yes, I agree, not November 9th, 1958, amazing as of my post, Janis Page is still alive at 100 years of age!

@@OsbornTramain The slate at the start definitely says 11/9/58 - perhaps it sat on the shelf for several months for some reason before being transmitted?

May 3 was probably the summer re-run date. Hearing the whole show might give some tipoffs as to the original November airdate (i.e. mentions of upcoming Thanksgiving etc.)

@@kevink2593 No reruns. Certainly not in May, Dinah did 36 shows that year, The summer replacement show with John Raitt and Janet Blair started on June 14.

It’s not just you. While slates were always used in filming and TV, videotaping methods such as queuing were very advanced for 1958. I really like master copies with their slates and timers intact, and I particularly like this kind of timer because it also appeared before “An Evening with Fred Astaire”, taped October 1958, the very first TV special in colour (about a month prior to this D. Shore Show). A “Hollywood Palace” and “It’s Your Bet” episode has this timer beeping on KZfaq somewhere... I wouldn’t want to hear it; that would be scary. See if you can find them!

@@Venusandmars77 Those timers with beeps are so cool. Imagine being in the 50's or 60's and seeing that kind of stuff.

@@Venusandmars77 I kind of find the beepers attractive for some reason, LOL!

Janis Paige is now 100 years old, congratulations to her!

64 years I think

There are so many "what were they thinking?" moments in regard to erasing videotapes from that era. Even Ed Sullivan wasn't saving b&w videotapes until a few years later. I think his shows from this period are saved on kinescopes. Dick Clark kinsecsoped all those old American Bandstand shows. Even his mid sixties ABC-TV weekly afternoon show only exists on bad kinescopes. How about Major League Baseball? Much of the World Series games from the 1960's and 1970's along with the playoffs don't exist on videotape. Neither MLB, the teams or NBC thought enough to make safety copies of those 2" reel to reel tapes. Probably the most famous instance of ridiculous cost saving was NBC's decision to erase the Tonight Show color videoptape of the night in 1968 when John Lennon and Paul McCartney went on the Tonight Show (guest hosted by Joe Garagiola) to announce the formation of Apple.

On an Ed Sullivan retrospective, I've seen a B&W videotape segment of Connie Francis singing "Lipstick on Your Collar" dated 1959, so not all his tapes from that era were erased.

@@shave-a-thon3415 The networks will tell you that videotape was very expensive in those days and "needed to be reused". Also, the 2" quad reels were huge and storage space/cost was a factor as well. The smart artists (Fred Astaire, Dinah Shore, Shirley Temple, etc) protected the tape masters one way or another.

@@jehobden It's such a pity that they just cut up the shows in half hour segments and don't show them in their entirety along with the commercials.

@@Lampshade51 The storage and cost issues should have been more of a concern for the local affiliates than the network. WPIX TV in NYC had some classic kiddie shows along with a dance party show hosted by Clay Cole. All are lost to the ages.

If the footage does exist, it would not be in color.

Oh stop bitching.

You're right, but I can live with it, especially on such a short clip. I wish they would show it raw, but I can understand them wanting to protect their work.

I can't name them, perhaps Barry Grauman can, but CBS had a few color specials before 1960. No color videotape survives, indeed I don't know if they taped at all (they went out live).

CBS regularly telecast Red Skelton in color from 1957 through '59, as well as several color specials. Then in 1959, the network abruptly discontinued color telecasting because of NBC's expanded emphasis on color [almost a dozen series were regularly colorcast in the fall of '59]. They didn't want RCA, NBC's parent company, to capitalize on any color series they might schedule {Bill Paley, "Mr. CBS", put it this way: "If we go to color, we'll only be helping RCA sell more color sets.....and I'll be damned if I'm going to let the General {David Sarnoff, head of RCA, and Paley's rival} do that!!!!". Their stubbornness continued through late 1965, when CBS was forced to schedule at least half of their prime-time [and daytime] schedules in color, because of NBC's expanded color schedules (about 95%; they billed themselves as "The Full Color Network" that fall).

Barry I. Grauman - It also didn't hurt for CBS in 1965 that another company began producing color cameras - Philips, with their Norelco PC-60 - which used Plumbicon tubes, and thus enabled CBS to carry out its "anybody but RCA" policy of replacing older equipment (which they had done previously when they purchased Marconi Mark IV B&W cameras to replace the RCA TK-10/30 and TK-11/31's). (On a side note, when their RCA TK-26 film chains transferred from their 81st Street studios in New York to the Broadcast Center were up for replacement, CBS opted for General Electric PE-240 chains.)

I have more recently discovered that Red Skelton did broadcast his show on CBS in the 1950's from Studio 33 (the Bob Barker Studio). I've been in Studio 33 four times. CBS stopped purchasing RCA-TK 41 cameras around 1960 and didn't broadcast in color again until 1965 using the beautiful Norelco PC 60 cameras.

+Bob Sewvello - CBS actually did quite a bit of color programming from 1954 to 1959 when it stopped (except for the occasional special or broadcast of "The Wizard of Oz") until 1965. I was able to track over 100 Red Skelton episodes in TV GUIDE that were broadcast in color from 1955 to 1959. Even "Burns & Allen," "The Ed Sullivan Show" (August 1954) and the "Jack Benny Program" were broadcast once in color (the Benny episode feature a young Harry Shearer as a member of a Boy Scout-like troop at a carnival; the syndicated episode, unfortunately, is in black-and-white). Other programs colorcast include "Shower of Stars," "Climax," and the network's 90-minute musical and dramatic specials.

Pro tip: double tap on the right side of your screen to jog the video forward 10 seconds, repeat as necessary. You’re welcome.

Sorry to hear that...wow.

Paul Surratt died in 2020 at age 72-73. He had a license plate that read "Save TV".

So glad to hear. She & Dinah were the best!

NBC was the only network actively promoting (and scheduling) color programs- albeit a handful of shows- at the time; CBS had about one or two, including "THE RED SKELTON SHOW"- until 1959, when ALL color programming was "suspended" due to William Paley's rivalry with RCA/NBC over color telecasts. ABC had NO color broadcasting facilities until September 1962.

Thank you. William Paley was a creep! He's the reason they cancelled Gilligan's Island. And I guess they made The Flintstones in color but ABC didn't begin broadcasting the color episodes until two years later. I read in a book written by Bob Denver that William Paley's wife was angry at CBS because they were cancelling Gunsmoke and she loved it. So to satisfy her they cancelled Gilligan's Island because they began Gunsmoke in the GI spot. And I believe made the former thirty minute GS to an hour.

According to Paley in his autobiography, the network had tentatively "pencilled in" "GILLIGAN'S ISLAND" for a fourth season on Mondays at 7:30pm(et), followed by a new "rural" sitcom from Filmways, "DOC". He reviewed the new schedule for September 1967, and decided "GUNSMOKE" deserved one more chance on Mondays at 7:30, and cancelled the commitments for the other series {"DOC" was reworked for NBC's consideration in 1969, but they passed on it}.

Okay. I just read what Bob had put in his book. Thank you for the comment.

***** Gunsmoke started as an hour program in 1961.

It's generally accepted that the oldest known color videotape is the dedication ceremony for WRC television that took place May 22, 1958. Search 1958 WRC oldest videotape in youtube to see a sample of it.

The second oldest known color videotape was of Fred Astaire's first TV special, "An Evening With Fred Astaire", broadcast in October of 1958, also on NBC. Supposedly, the Astaire special was taped in advance, but the cast also did the show live the evening it aired, the idea being that if there was a problem with the tape, the network could within seconds switch to the live show. I would think this color tape was a recording of a show seen live on the East Coast but recorded for replay three hours later for California viewers.

That's the one with President Eisenhower

super duper my family had two color television sets. Wait, that was Marty McFly

RCA introduced color video tape recording in Sept 1958 and the first show recorded in color was An Evening with Fred Astaire in Oct 1958. (That tape is still preserved.)

Dinah Shore LIVES! She's immortal!

@@ericdreizen1463 I saw her Wednesday. She looked DELICIOUS in that gown of hers on her date with Tupac. (Rumor has it they had “desert” at Tupac’s crib!