of these films has degraded to the point where in some cases the video is too dark to be worth viewing , the audio quality is fine . A number of kinescopes from 1966 , the year " Guiding Light " < nowiki > ' s < / nowiki > setting shifted from Selby Flats , California to the Midwestern town of Springfield , were uploaded to a number of websites including the now - defunct World of Soap Themes website . Audio recordings of 1973 – 1974 " Guiding Light " episodes have also been uploaded . There are only three known surviving black - and - white episodes of " Another World " from 1964 at the Paley Center for Media . Another known " Another World " episode available was a black - and - white kinescope from 1968 , on the World of Soap Themes website . Agnes Nixon initially produced her series " One Life to Live " and " All My Children " through her own production company , Creative Horizons , Inc . , and kept a complete archive of monochrome kinescopes until ABC bought the shows from her in 1975 . When the network wanted to expand " All My Children " from 30 minutes to a full hour in the late 1970s , Nixon agreed on the condition that the network would begin saving the episodes . ABC complied , and full hour broadcasts began on April 22 , 1977 . However , a fire destroyed the vast majority of the early - 1970s kinescopes , leaving only a few random episodes from each season . " All My Children " episodes from its first year on the air were seen on ABC in the 1990s and on SOAPnet in February 2005 , the latter in celebration of the show ' s 35th anniversary . A 1969 episode of " One Life to Live " was featured on the World of Soap Themes website , and at least one episode from the late 1960s exists in color . Virtually all episodes of " General Hospital " , from its premiere in April 1963 through August 1970 , are archived at UCLA . The UCLA Film & Television Archive holds a large amount of daytime television airings that were spared from the wiping practice . Also archived there are handfuls of episodes of each soap opera that was on the air from 1971 and 1973 , including " A World Apart " , " Where the Heart Is " , and " Return to Peyton Place " . DuMont programs . It is believed that virtually the entire archive of the DuMont Television Network , covering its whole history from 1946 – 1956 , was disposed of during the 1970s by a " successor " broadcaster ( presumably Metromedia , the holder of DuMont ' s assets ) , who dumped all of the kinescopes / videotapes into the East River to make room for other tapes ( believed to be ABC ' s ) at a New York City warehouse . Further , a large number of DuMont ' s kinescopes were destroyed c . 1958 for their silver content . Of the over 20 , 000 programs carried by DuMont in its ten - year existence , approximately 350 or so episodes of DuMont programming are known to exist today , less than 2 percent of its total output . The remainder were either never recorded ( e . g . NFL on DuMont ) or were dumped in the earlier purges . " The Tonight Show " . Almost all of " The Tonight Show " with Jack Paar and the first ten years hosted by his successor Johnny Carson were taped over by the network , which is why Carson ' s late 1960s shows looked muddy compared to his competitor Dick Cavett on ABC ; NBC was using the " Tonight Show " tapes repeatedly . Early sporting events . Many early sporting events , such as the World Series and the first two Super Bowl s , were also lost , though a nearly intact recording of the first Super Bowl was found in 2005 . Super Bowls . " Super Bowl I " was aired by both CBS and NBC ( the only Super Bowl to be aired by two networks ) , but neither network felt the need to preserve the game long - term ; CBS saved the telecast for a few months and reran it as filler programming at least once before wiping it . A color videotape containing the first , second and fourth quarters of the telecast from WYOU ( the CBS affiliate for Scranton , Pennsylvania ) was found in 2005 and is in the process of being restored . " Super Bowl II " was aired exclusively by CBS and was believed to have been erased , but now it is learned that the entire telecast fully exist and rests in the vaults of NFL Films . Though the telecast of " Super Bowl III " exists in full color , only half of the " Super Bowl IV " broadcast does ( the rest was preserved by Canadian television in black - and - white ) , and the status of most of " Super Bowl V " remains unknown . It was not until " Super Bowl VI " that a continuous archive was established . Similarly , all of the telecasts of the NFL Championship Game s prior to the Super Bowl are believed to have been lost , with all surviving footage of those games coming from separately produced film . The National Football League had its own filmmakers , NFL Films , filming the game with its own equipment . Thus , preserving the telecasts on tape was not seen as a priority by the networks when another source was available – though the sportscasters ' play - by - play comments , as a result , were lost . World Series telecasts . All telecasts of World Series games starting in 1975 ( Reds - Red Sox ) are known to exist in full . Follows is the known footage of World Series telecasts prior to 1975 : League Championship Series telecasts . For the League Championship Series telecasts spanning from 1969 – 1975 , only Game 2 of the 1972 American League Championship Series ( Oakland - Detroit ) is known to exist , however the copy on the trade circuit is missing the Bert Campaneris - Lerrin LaGrow brawl . There are some instances where the only brief glimpse of telecast footage of an early LCS game can be seen in a surviving newscast from that night . While all telecasts of World Series games starting with 1975 are accounted for and exist , the LCS is still a spotty situation through the late 1970s : Wiped programs . Early live shows . Many programs in the early days in television were broadcast live and never recorded in the first place ; while they are also lost forever , they in fact were not wiped programs because they were never recorded . Most prime - time programs were preserved by the kinescope recording process , which involved filming the live broadcast from a television screen using a motion - picture camera ( videotape , for recording programs , was not perfected until the late 1950s and was not widely used until the late 1960s ) . This was also a common practice for broadcasting live TV shows to the west coast , as performers often performed a show back - to - back , but never back - to - back - to - back . Daytime programs , however , were generally not kinescoped for preservation ( although many were temporarily kinescoped for later broadcast , episodes recorded in this way were often junked ) . Many local station and network newscasts were prone to wiping . News . Some early news programs , such as " Camel News Caravan " , are largely lost . Moving images of Walter Cronkite reading the news in his studio every night for six years are gone with the exception of his coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the JFK assassination in 1963 . Studio shots of Peter Jennings inside his ABC studio during his first year there ( 1965 ) are also gone . Vanderbilt University has kept all evening national news telecasts since Monday , August 5 , 1968 . As of 1997 , CBS had saved 1 , 000 , 000 videotapes of news reports , broadcasts , stock footage , and outtakes according to a report that year from the National Film Preservation Board . The same report added , " Television stations still erase and recycle their video cassettes " , referring to local news programs . Many local stations contract with outside companies for archiving news coverage . Situation comedy . Little of the first sitcom , " The Mary Kay and Johnny Show " , remains today . It was initially live and not recorded , but later in its run kinescopes were made for rebroadcasting . Fragments of episodes and one complete installment are known to exist . Game shows . Game show s , more than any other genre , were prone to wiping . Many games between 1941 and 1980 had insignificantly - short runs ( some measured in a span of weeks or even days ) that the networks felt it unnecessary to keep them for posterity , whereas recycling the tapes would be more profitable and less of an effort than attempting to sell the series in reruns , in an era before cable television . Mark Goodson – Bill Todman Productions ( and to a lesser extent , Barry - Enright Productions and Chuck Barris Productions ) had the foresight to preserve many of their games for later reruns ; for years , these shows dominated the Game Show Network ( GSN ) line - up . Most other game shows from that era were not so fortunate . Almost all of the Bob Stewart , Heatter – Quigley , Hatos – Hall ( except for a large portion of " Let ' s Make a Deal " ) , and pre - 1980 Merv Griffin productions have been destroyed , with the exception of a few rare pilots and " cast aside " episodes . The few remaining episodes have therefore become collectors ' items , and an active trading circuit exists among collectors . NBC and ABC continued the wiping process well into the 1970s ; while ABC ceased in early 1978 , NBC continued to wipe some shows into 1980 , leaving much of their daytime game show content lost forever . CBS abandoned the wiping process by September 1972 , largely as a result of their collaboration with Goodson - Todman ; as a result , even the network ' s shorter - lived games ( such as " Spin - Off " ) still exist in their entirety . Incidentally , all three networks ended their wiping programs during the time Fred Silverman led their respective networks . While it remained in business , DuMont wished to keep its programs as intact as possible . However , the network ceased in 1956 and its archive was destroyed in the 1970s . The corporate successor to DuMont , Fox , not only has never aired any daytime programming ( other than its Fox Kids block from 1990 – 2001 ) but debuted in 1986 , well beyond the wiping era .