Welcome my friend!!

It was an excellent recording you made :)

Hi Barnaby1,

Very exciting to hear from someone in the business then. Do you recall: was the recording basically a recording of a 'live' show, or was there editing involved, as was the case with " An Evening with Fred Astaire" also in 1958?

Thanks for any input you may have.

Pete

Welcome Barnaby!

It's interesting that the quality of the video was better back then than it was in the 70's and 80's when they started using the early Solid State Cameras, most of those shows look rather artificial today while the Dinah Shore video looks rich and colorful.

Just imagine- Being PAID to get to "Play" with state of the art video stuff like that...Did you REALISE what a KEWL job you had ?!?

Cool, it's neat to have someone who was part of that history posting here now. BTW, I admire the quality of those early shows, both in content and in a technical way.

Pete:

What editing was involved in the "Evening with Fred Astaire Show" that you've seen...? The original program was a live broadcast from L.A. to N.Y., which was taped and then replayed for the West Coast.

- Kevin

I agree totally, I remember the early color shows and the results were amazing, whereas the later color shows seemed to look washed out and lacked the delicate color balance achieved in early days.

Didn't the Astair show use some cutting and splicing?

Pete

Not the first one. It actually was a live broadcast to the East Coast, with a taped West Coast replay three hours later.

The subsequent Astaire specials were edited, however, as they were taped and assembled in advance.

- Kevin

I thought the same. However my bias may be due to the poor shape we see a lot of the older programs these days. In many instances we are seeing multigenerational copies. The losses incurred with the multiple dubs make the 70's and 80's programs look pale in comparison with the first generation recording of Dinah Shore.

Like old film, many producers never saw the need to properly monitor the dubs or show any concern in archiving. Most of the early video tapes, especially by ABC and NBC were erased after use. It could not be fathomed that someone would be interested in Dinah Shore's program 55 years later!