Slashdot Mirror
CBS Refuses To Preserve Jack Benny Footage
goosman writes "The president of the International Jack Benny Fan Club had the opportunity to review some holdings of the CBS vaults while assisting them with some transfers. In the vaults she found 25 shows on film that were unreleased, but in the public domain. The IJBFC offered to pay for the digitization and preservation of these shows; they got a letter of enthusiastic support from the Benny estate. CBS has so far refused to allow this preservation to happen." BoingBoing and TechDirt have both covered this act of cultural destruction.
Found something on Boing-Boing's comments which might make us take this with a grain of salt:
Here (with his permission) is a comment from Stan Taffel, who is a media preservationist and posted this to the Association of Moving Image Archivists listserv (AMIA-L). According to Stan, this controversy has been orchestrated by a fan club person who sells copies of the shows. Stan also tells me he's just been speaking with a company who is trying to secure a license to release the shows. Again, I'm just reporting what others have said, and have no personal stake or opinion other than that these shows should be made available to those who fervently want to see them.
Stan's comment:
"I have spoken to my source at CBS and am happy to report that the "hype" is just what it is; all hype.
CBS is ready and willing to sub license any property (as they did with Studio One etc.) for a fee.
Laura Leff, the "President" of the Jack Benny Fan Club she began a few years ago, is very good at
generating P R and has done a very good job at starting a Facebook petition against CBS and getting
articles and giving interviews pleading for the release of 25 Benny shows. She says that CBS has "locked"
these films away and will not be preserved. This is not the case.
The 25 Benny shows as well as the full run of the series is stored in state of the art facilities. The film elements
are safe and in good shape. CBS is also aware of the fact that Ms. Leff has a library of many existing shows
and charges for making copies; dupes of both copywritten and PD shows are offered from her website.
While I applaud her tenacity and love for Jack Benny (she organized a fine website and a convention a few
years ago), it seems that the truth has been diluted and the actual state of the predicament has been reported
in error. She is great at "self promoting". What it boils down to is this: She is a huge fan who just wants to
have copies of the shows and has gone this route to try and obtain them. CBS doesn't know how she was
"supervising" a transfer of one of the color shows as that is not her job. True, it was an NBC special and
maybe she was invited to see a conversion but "supervising"? She is friends with Joan Benny (Jack's
daughter) so perhaps that's how she was invited to see the inner workings. She has gained attention to her
fan club and her plight, however misrepresented it is.
CBS is not the enemy here; they will sub contract The Jack Benny out. As these are supposedly P D shows
(and that's not definite) there are other sources to locate them and once they're out, anyone can dupe them
and sell them for no fee. CBS isn't the only source for 16mm kinescopes. They even told her to try to find
them through other avenues, fully aware she wants to add them to her "collection".
Should these films be available - of course. However, business is business and CBS pays for the storage
of these and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of elements and that's not cheap. To give copies to her
for her archive is not so simple even if she pays for her copies. Maybe some company will come forward
and these shows will be seen. Time will tell."
As a big fan of Jack Benny's work I have to say CBS aren't a bunch of mother fuckers. They're a bunch of horse fuckers.
They can't be both? Mother fuckers don't have to be fucking a human mother.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Replying to my own article because it's even worse than that, as said in a very interesting comment in the boingboing article: apparently
1) the person who started this whole thing sells copies of shows, and they're not all PD.
2) she's a fan who's using this as an excuse to expand her collection.
3) her claim that she was "overseeing the color specials transfer" seems to be a lie.
4) CBS is willing to license these episodes out; they did not, as falsely claimed, say that it would be too much trouble even if they could iron out the legal issues
5) the episodes are not some unique thing that only CBS has copies of
The headline and article are grossly misleading. CBS is not opposed to preserving this material. Rather, it is unwilling to assume the legal costs of protecting itself against copyright infringement suits if it distributes the material. While I agree that this is an unfortunate effect of the current copyright regime, it simply is not true that CBS is refusing to preserve these shows. They have not discarded them or destroyed them; they're keeping the originals in their vault.
Pity Johnny Carson is also dead. He and Benny were extremely close, and he would have raised holy hell over this. And the dude had a lot of clout.
Can't get outraged, though. Media conglomerates have already used up most of my outrage, and I want to save what's left for genocide, the Republican party, and other serious stuff.
Indeed, the slashdot summary *is* wrong. See posting #31 at the BoingBoing article -- a Ms. Laura Leff is a major fan of Jack Benny. She sells both PD & copyrighted Benny shows:
"The 25 Benny shows as well as the full run of the series is stored at CBS in state of the art facilities... CBS is also aware of the fact that Ms. Leff has a library of many existing shows and charges for making copies; dupes of both copywritten and PD shows are offered from her website."
CBS seems to be fairly reasonable; Ms. Leff apparetnly is making much noise for her own benefit.