Among the Betamax tapes I dug out this morning are:
- The first episode of “Moonlighting” with Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis
- ALF hosting “The Tonight Show”
- An episode of “Grand” [View the opening titles of “Grand,” which are… well, grand… 8mb]
- Late Night with David Letterman’s 7th and 8th Anniversary shows
- A Soviet newscast, “Vremya” [View a snippet of “Vremya”… 7mb]
- An “Entertainment Tonight” piece on the Dr. Who USA Tour, a project I worked on back in 1987 [View the piece — look for my silver Volkswagen Rabbit convertible parked behind the big trailer… 8mb]. I wonder what ever happened to the big trailer that was converted to a mini exhibition?
- An episode of “Alive From Off Center”, a short-lived avant-garde PBS series [View the title graphics… 6mb]
And that’s just on the first 4 tapes. Who knows what bizarre pieces of television history are lurking in the back of the closet?
Why did I tape these things? I do know that I told myself that they would be interesting some day in the future, and I was right. But did I imagine that the future would bring an interconnected communications system where I could make them available to the entire world? Or did I expect to sit at home and actually watch them one night?
