Hey, I'm new to this board. Does anybody know where I can watch original broadcasts of I Love Lucy online for free and without registering?

I looked high and low for such a place to view all classic TV online for free and I can't find a thing...even when I type in "free" in my search. Unless there is some underground site that no one is aware of then I think we are out of luck. If you want "uncut" shows of I Love Lucy, I think you will have to consider buying the DVD's. I have only two seasons left to buy. I wanted to buy it all in that set, but i can only afford one season at a time. Good Luck and if you do find something in the future, please pass it on.

Welome to the board!

If you want to see broadcasts of I Love Lucy that aired as they originally were on CBS back in the day (aired 9:30 PM Monday Nights in the 1950s), you are out of luck. Several shows, commercials, promos, and specials from that era are long gone because the producers did not preserve them well, and over time, they have vanished. The majority of the shows, including the commercials, were filmed on kinoscope, which was just a single camera filmed with a television screen. As such, they were low quality and they degraded over a period of time. To think of an original broadcast is to watch something that aired on television for the first time, and that means watching I Love Lucy amongst a block of other shows in the 1950s.

I would highly recommend saving up your money and buying I Love Lucy on DVD either in seasons or the complete package. If not, then you may have to do some hard searching to find episodes online that you can watch for free. Youtube has recently deleted several accounts that contained I Love Lucy episodes due to copyright infringement and owner violations. As of right now you can only view clips of I Love Lucy, which is probably what you didn't have in mind.

There are pirate and bootleg websites out there that allow you to get anything from classic television shows to the newest movie that was just released, for free. With a torrent, you can get an entire series of a show onto your computer and watch all the episodes. But all of this is illegal, and authorities out there are beginning to charge heavy penalties and jail time to anyone who is downloading movies/shows illegally. DVDs now have copy-protection, which prevents a person from burning a movie onto a blank disc to give to a friend.

Blew a bit of wind out there. :rolleyes:

Thanks guys. I do have the show on DVD but, I was just curious about the original broadcasts. Thanks again.

I have quite a few episodes of ILL from the original broadcasts. These were all sourced from 16mm, and more than likely from prints made that were sent to CBS stations that were actually not part of the network. (i.e. a station in the middle of nowhere that, at that time, aired shows from ABC and/or NBC as well.) While the quality varies per episodes (and many of these floating on the collectors market are copies of copies of copies of copies) they do exist. If you are interested in seeing any, I would suggest posting on the "traders forum" here on the website.

A friend of mine had a copy of the Christmas from a 16mm print for years before the show was "found" and broadcast on CBS in 1989. Also, I believe that all of Lucille Ball's copies of the films included the commercials, as well as Jess Oppenheimer's prints (which Gregg Oppenheimer said in Jamestown, NY in 2004 that he used to find the missing footage and replace it in the shows for the DVD releases).

As far as seeing these shows online, I have no idea where or if they are available. Outside of the novelty of having these shows "as is" with the original cigarette openings and the original animation, your best bet is still the DVD releases.

Wow, that is amazing. It's best to keep on to those, since I consider them to be collectibles. All I have is the first two seasons of I Love Lucy. :(

I guess there is really one nice thing about the broadcasts of ILL and that is the extra footage of Lucy and Desi pitching the sponsor products. But still, most of these commercials have popped up on commercial compilations on VHS and DVD over the years, and the non-cigarette commercials have been put on the DVD's of the series.

I love these "commercials" they do together. They look so cute.