There IS more to the story, but some of the things Stan Taffel's contact
at CBS told him were said out of self-admitted ignorance of the
situation. Last Sunday -- even before the web and press discussions
began -- I interviewed Laura Leff (a long time friend) on my regular
Sunday night (11:30PM Eastern) spot on YesterdayUSA.com about her
original message to her friends and members. Laura DID supervise the
transferring of NBC color programs at CBS because Laura paid for the
technical service of CBS to transfer the 2-inch quad tapes that are
owned by the Benny family. The Benny family owns the rights to those
NBC programs and fortunately had possession of the tapes. The Benny
family also owns the rights to the CBS films in questions and had sent
CBS written authorization for Laura to pay for the transfer of about 25
of the programs which CBS happened to have in its possession AFTER CBS
had given Laura the information that they had them and that they would
be available if she got the Benny family approval in writing -- which
she did. The family was and is enthusiastic about Laura's activities,
and her "fan club" is a 503C non-profit. She specifically asked CBS
during the year-long discussions on this if they would be acting faster
if she were a commercial operation instead of a non-profit, and they
said no. Laura and the family have also been trying to get a commercial
operation interested in distributing the programs like the Skelton and
Hope families have, but have not had any luck. If there is NOW a
company approaching CBS, they could have approached the Benny Family for
the past decade and gotten rights from them -- and that especially is
true for the color videotaped programs which fortunately are not
controlled by either NBC or CBS. Some of the comments on these message
boards approach libel.
Mike Biel [log in to unmask]
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] A little off topic CBS benches Jack Benny
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, January 20, 2010 7:08 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
Please see the thread about "The truth about Jack Benny Preservation"
currently
http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A1=ind1001&L=amia-l#85 (but likely
to change, I think.
It should always findable here:
http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A1=ind1001&L=amia-l )
There is more to this than Laura Leff makes it out to be.
There are other threads on the topic - look under "J" in the second
link.
Cheers,
Richard
At 06:25 PM 2010-01-20, you wrote:
>http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/cbs_benches_jack_benny_n7b76Pou9inaGa1S9JqDxM
>
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information:
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
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