I remember watching UM on Lifetime when I was younger, but its been years since I've seen a full length episode. I don't think I saw the show in first run and if I did I was too young to remember. I've been curious how updates were handled. Of course I'm referring to the RS episodes and not the junk they show today.

1. During the NBC & CBS runs when there was an update to a case would they rerun the original case before they showed the update or would they just rerun the update in a later episode by its self?

Example: -Episode airs featuring someone wanted for murder.
-Four or five weeks later an episode airs with two or three new cases along with the rerun of the murder case with an update at the end saying the person was captured.

2. When Lifetime aired the episodes did they always show the updates with the original cases if there was one or would they show the case and maybe five or six episodes later show the update (like it would be in the original airings)?

Hope I didn't confuse you too much. :)

I have no idea about NBC because I was a kid then and don't have any of the episodes to reference but I can comment on Lifetime.

These are the sorts of updates I saw:

UM updates following the segment which were clearly the format Lifetime received the episode in

Lifetime update following the segment (or following the UM update after the segment so there were 2 updates)

UM updates in a different episode with a brief summary of the case with the promise of more details in an upcoming broadcast

UM segment without any update (even when I'd seen it in another episode w/the other types of updates)

Lifetime is hard to go by because they chopped up a lot of the episodes and when that happened I think sometimes the updates went and/or they just didn't bother to check if there was an update to any of the segments when they pieced together their own episodes.

And to clarify, UM updates are those that were either hosted by Stack or done with the same text format of the original show. Lifetime updates had/have a different look to them.

I remember watching UM on Lifetime when I was younger, but its been years since I've seen a full length episode. I don't think I saw the show in first run and if I did I was too young to remember. I've been curious how updates were handled. Of course I'm referring to the RS episodes and not the junk they show today.

1. During the NBC & CBS runs when there was an update to a case would they rerun the original case before they showed the update or would they just rerun the update in a later episode by its self?

Example: -Episode airs featuring someone wanted for murder.
-Four or five weeks later an episode airs with two or three new cases along with the rerun of the murder case with an update at the end saying the person was captured.

2. When Lifetime aired the episodes did they always show the updates with the original cases if there was one or would they show the case and maybe five or six episodes later show the update (like it would be in the original airings)?

Hope I didn't confuse you too much. :)


1. This is what I remember from the original broadcasts:

An episode would air a story
-if there was an update say 6 months later, they would show them halfway through the program (a little 'update' screen would come on) and it was usually a synopsis of the story and then they would announce the update. RS would indicate at the beginning of the show that there was an update to the show

2. I can't really remember what lifetime did differently (the original format was burned into my brain). I just remember that RS would always mention that a lifetime viewer called in the tip and it made me laugh.

I remember watching UM on Lifetime when I was younger, but its been years since I've seen a full length episode. I don't think I saw the show in first run and if I did I was too young to remember. I've been curious how updates were handled. Of course I'm referring to the RS episodes and not the junk they show today.

1. During the NBC & CBS runs when there was an update to a case would they rerun the original case before they showed the update or would they just rerun the update in a later episode by its self?

Example: -Episode airs featuring someone wanted for murder.
-Four or five weeks later an episode airs with two or three new cases along with the rerun of the murder case with an update at the end saying the person was captured.

2. When Lifetime aired the episodes did they always show the updates with the original cases if there was one or would they show the case and maybe five or six episodes later show the update (like it would be in the original airings)?

Hope I didn't confuse you too much. :)


In the NBC days:

* Story about a fugitive airs without an update.

The fugitive is arrested a week later.

* Update is aired about his capture the following Wednesday. Most likely, the update is preceded by some brief background on the story and Stack may say something like "two weeks ago, we brought you the story of..." and a few lines to remind/inform viewers of what the case was about.

Lifetime's handling of the same episode:

* The original airing of the story and the "update" from two weeks later are cojoined together so you get the original story followed immediately by the update.

* The update is most likely deleted from the episode it was originally a part of. Although this really varied.

It wasn't obvious until I started collecting recordings of NBC episodes, but Lifetime did some fairly extensive editing of the episodes. It wasn't uncommon for Lifetime to delete entire segments and updates from the episodes they were a part of originally, only to insert them in to other episodes. I would guess this was done for timing and commercial placement considerations and to better accommodate updates that, for obvious reasons, were not a part of the original broadcast.

This thread is a good example of an attempt to track Lifetime episodes and figure out what stories and updates aired when...

www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=190996

Obviously, the same Caveat applies: This discussion is in reference to the Robert Stack format that used to air on Lifetime from roughly 1992 until 2008, give or take.

Thanks to those that responded.

I just remember that RS would always mention that a lifetime viewer called in the tip and it made me laugh.
I always got a kick out of that! I loved it especially when it was a guy and they would write "Lifetime Viewer" under his name (Greg Webb for example)