I wish METV could add The Farmer's Daughter

[Hawkee]

My mom and I were discussing retro shows and my mom had never even heard of The Farmer's Daughter and I wish METV would add it to it's lineup. Was The Farmer's Daughter a great show and would my mom love it?
Bestie

[Duster76]

The issue concerning The Farmer's Daughter reruns has come up in the past, here's a write-up by poster Ronny G from 2011 when Antenna TV considered adding the series:

"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".

[Ronny G]

Originally Posted by LaBestia

My mom and I were discussing retro shows and my mom had never even heard of The Farmer's Daughter and I wish METV would add it to it's lineup. Was The Farmer's Daughter a great show and would my mom love it?
Bestie

The Farmer's Daughter was a Screen Gems production--the same company who brought us Hazel, Dennis the Menace, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and many other classic TV shows. They shared the same writers, directors, crew, and the same amusing plots, so if your Mother liked any of the shows, I'm sure she would like The Farmer's Daughter. It ran for 3 seasons back in 1963-1966.

The Farmer's Daughter was based on an old 1940s movie of the same name. It starred the beautiful Swede actress Inger Stevens and the talented William Windom. It's premise was similar to "The Nanny," except in this case, Katy was a shy, naïve Swedish farm girl who moves to Washington, to be a live-in governess to the two young sons of a widowed Congressman named Glen Morley. It was mostly a romantic comedy. There is a courtship between Katy and Glen that slowly develops over the course of the first two seasons until they eventually get married during the third seasons. However, some episodes were more sad and dramatic and didn't have a laugh track, like the episode where Katy found Glen's deceased wife's diary which chronicled how they met during the war, up to her cancer diagnosis. Inger wearing a dark wig also played the wife in this outstanding flashback episode.

The show was last seen in reruns 40 years ago on the CBN network during the mid-1980s. Apparently, the network ran old 16mm prints, as the show was never properly transferred to video, and now, Sony doesn't want to spend the money to remaster new prints from the original negatives, so the show is sadly slipping into obscurity.

[1960'sTVfan]

Originally Posted by Ronny G

The show was last seen in reruns 40 years ago on the CBN network during the mid-1980s. Apparently, the network ran old 16mm prints, as the show was never properly transferred to video, and now, Sony doesn't want to spend the money to remaster new prints from the original negatives, so the show is sadly slipping into obscurity.

Yes it's indeed a shame that this is being allowed to happen. Perhaps the people at Sony believe there isn't enough public interest in the series and to create new prints from the negatives would be too cost prohibitive.

[stevea]

IMO Sony has digitally remastered virtually none of the old Screen Gems shows, except possibly Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie for streaming. I think they might have remastered season 1 of Hazel for DVD, and season 1 of Dennis the Menace for Nickelodeon many years ago. For all the other shows they rely on their old videotape transfers, which probably never happened for Farmer's Daughter.

They have a habit of using or leasing the wrong masters for DVD projects, such as edited versions of most of season 1 Father Knows Best, or the recent I Dream of Jeannie Blu-Rays.

All of this is conjecture on my part. But I am pretty sure Farmer's Daughter was never mastered to videotape, because there was a flap about that around a decade ago when Antenna TV wanted to air the episodes.

[RetroTVNitekatt]

This show is never going to see the light of day!

Heck, Sony is giving Neal Sabin (MeTV Founder, and Weigel's Vice Chairman) excuses regarding the Columbia/Screen Gems animation library when he's trying to license them for "TOON IN WITH ME"! Which is why they've only aired a couple so far. (He's confirmed this on the TIWM fan page on FB)

[edplattfan]

I'm William Windom's biographer and I'm doing a documentary on him. I was told by a Sony executive (in 2020) that Sony no longer held the rights to The Farmer's Daughter. That being said I also spoke with a gentleman who's doing a documentary about I Dream of JEannie with Barbara Eden. He worked for Sony during the earlier part of the century, in Archiving. He was part of that whole Antenna tv situation. He said that the sales department at Sony made the deal with Antenna TV re: The Farmer's Daughter...without checking with archives first. HE talked about how shows had an exclusive 25 year distribution window. Which means FD would have ended in 1988. However there were some shows that fell into limbo. If it wasn't originally considered a possible sales success, the show was never transferred to tape. FD would have ended in 1988 at teh time transfers were occurring. So it's possible no one cared to do it back then. Only 16mm prints exist of FD, or did. When CBN aired it, Sony's vault wasn't being managed by the archive group this gentleman worked for so there is no record of any vault movements pre-2000. However he said Sony/Columbia may have sent the 16mm copies to CBN but that they never returned to Sony but rather teh show owners. Which I would assume was Sony or Coca COla or whoever owned COlumbia in the 80s. Anyway, I think the original negatives are gone forever as are the 16mm. I'm sure they were thrown out by CBN or sold online. POint is, the show pretty much doesn't exist other than the home made DVDs out there.

[stevea]

It makes sense that it was never transferred--it's only three seasons and it's another color/B-W split.

What may not be true is the status of the 35mm masters. Just because Sony lost the rights to the show, it doesn't mean they went into an archive and surrendered film reels to some entity.

Of course, the rights question is totally relevant. If somebody wanted to "do something" with the episodes now, it is possibly not legally do-able.

The phrase "lost in the archives" comes to mind. It's amazing what they can come up with--take Father Knows Best, for example. Season 1 DVD consisted of mostly syndication-edited episodes (the tape transfers matched the dreadful blackout film edits). Fans screamed, and they found complete episodes for the remaining seasons. And complete season 1 episodes probably exist (or existed) someplace because TV Land showed differently-edited episodes back in the early 2000s. I've heard that when transfers were done, if syndication edits were matched to film edits, they also transferred the complete episode. This is what was done with the syndicated seasons of My Three Sons--the network versions were transferred.

[Charles Knox]

Originally Posted by RetroTVNitekatt

This show is never going to see the light of day!

Heck, Sony is giving Neal Sabin (MeTV Founder, and Weigel's Vice Chairman) excuses regarding the Columbia/Screen Gems animation library when he's trying to license them for "TOON IN WITH ME"! Which is why they've only aired a couple so far. (He's confirmed this on the TIWM fan page on FB)

Sory about the thread jack, but have you guys asked him about adding the UPA cartoons from Sony's vault to Toon In With ME?

[opus]

There’s a bunch of episodes on YouTube (if that’s not common knowledge)

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...bPS6RdW3mp24-C