New Ellijay Television

NETV is proud to bring you authentic pieces of television history with our in-house digitization of "Space Patrol"!

https://newellijay.tv/shows/space-patrol/

This year marks the 75th anniversary of this groundbreaking sci-fi show. Join us on a journey back to the dawn of space adventure and experience the show that captured the imagination of a generation!

Tune in on New Ellijay Television to see history restored and rebroadcast.

#SciFi #Archive #Digitization #LostMedia #VintageTelevision #NewEllijayTV

Space Patrol – New Ellijay Television

Aug 30, 2025 at 3:50pmWeb
Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

Space Patrol, like many programs of the 1950s, was a Live broadcast. There was no video tape. Video tape wouldn't be invented until Bing Crosby got into the game in the mid fifties. (I'm not kidding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Crosby#Role_in_early_tape_recording )

As a result, the quality of these early episodes varies wildly from clip to clip, depending on where the episode was sourced from, how it was sourced, and how it was processed. Some look really nice!

Others ... well, not so much.

Bing Crosby - Wikipedia

Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

Also like many other shows of the 1950s, Space Patrol aired 6 days a week!

6 live performances every week!

6 episodes written every week!

No time off for summer, no "seasons" just 52 weeks a year, 6 episodes a week.

And then they added a radio show that broadcast one or two days a year, also live.

8 live broadcasts in a week, for hundreds of weeks in a row! Astounding!

Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

Weekday episodes of Space Patrol were 15 minutes long, and comprised a single ongoing story. Most of those weekday episodes have been lost.

We've done our part to preserve some of them, and they live here: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/pq8kKq8uqxKw59YkkiXhHN

I've got another few dozen that will get digitized over the coming months, and when I'm done that's likely to represent 100% of the surviving 15 minute episodes. (It's not much!)

Space Patrol (daily)

PeerTube
Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

The half hour Saturday Morning episodes weathered the years a little better: https://vod.newellijay.tv/my-library/video-playlists/fFA2rXWXUFgoLJyVnHzymY

There were around 200 of these weekly episodes produced, starting in late December 1950.

Of those, more than 100 survive!

I've digitized a few dozen myself, and I've got about two dozen more to go. Many of the episodes I've digitized were already available, sometimes even in good quality, but many of them were VHS rips, or weren't available at all.

New Ellijay TV

New Ellijay TV is a local collective of producers, directors, writers, and actors, focused on creating visual media for our community and beyond.

Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

Part of the problem with digitizing these episodes is that there was no videotape.

That means every copy of the show we have today is taken from a FILM that was produced by pointing a 16mm film camera at a television.

And, because film scanners are expensive to acquire and operate, most of them are digitized by pointing a video camera at a projector.

This is especially obvious in 80s and 90s VHS transfers, but you can see some of those artifacts in our work too: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/fFA2rXWXUFgoLJyVnHzymY?playlistPosition=17&resume=true

Space Patrol (weekly)

PeerTube
Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

In the video linked in the previous post, the whole thing starts WILDLY out of focus, and you can see the focus shifting back and forth for a few seconds before it all settles in.

I digitized that episode and I can verify that the first 15 - 20 seconds of the film are out of focus.

Once the film snaps back into focus, it takes the digitized copy a few more seconds to autofocus.

Artifacts of the precarious process it took to preserve this media that would otherwise be lost.

Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

I'm grateful that we have the resources to do this kind of preservation work. I'm proud of our meager contributions to keeping these programs out of the cultural dustbin.

But the work is expensive! Buying the film, maintaining the equipment, operating the equipment, cleaning up the raw transfers (often from negatives!) and making sure the sound is as good as possible (which, lets be honest, is often not very good!) takes resources and time.

Show threadNew Ellijay TelevisionAug 30, 2025

If you'd like to help us continue to preserve old television shows, and make new ones, consider sponsoring the network: https://newellijay.tv/sponsor-us/

or sponsoring me: https://www.patreon.com/ajroach42

or just watching our livestream: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/hPrMTPpUuP8ZLoaqHTkLmd?start=0s

or installing our Roku channel: https://newellijay.tv/2023/02/16/roku-app-available-now/

or advertising with us: (Link to come, I'm working up new pricing. Packages from $50/month. DM me for details.)

Sponsor us! – New Ellijay Television