Buyer's Guide to Fifty Years of TV on Video

Rating:
Summary: Ugh.
Review: A terrible waste of shelf space.
This guy is curmudgeonly, arrogant and ill informed. He criticizes like-minded books in the field for their inaccuracies and yet this book is riddled with laughable errors.
Get a fact-checker, buddy.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Bias
Review: The Buyers Guide To Fifty Years of TV On Video by Sam Frank

The title grabbed my attention. Having grown up with television and having my goals and mores and sensibilities shaped by the flickering box, I was intrigued. Could someone actually compile a listing of old TV shows that were available on video? A computer database might could provide a cold listing, but what about the personal touch? Insights into characters, background anecdotes, historical notes, personal touches which would make such a tome palatable and fun surely couldn't be possible, Wrong. Sam Frank obviously loves the medium of television. His intimate knowledge of, and familiarity with, many of the shows and made-for-tv productions in his book is evident. His interviews with writers, producers, actors and insiders help make this book fun and informative. I admit that our opinions on many shows are quite different, but to each his or her own. I expect it will be a necessary reference book for libraries and video stores, as well as become a well-thumbed companion for tv- and video-phile everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Much-needed reference
Review: The Buyers Guide To Fifty Years of TV On Video by Sam Frank

The title grabbed my attention. Having grown up with television and having my goals and mores and sensibilities shaped by the flickering box, I was intrigued. Could someone actually compile a listing of old TV shows that were available on video? A computer database might could provide a cold listing, but what about the personal touch? Insights into characters, background anecdotes, historical notes, personal touches which would make such a tome palatable and fun surely couldn't be possible, Wrong. Sam Frank obviously loves the medium of television. His intimate knowledge of, and familiarity with, many of the shows and made-for-tv productions in his book is evident. His interviews with writers, producers, actors and insiders help make this book fun and informative. I admit that our opinions on many shows are quite different, but to each his or her own. I expect it will be a necessary reference book for libraries and video stores, as well as become a well-thumbed companion for tv- and video-phile everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: 'Buyer's Guide' is flawed but valuable resource
Review: While it is still several years before DVDs completely push "Buyer's Guide to Fifty Years of TV on Video" into obsolescence, it may be useful to note that the book, for all of its flaws, contains some extremely valuable information.

Yes, the late Sam Frank hammers away relentlessly at the mistakes of other TV historians, then makes numerous errors of his own; and certainly his editorial comments often seem like unwarranted intrusions, even though the premise of an opionated buyer's guide isn't inherently wrong (Leonard Maltin's annual Video Guide is clearly meant at least in part to be a consumer guide, to name one example; yet the Maltin guide is superior because it is seems far less capricious).

Nonetheless, there are things here that are difficult to find elsewhere. For example, it lists the episodes available from many of the series released by Columbia House Video Library through mid-1997 (and does so in chronological order, rather than the order of each volume). Even if you ask Columbia House for a list of every episode it offers of, say, "The Untouchables," you will get just a list of episodes, with no airdates, and no plot descriptions. Frank doesn't always give you plot descriptions, but generally he does, and with the airdates included, you can at least choose episodes from your favorite period of the show's development, if you're so inclined.

Frank's guide is particularly good for anyone interested in television's so-called "Golden Age." He was a Baby Boomer, and takes a great interest in playing up -- and simultaneously debunking myths about -- what made this era special.

It is here that his editorializing, particularly on things like picture and sound quality, is quite useful, as there are some horrible third-or later-generation public domain video dubs out there that should be avoided. The worst of these sometimes use kinescopes that are just overexposed or otherwise compromised to begin with. Yet, there are others that look and sound quite good, and it's good to have a reference point that helps to make the distinction. Listings are included for a lot of the "Playhouse 90," "Studio One," "Four Star Playhouse" and other early anthology shows released by Video Yesteryear and other public domain dealers, many of which are still available through retailers like Movies Unlimited. Inevitably there are listings for dealers in the book that no longer exist, or have since stopped selling videos, but in the age of the Web, a lot of this stuff can be found.

The book also includes exhaustive appendixes about the history of videotape and the development of color television, which seem to be squarely aimed at TV historians. In fact, throughout "Buyer's Guide," Frank's extreme interest in both innovations is underscored again and again. His main point seems to be that old television shows that can now only be seen on somewhat blurry black and white kinescopes looked crisp and bright in their original telecasts, and for that reason, among others, we shouldn't automatically judge these shows, and the audiences who appreciated them, harshly today. Whenever Frank does find a tape of something shot on video before the late '60s that actually looks close to pristine, he makes sure to draw our attention to it. How relevant this is to the typical reader is open to conjecture.

Numerous items from the MPI Home Video catalog are another welcome feature, including their "Nightline" tapes, "Hullabaloo," "The Missiles of October" and more. Frank's overview and descriptions of a number of episodes in the "Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts" series are solid, and again represent something you don't see discussed very often today.

"Buyer's Guide" is a good supplementary reference if you've already got Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh's "The Complete Directory to Primetime Network and Cable Television Programming: 1946 to Present," or Alex McNeil's "Total Television." Frank's myopia keeps it from being anything like the definitive tome he apparently envisioned, but it's hardly a disaster.