| Focal Archive
Zones : Autumn, 2002 Issue #43
HISTORIC FILMS BUYS DON KIRSHNER'S ROCK CONCERT LIBRARY AND
THE DAVID SUSSKIND TALK SHOW ARCHIVE
Historic Films Archive of Greenport, NY, has recently purchased
all rights to the 1970’s premiere live rock & roll concert television
program, “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert/In Concert”,
and has secured exclusive excerpt rights to the ground-breaking “David
Susskind Show”.
The rock concert programmes, originally produced by legendary song publisher
and producer Don Kirshner, were a US Saturday night television staple from 1971
until 1982. Except for a brief airing of 12 episodes by VH1 a few years ago,
the programs have long been off the air and unavailable for licensing purposes.
Historic Films President Joe Lauro states “We are delighted
to have this great addition to our music library. I don’t think there
is another program which documents Pop music from that period as well as the
'Rock Concert’ programs. Another great thing about the program is that
most of the performances are live, therefore making it less expensive for potential
licensees, since the sync rights do not need to be cleared.”
"Stunning" Quad Transfers
“We have spent the past 4 months transferring all the original programs
from their 2 inch quad masters to DigiBeta, including several hundred hours
of rehearsal and outtake footage, and are at the final stages of adding all
the performances to our online data base (www.historicfilms.com).
Fortunately, most of the programs were in excellent condition, so the transfers
are stunning, with very little dropout or problems, which often occur with older
Quad tapes.”
“We were fortunate”, says Mr. Lauro, “that the Quad tapes
all played quite nicely on our in-house machines. All of the 230 programs were
on large 90 minute reels with the added bonus of original pop-oriented commercials
intact. The library also includes several thousand music promos from the pre-MTV
period, many of which are quite rare today.”
‘The David Susskind Show’, which began its network life as ‘Open
End’ in 1958, presented long form interviews and debate with subjects
such as Nikita Kruschev, Robert Kennedy, Truman Capote, Germaine Greer, Phil
Spector, and F. Lee Bailey.
America’s first confrontational-style talk show, Susskind would often
explore then- controversial subjects such as homosexuality, interracial marriage,
and the workings of the Mafia.
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