KXTX Channel 39 [Dallas-Fort Worth,TX] - Star Trek - "Arena" (Technical Difficulties Moment, 1979) 🖖

Here's an excerpt from an airing of an episode of the original Star Trek series on KXTX Channel 39 in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX (then owned by the Christian Broadcasting Network, now owned by Telemundo - and thus, a sister station to our own WSNS Channel 44, hence a six-degrees-of-separation Chicago connection).
After the station ID/"Next" promo (voiceover by ??), they start right off the bat with a misthreaded presentation (from the 16mm film projector) of the episode "Arena" (Season 1, Episode 18, originally aired on the NBC Network on January 19th 1967), and almost immediately, they not-so-boldly go where every station has gone before - to the dreaded "Technical Difficulties - Please Stand By" slide (on for 19 seconds before they go back to normal).
This aired on local Dallas-Fort Worth TV on Tuesday, May 8th 1979 (not from Chicago, but still interesting nevertheless).
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The Museum of Classic Chicago Television's primary mission is the preservation and display of off-air, early home videotape recordings (70s and early 80s, primarily) recorded off of any and all Chicago TV channels; footage which would likely be lost if not sought out and preserved digitally. Even though (mostly) short clips are displayed here, we preserve the entire broadcasts in our archives - the complete programs with breaks (or however much is present on the tape), for historical purposes. For information on how to help in our mission, to donate or lend tapes to be converted to DVD, and to view more of the 4,700+ (and counting) video clips available for viewing in our online archive, please visit us at:
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[@luisreyes1963]

The good old days of TV stations presenting reruns on 16mm film. 📺📽️

[@525Lines]

All I ever saw growing up were badly worn original prints with hairs and dust being pulled through the projector.

[@tsntana]

Now THAT'S the way I remember watching Star Trek.

[@visaman]

Even for 1979 it looks like the film was stomped on by elephants a few times.

[@davescarpa8848]

A lot of stations used 16 mm film , they used to splice the episodes for time

[@cellytron]

What amazes me about these is how fast they always get the problem fixed!

[@jeenkzk5919]

Yeah they beat the hell out of those prints. I love seeing them like this! As much as I love digital remastering, it’s nice to see them in this form!

[@comchia4306]

Star Trek: Strange New Technical Difficulties.

[@christopherthomas3888]

Ah, yes, good old Channel 39. This is where is saw Star Trek for most of my childhood. For a long time, they refused to air seven episodes because of concerns about "demonic possession". They did finally air six of them but, to the best of my knowledge, never aired And The Children Shall Lead.

[@norbertop.niebres6320]

What do they mean by "demonic possession"?

[@v8vrooooom]

I started watching Star Trek TOS in syndication in the early 80s here in Atlanta on WXIA...they did not yet have higher quality videotape prints but had this type of projection film to tv transfer ...the syndicated prints were HEAVILY used prior to this already and the picture quality was usually this poor, dark...colors were off...did have some charm to it and certainly a petina! A few years had passed and another local got the right to show it and they had all new videotape duplicates of the episodes which looked great...to say nothing of how HD versions look today.

[@Nicointechnicolor]

Looking for a technical difficulties screen, now I wanna watch Star Trek Lol

[@batterymakermarkii2654]

That print is shot!

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

0:12 Ribbon Defect😱

[@kascnef]

When did stations air 35mm prints of Star Trek

[@thevampiregirl7529]

I swear Star Trek always caused the problems...

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

What is this Episode called at the beginning at 0:12

[@luisreyes1963]

Arena

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

0:10 Ribbon appears Defect.

[@robertianhawdon]

0:20 someone clearly gave the telecine machine a whack hoping to sort the issue live on air 😆

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

Como se chama o Episódio 😊

[@MR_MRM_]

When did syndicated reruns like that start to be converted to 3/4-inch videotape? I know tape was in use widely by the networks long before 1979.

[@stephenzamarin3193]

I believe it was by the mid-late 1980's. Commercials also changed over by that time as well.

[@jsb1980]

If I'm not mistaken, Star Trek was remastered for syndication onto videotape sometime in the early 80s, just in time for the series home video release.

[@MR_MRM_]

@@jsb1980 That late? I'm surprised. I would have thought they'd have been transferred to studio video tape by the mid 1970s and distributed that way, even if they were just straight 16mm transfers. Obviously, that wasn't the case everywhere based on the clip.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

@@jsb1980 It could vary from station to station in the 80's. Some stuck to telecine projectors while others might take the video mastered copies instead (usually newer stations did). This transition lasted into the early 90's.

[@siemenstraffic]

I still remember on WGN channel 9 especially on the cartoon clips during the Bozo show and on WFLD channel 32 durning Field Communications ownership that most of the cartoons where still on 16 mm film that was badly scratched up and the colors where washed out to the point that the film even broke during the show and had to be spliced back together. Don Rose aka "Dr. Don," vocie saying "Where experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" whit a placecard on screen. That all changed when Metromenda took over WFLD sometime around 1983 and WGN not so far after.. By that time cartoon library was Telecine over from good master film rolls to Sony U-matic tapes execpt for The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals never got transfered just to vanish completely from the channel lineup when FOX took over in 1986.

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

0:11 and 0:25 What is the name at the beginning of the Episode.😮😊

[@jasonluong3862]

My parents used to watch Trek in Vietnam. It was quite popular there for some reason.

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

When did this episode air?

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

Which is the Episode at the beginning appears Defect.

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

0:12 Defect in Video Taipe😱

[@thisislocombia]

not videotape but film

[@seymourfatboy]

Damn it Jim. I'm a doctor not a projector runner...

[@CrowTRobot-ni7zu]

Scotty...report!

[@bethdibartolomeo2042]

I'm fixin' her as fast as I can, Captain!

[@JasonDelarosa2000]

@@bethdibartolomeo2042 Scotty, you're fired.

[@jimmymelendez1836]

Whoa, that was bad but you made do with 16mm film. I really miss seeing Star Trek without the horrible CGI effects.

[@douglasdesouzavieira8548]

0:10 A Fita com Defeito.

[@jasonluong3862]

This is fake. TOS was transferred to video tape at broadcast. This technical difficulty would look like this if it was film.

[@FuzzyMemoriesTV]

Not fake. This is how it aired. Nothing has been modified.