http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2010/10/antenna-tv-launch-schedule-starting.html

I'm really excited to hear that this show is coming back to TV.:happyface
I don't think it has been in reruns since the 1980s on CBN.:confused:
That's the last time I remember watching it.

well, here it's feb. 3rd, and no "FD"! What happened Pav?

From December: http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2010/12/antenna-tv-launch-schedule-changes.html

I just came across this network the other day!! I love it!!! :) If only someone would play The Facts of Life, Diff'rent Strokes, and The Brady Bunch, and I'll be a happy gal!!!

I've been following Antenna TV on facebook, and I have some disappointing news. :( :( :(
Today (4/30/11) some guy named Frank asked about "The Farmer's Daughter" and Antenna TV's representative responded with the following quote:

Antenna TV - Tribune Broadcasting Company: Frank, I have bad news about Farmer's Daughter. The prints were in such bad shape that Sony was not able to remaster them. I am so sorry. I know many people were looking forward to seeing this series.

Another person named Steve responded and was a little more vocal, but I thought it was interesting what he had to say:

Steve: "such bad shape" - let's not use PR talk - just say that it's cost prohibitive to bring the prints back up to broadcast quality. Sony isn't going to put the resources into doing that if the costs won't be recouped and Antenna TV won't pay ...anything beyond the agreed licensing fees for the series. It's a business/economic issue.

Some series need more work than others especially if the negatives haven't been used in 25+ years when the last batch of safety 16mm negatives for syndication prints were stuck. I wonder if the color episodes are the ones giving them more problems than the B&W
ones.

Still, I find it highly unlikely that all the episodes are "in bad shape',and that Sony can't throw together a "best of" package for ANTENNA TV. They need to think outside the box. Even if it means supplying transfers from safety 16mm prints/negatives.

I've been following Antenna TV on facebook, and I have some disappointing news. :( :( :(
Today (4/30/11) some guy named Frank asked about "The Farmer's Daughter" and Antenna TV's representative responded with the following quote:

Antenna TV - Tribune Broadcasting Company: Frank, I have bad news about Farmer's Daughter. The prints were in such bad shape that Sony was not able to remaster them. I am so sorry. I know many people were looking forward to seeing this series.

Another person named Steve responded and was a little more vocal, but I thought it was interesting what he had to say:

Steve: "such bad shape" - let's not use PR talk - just say that it's cost prohibitive to bring the prints back up to broadcast quality. Sony isn't going to put the resources into doing that if the costs won't be recouped and Antenna TV won't pay ...anything beyond the agreed licensing fees for the series. It's a business/economic issue.

Some series need more work than others especially if the negatives haven't been used in 25+ years when the last batch of safety 16mm negatives for syndication prints were stuck. I wonder if the color episodes are the ones giving them more problems than the B&W ones.

Still, I find it highly unlikely that all the episodes are "in bad shape',and that Sony can't throw together a "best of" package for ANTENNA TV. They need to think outside the box. Even if it means supplying transfers from safety 16mm prints/negatives.

Here we are 6 years later and the series is still the highest profile 1960's Screen Gems series still MIA.

How can one series, 202 cans of 35mm camera negatives (one for picture,one for mixed sound) become "bad shape" stored in the same vaults as Columbia's features and other Screen Gems shows where there's been no other reported issues with any other films or shows? There was something fishy about all this,and still is. Think "Steve" called them on the Carpet.

This is the same AntennaTV that isn't being upfront now about losing affiliates due to the FCC Spectrum buy-back and stations shutting down. (Boston/Manchester being the biggest)

I'd hardly say FD is SG's highest profile 60s series. I'd say it would more likely be Bewitched (followed by I Dream of Jeannie).

Would still like to see it, though.

I'd hardly say FD is SG's highest profile 60s series. I'd say it would more likely be Bewitched (followed by I Dream of Jeannie).

Would still like to see it, though.

I said "...still the highest profile 1960's Screen Gems series still MIA" MIA="Missing in Action" Not that it was it's highest profile overall :)

Besides it was last seen on the Family Channel in the '90's. That's where the DVD set that's floating about came from. The quality of those DVDs leaves a LOT to be desired though, but it's not the fault of the Family Channel showings it's the lousy recording quality of whoever it was that recorded these shows on tape and then did a horrible job of transferring them to DVDs. At any rate the point is Me TV or Cozi TV could show those same source programs that Family channel showed. I'd be more than satisfied with the video quality of those original tapes that Family channel had then I'd re-record it myself from fresh broadcasts now and would get a decent set. I suppose the problem is that maybe TV stations only want to show digital recordings not the actual films that Family channel must have used. I say, Columbia if you're too lazy to make digital copies then let the current vintage TV channels play the films the way Family channel did. Now that would make us all happy.:)

I said "...still the highest profile 1960's Screen Gems series still MIA" MIA="Missing in Action" Not that it was it's highest profile overall :)

My bad. Would really like to be able to delete my original post.

The problem with FD and all the other old SG shows is that Sony has done NO WORK on them. Still the same tired, poorly edited syndication prints, transferred years ago to videotape. They may be played back from more modern media now, but the quality and editing have never been worked on (you can tell by the old logos (except the original) still attached to the end).

So, if the junk copies they still play on Antenna are still acceptable (like Burns and Allen, Dennis the Menace, and Father Knows Best), why not just play FD as is?

I was told by an industry insider that the Farmer's Daughter was NEVER transferred to videotape like Hazel or Dennis. The last time the show aired in reruns was on CBN in the mid-1980s, and that the station was given the same old, beat-up 16mm reels that were shipped to TV stations across the USA on film. Up until the late '70s, this was the conventional way of distributing TV episodes to network affiliates.The show needs to be remastered, which means they have to go back to the original elements, but it is very expensive to do so. Sony doesn't see a profit so they're not going to do it. I sincerely wish they would, but there's not a huge demand.
Until then, i will have to enjoy my bootleg sets. By the way, there are at least 2 different homemade sets out there. I know because I own both of them. One is a 9-disc set which crams 10 episodes per disc, and a 16-disc set which has 5 episodes per disc. The quality is as different as night and day. The episodes do not appear to be from the same source, either, which leads me to believe that there was more than just one person recording the show back then. They both are missing the same episodes because--get this, CBN did not air all the episodes. Because it was a Christian-owned network, they declined to show any episode whose subject matter did not fit in with their beliefs. They did not not run an episode that dealt with horoscopes and astrology. They also chose not to run an episode about an unwed mother that Katy befriends.
Here are some screen caps from some of my episodes. The picture is a little soft focus, but completely watchable. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s, remembers watching TV like this. We did not have high-definition digital TVs like today, so we were used to watching old, grainy prints. Of course, it would be nice to see this series restored, but this is pretty much how I remember watching it in reruns 30 years ago.

I've always liked William Windom as an actor and would like to see The Farmers Daughter, but it sounds like restoring the episodes to modern telecast standards would be too cost prohibitive. Seasons 2 and 3 of The Joey Bishop Show (the color seasons) don't look that great but Antenna TV is airing those.

Amazing that anyone in the 90s was still playing a show from reels of film.

About the DVD sets floating around: to me the number one quality problem on these sets (any show) is cramming too many episodes on a DVD. Picture motion becomes jerky, audio gets out of sync. DVD-Rs are NOT that expensive. Use SP mode.

The Farmer's Daughter didn't run on the Family channel in the 90s. It was last run on CBN in the mid-1980s. If it had been on in the 1990s, then there would be more copies floating around because more households had VCRs then.
Also, another factor to poor quality is the dubbing standards back then. There were no DVRs, so making a copy of a TV show required two VCRs hooked up together. One played and the other one recorded. The second copy was called a "second generation" because the picture quality declined. That's how we traded tapes back then. If the person who received the "second generation" tape made a copy for another friend, then that would be called a "third generation" tape, and the picture was even worse, and so on....

Here is a page from the May 11, 1986 Detroit Free Press TV Guide. The Farmer's Daughter aired at 1pm on CBN.

Still on CBN's schedule in Nov. 1987. I couldn't find any listings in 1988.

And a lot of other good stuff, too.

The Farmer's Daughter didn't run on the Family channel in the 90s. It was last run on CBN in the mid-1980s. If it had been on in the 1990s, then there would be more copies floating around because more households had VCRs then.
Also, another factor to poor quality is the dubbing standards back then. There were no DVRs, so making a copy of a TV show required two VCRs hooked up together. One played and the other one recorded. The second copy was called a "second generation" because the picture quality declined. That's how we traded tapes back then. If the person who received the "second generation" tape made a copy for another friend, then that would be called a "third generation" tape, and the picture was even worse, and so on....

Oh, yeah. The quality is a double-whammy. Not only do you have nth generation VHS copies, at SLP speed to jam more on a tape, then you try to jam as much as possible onto a DVR-R.

Even people recording today, direct to a DVD recorder, records at slower speeds, with resulting deteriorated quality.

This is the earliest CBN listing for The Farmer's Daughter that I can find: Sept. 1985. So, we can conclude that CBN aired the show Sept. 1985 to Nov. 1987.

Ah, memories. Yes, I used to record all kinds of shows with my VCR back in the '80's. But I never started trading till DVD recorders were invented. It was about 2005 when I really started working overtime transferring all my TV shows from tape to DVD so that I could have material that others didn't already have to trade with. I'm the one who got stuck with the lousy looking 9 disc set of Farmer's Daughter. The only thing I can say about it is it's better than nothing. In fact it's not just that the picture quality is poor on some or most of the episodes but the DVDs themselves don't even play on most normal DVD players. In fact the only way I could get 3/4's of all those DVDs to play back was to play it on my Panasonic DVD recorder. They wouldn't play back on any regular DVD player. I was tempted then to re-record them myself onto DVDs so that in the future I would be able to play them back on regular players but the quality was so bad I decided to forget it. I was hoping some day they'd be available commercially.

Speaking of CBN (which later turned into the Family Channel, that's why I called it that) CBN did the same pulling of certain episodes it didn't approve of for Hazel. I recorded Hazel and Father Knows Best from CBN and I remember them skipping past the episode where Hazel believes in luck and her rabbit's foot, never saw that episode (as an adult anyway) till WOR played the Hazel series. Recorded those too. They also edited out the scene where Mr. Griffin goes to a gypsy fortune teller in another episode. Very strict rules they had there. I hate censorship of any kind even from the Godly.:o

Kind of off-topic of FD, but in relation to above, WHMB, a local religious station, used to play I Love Lucy. They would skip two European trip episodes: the one where the little Italian boy shined shoes, and the episode with Lucy in the grape vineyard. I don't know why they skipped the first one, but I figured they skipped the second one due to Lucy probably swearing at the end.

They did play a lot of good stuff, though. I got M3S seasons 6-10, unedited, from there, on MY vintage 2005 Panasonic DVD recorder (still proudly in service).

Also, I know what you mean about getting stuck with lousy DVD sets. That happened to me with Silver Spoons.

Speaking of My 3 Sons, it was thanks to my CBN/Family Channel recordings that I was able to add some missing early b/w episodes that Nick @ Nite and TV Land skipped over (each and every time they played the b/w's they'd skip the same episodes). Anyway recording the same series over again when different stations played it paid off, I was glad my earlier CBN b/w My 3 Sons recordings helped fill in the gaps when I transferred over to DVD using mainly Nick and TV Lands for sources since they skipped around.

All this talk about The Farmer's Daughter has made me want to watch the show again, so I pulled out my DVDs the other night and watched a few episodes. I already mentioned that I own the 9-disc set and the 16-disc set, and I wanted to show you the difference between the two. I watched the first season episode #24 entitled, "The Swinger" . The picture quality on the 9-disc set is just horrible The source looks like it's from a personal 16mm reel, which was then transferred to tape over and over several generations and then transferred to DVD. The picture is all washed out. However, the picture quality on the 16-disc set is ten times better. It was obviously recorded from TV because the CBN logo flashes onscreen in the lower corner for a moment. This is just one example. There are other episodes like this. So if you only have the 9-disc set, you should do yourself a favor and try to seek out the 16-disc set because it doesn't look like we'll see this show on an official legitimate DVD soon. Nevertheless, the 9-disc set still has it's perks as it contains 4 episodes not on the 16-disc set.

When you get these umpteenth (VHS) generation sets, probably recorded on the slowest speed possible, then transferred, squeezing as many onto a DVD as possible, well...fair warning.

1980s cable had its problems, in addition...ghosting, hum bars (now we get pixilation and other problems with digital transmission).

Getting back on topic, I assume since the 16 disc set was recorded off CBN, that the color episodes are actually in color (the 9 disc set, I'd kinda doubt it...).

I can say the 9 disc set does have color episodes of Farmer's D, main problem for me is most of the discs don't even play on normal DVD players, only on my Panasonic would they play, even then on some of the discs the menu wouldn't work right, you had to skip search thru episodes to get to other episodes on the disc. Really they're a mess. :(

I guess that depends on the person who made copies of the discs and/or what kind of dubbing equipment or discs they used. Mine were recorded on Hewett Packard discs--not that they are so great, but I haven't had any problems yet. Fingers crossed.

Here we are 6 years later and the series is still the highest profile 1960's Screen Gems series still MIA.

How can one series, 202 cans of 35mm camera negatives (one for picture,one for mixed sound) become "bad shape" stored in the same vaults as Columbia's features and other Screen Gems shows where there's been no other reported issues with any other films or shows? There was something fishy about all this,and still is. Think "Steve" called them on the Carpet.

This is the same AntennaTV that isn't being upfront now about losing affiliates due to the FCC Spectrum buy-back and stations shutting down. (Boston/Manchester being the biggest)

Here we are another 2 1/2 years later and STILL Sony has done nothing.

Keep in mind they threw together a partial package of THE PAUL LYNDE SHOW (I've heard 16 out of the 26) episodes from whatever prints were on hand for ANTENNA TV a couple of years ago.

Shame they can't get their act together - Sony even sold most of it's stake in CRACKLE their ad supported streaming service (Non-Sony/Columbia/Screen Gems material is starting to show up on the service) and removed the App from Sony branded internet capable devices!

But even having their own service or channel wouldn't make a difference - just look at NBC/UNIVERSAL and PEACOCK - alot of material licensed from 3rd parties (Which include Sony and CBS Television Syndication) and only a handful of classic (pre-80's) Universal Television library product.

I always wondered why the CBN episodes have several missing. I guess they didn't like the episode where Katy is in a harem costume or when her feminist cousin comes to visit. Not sure why they would skip the episode in season 3 where Glen thinks Katy is pregnant. Sadly not even Paley or UCLA have all the episodes. Just a handful and they're the same that have aired on CBN and other stations back in the 80s/90s. Although Paley has "Cousin Helga" episode. I think UCLA has the original pilot that was shot in 1962 with an intro from Inger to sell the series to the Network. SG re-tooled the pilot for the first episode, Speechmaker. Mickey Sholdar told me that the pilot was done in 62. I read that NBC did a re-make of the film earlier in the year and it must have sparked interest in the series. Bill Windom, Mickey and Rory O'brien also starred together in the film "One Man's Way." Rory said he wasn't 100% sure but he thinks it's because they were already slated to do the series so they made the boys play Bill's character's son in the film. They shot it before going into filming for the FD series.

I always wondered why the CBN episodes have several missing. I guess they didn't like the episode where Katy is in a harem costume or when her feminist cousin comes to visit. Not sure why they would skip the episode in season 3 where Glen thinks Katy is pregnant...

CBN didn't air episodes with content that was against Christian Values - simple as that. It's something to be respected. There was a MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. episode or two they didn't air when they had the rights to those they didn't air for the same reason.

Right, WHMB, a local religious station, even skipped the Lucy episode with the grape vat, because she was obviously swearing at the end.

They also skipped the France episode with the little shoeshine boy who lied and said it was his birthday.

Just a copy/paste to try to clear last post message

When you get these umpteenth (VHS) generation sets, probably recorded on the slowest speed possible, then transferred, squeezing as many onto a DVD as possible, well...fair warning.

1980s cable had its problems, in addition...ghosting, hum bars (now we get pixilation and other problems with digital transmission).

Getting back on topic, I assume since the 16 disc set was recorded off CBN, that the color episodes are actually in color (the 9 disc set, I'd kinda doubt it...).