Lost television broadcasts are television programs that were not preserved after their original airing, rendering them permanently lost. This particularly affects television programs that aired before the widespread use of home video recording and digital archiving. A significant portion of early television programming was never recorded, largely because recording equipment was unavailable or the content was considered to have little monetary or historical value.
Wiping Wiping and junking are colloquial terms for actions taken by radio, television, production and broadcasting companies to erase or destroy old audiotapes, videotapes, and kinescopes. Although the practice was once typical, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, wiping is much less common today.
Ongoing recovery efforts
Australia The majority of locally produced original programing in Australia was funded by the government-owned Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Commercial stations created their own programs, yet by June 1964, ABC had produced 185 of the 212 plays, all 31 operas, and 90 of the 95 ballets shown on Australian television in that period.Stuart Cunningham et al., The Media and Communications in Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2001, ), p.175
Although many important ABC programs from these early days were captured as kinescopes, most of this material was later lost or destroyed. In a 1999 newspaper article on the subject, author Bob Ellis recounted the story of a large collection of kinescopes of early ABC drama productions and other programs, including some of the first Australian Shakespeare television productions and the pioneering popular music show Six O'Clock Rock. Learning that the ABC planned to dispose of these recordings, Bruce Beresford (then a production assistant at the ABC) arranged for a friend to pose as a silver nitrate dealer, and the anonymous collector purchased the films for a nominal cost. Subsequently, the collector occasionally rented some of the recordings out to schools for a small fee. However, the daughter of one of the actors involved (Owen Weingott), recognized her father from a Shakespeare production and told him about it. Assuming that ABC still owned the print and was making money out of these recordings without compensating the actors, Weingott lodged an official complaint. Commonwealth police descended on the illegal collector, but he was warned that they were coming, and in a panic, he destroyed almost all the material he possessed.Bob Ellis, "The Lost Picture Show", Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1999
The National Film and Sound Archive holdings of 1950s-era shows include several episodes of the 1957 discussion series Leave It to the Girls, most of the 1958–1959 soap opera Autumn Affair, and several episodes of the comedy game show The Pressure Pak Show.
Brazil From 1968 to 1969, Rede Tupi produced new episodes of the telenovela Beto Rockfeller by recording over previous episodes; as a result, few of the older episodes survived. After the closure of TV Tupi in 1980, the 536 tapes at its São Paulo studios were transported to a warehouse in the São Paulo municipality of Cotia. They were left to deteriorate there until being recovered by the Cinemateca Brasileira in 1985 and subsequently restored by TV Cultura in 1989. Only two Rede Tupi–owned and operated stations are known to have any preserved videotapes; TV Itacolomi's archives are now owned by TV Alterosa, the Minas Gerais affiliate of SBT in Belo Horizonte. In contrast, almost all of TV Piratini's material was lost in a fire in 1983, two years after the building of the extinct station was occupied by TVE-RS, the statewide public television station in Rio Grande do Sul. The few surviving TV Piratini tapes are stored at the Hipólito José da Costa Communication Museum in Porto Alegre, which are in a heavily deteriorated state. Additionally, a number of tapes at the Rede Tupi studios in Urca, Rio de Janeiro, were later found to have been significantly degraded by vinegar syndrome, so they were unable to be migrated to a modern format. However, part of the library of Rio de Janeiro TV Tupi studios was founded in 2005 at the headquarters of Radio Tupi and later donated to the Brazilian National Archive, which signed an agreement with Globo in 2007 to preserve the material.
The public television network Cultura has preserved many old programs and has one of the most complete archives among Brazilian television networks. Despite having suffered a fire in 1986, this fire did not reach the station's archives.
After the bankruptcy of Manchete in 1999, most of the collection was seized at the station's studios in Rio de Janeiro until it was included in the bankruptcy estate and later auctioned by the Brazilian courts, which caused part of the library to be lost. However, some telenovelas (such as Pantanal) had reruns by some television networks (such as SBT and Band).
Canada The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has rarely wiped programs it has produced. As a result, the CBC now maintains a nearly complete archive of all programming it produced that was recorded. One exception was the 1953–54 sciencefiction series Space Command, of which only one out of 150 episodes are known to survive. However, the whole series was kined for distribution to stations across Canada. The CBC has also said that the 1984–1993 music video series, Video Hits, no longer exists in their archives.
Chile During the 1973 coup, the military burned a large portion of the publicly owned Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) archives between 1969 and 1973.
Canal 13 (formerly Catholic University of Chile TV) also had programs whose records are lost or never existed because they were only broadcast live. Although Sábado Gigante began in 1962, it only had recorded programs or fragments since the early 1970s. Popular live sitcom El litre 4916, broadcast between 1963 and 1965, was not recorded and had no surviving episodes.
Europe The first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 was broadcast live on radio and television, but only a partial audio recording of a radio transmission has survived from the original broadcast, with an independently filmed clip of the winner's reprise as the only video available. The ninth edition in 1964 was rumored to have been recorded on tape by DR, the Danish broadcaster and that edition's host nation, but was later destroyed in a fire. However, DR later stated that a recording was never made in the first place, as no tape machines were available at the time. Another recording of the contest was thought to have existed at the French television archives, but it has since been revealed that this is not the case.
Belgium Most Flemish youth series from the 1950s were not preserved: Bolletje en Bonestaak (1955), Jan zonder Vrees (John the Fearless, 1956), Schatteneiland (Treasure Island, 1957), Reis om de wereld in 80 dagen (Around the World in 80 Days, 1957), and Professor Kwit (1958). The series Manko Kapak (1959) is an exception and survives on kine. Only three of the 12 episodes of the Flemish courtroom drama series Beschuldigde sta op from the 1960s to 1980 survive.
Czechia In 1997, the Czech Television studio archive in Ostrava experienced a devastating flood. The flood destroyed 30,000 news film shots, 6,000 films, 2,000 video tapes, 9,000 scripts, 10,000 photographs, half of the sound archive and the costume department and the props warehouse.
Finland In Finland, the law on the archiving of TV programs came into effect in 1984. In 1981, Finland held a televised competition to select their musical entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. The only live performance from their semi-final round is of the Leevi and the Leavings, which was discovered in a private collection recorded on a VHS cassette. The original tape from Yle (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) containing all fifteen acts is lost, although all acts that qualified for the final round are available online. The majority of these annual competitions held between 1961 and 1984 are now lost.
Ireland The Republic of Ireland was a latecomer to television, with Telefís Éireann being established at the end of 1961. Although early news broadcasts were recorded on kines, almost all broadcasts up until 1977 are lost. Of the soap opera Tolka Row (1964–1968) only the last episode survives, while almost all the early episodes of The Late Late Show (1962–present) are lost. Even when shows were sent abroad– The Riordans was sent to Australia for rebroadcast– the tapes were often sent back to Ireland and recorded over, as they were so expensive.
Netherlands The 1970s Dutch TV series The Eddy-Go-Round Show hosted by Eddy Becker, despite featuring high-profile guests, is reported to have been largely erased by the broadcaster it aired on. However, a short section featuring Swedish pop group ABBA performing "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" was later uncovered on a tape recorded by a home viewer. An additional episode was later uncovered as the host had kept a copy for himself and was later rebroadcast on a Dutch cable channel in 2012.
United Kingdom
Recording technology and rights Drama and entertainment output was studio-based and followed the tradition of live theatre and radio drama.
The Sunday-Night Play (a major event in the 1950s) was performed live in the studio. On following Thursdays, because telerecording was then of insufficient broadcast quality, another live performance was broadcast, with the artists returning to perform the play again. Black Limelight is a stage play that was adapted for British television three times, with each version being lost. These include a 1952 version as part of Sunday Night Theatre, which was broadcast live and not recorded, a 1956 version as part of Armchair Theatre and a 1962 version as part of BBC Sunday-Night Play.
Lost programs Madhouse on Castle Street, a 1963 BBC teleplay starring a then-unknown Bob Dylan, is considered lost. It was erased in 1968, and despite attempts by the British Film Institute to recover it, a telerecorded copy has still not been found .
As of 2026, 95 black and white episodes of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who are not known to survive, all from the tenures of the first two Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton (see Doctor Who missing episodes). Audio recordings survive for all of the lost episodes and have been released commercially by the BBC. Several episodes of some serials, including The Invasion, The Reign of Terror, The Power of the Daleks and The Ice Warriors (all episodes only surviving in audio form), were reconstructed using animation for DVD releases.
The BBC wiped many editions of Not Only... But Also, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore from its archives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cook and Moore reportedly offered to pay for the cost of preservation and buy new videotapes so that the old tapes would not need to be reused, but this offer was rejected. Some telerecordings of the black and white episodes survive, but the completed programs on color videotape of the 1970 series were wiped. As a result of this, the only surviving color sketches are the
There is lost material in all genres– as late as the early 1990s, a large number of videotaped children's programs from the 1970s and 1980s were irretrievably wiped by the BBC archives on the assumption that they were of "low priority", without consulting the BBC children's department itself.
Other lost material Episodes of the pop music chart show Top of the Pops from its first decade were either wiped or, if transmitted live, not recorded. The Beatles' only live appearance on Top of the Pops in 1966, performing the single "Paperback Writer", is believed to have been wiped in a clear-out in the 1970s. An off-air recording of 11seconds of footage made on an 8mm film camera was discovered in April 2019.