Airdates of Season 1 Episodes Determined?

[Deleted]

In the episode guide entry for "The Crawling Eye" on Satellite News, Sampo notes, "We’re not absolutely positive when this episode was first shown. The Comedy Channel first started broadcasting on Nov. 15, 1989, but it’s unclear if MST3K was in immediate rotation. Cast members have said, somewhat casually, that it first ran on Thanksgiving day, 1989. That year Thanksgiving fell on the 23rd. But we’ve been unable to confirm that, and back then nobody was keeping track of this stuff. If somebody has TV Guides from the second half of November, 1989, and it lists The Comedy Channel, let us know! (See the comments for more on this.)"

I won't post all the relevant comments, but it basically boils down to some people saying 102 - The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy aired first on 11/18/89 with 101 - The Crawling Eye airing a week later. This is what is shown on the schedule at MST3K Temple (http://www.mst3ktemple.com/schedule1989.htm). Unfortunately, because there are no definitive TV schedules or records that have turned up, no one really knows when each episode first aired.

Oh, we also know that 104 - Women of the Prehistoric Planet was one of the last episodes filmed in season 1, despite the low production number.

Anyway, enough background info. I was sorta snooping around on the US Copyright Office website and decided to look up "Best Brains." What I found was an entry for almost every episode of the show (minus the KTMA ones and a few others that might just be out of order), the movie and some other cool stuff.

Each entry has a "Date of Publication." On most of the episodes I looked at (everything listed from seasons 2 and 3), this complies with the actual airdate (as listed on Satellite News, anyway). So, I got curious and looked up the season 1 shows. Much to my surprise, the publication dates aren't in order (101, 102, 103, etc.), nor do they follow the order on MST3K Temple.

Here's the link to all the entries for "Best Brains". The season one episodes are on pages one and two. But to make this all a bit easier for all of us, I'll just list the episode with its publication date below:

101 The Crawling Eye - 1989-11-25
102 The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy - 1989-11-18
103 Mad Monster - 1989-12-02
104 Women of the Prehistoric Planet - 1990-02-27
105 The Corpse Vanishes - 1989-12-16
106 The Crawling Hand - 1989-12-30
107 Robot Monster - 1990-01-06
108 The Slime People - 1990-01-13
109 Project Moonbase - 1990-01-27
110 Robot Holocaust - 1990-02-10
111 Moon Zero Two - 1990-02-17
112 Untamed Youth - 1990-02-24
113 The Black Scorpion - 1990-03-03

So, if those dates are accurate and are the original Comedy Channel airdates, then the original broadcast order was: 102, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 104, 113.

I don't know if this is the definitive proof needed to determine when these shows aired, but I thought it was interesting and worth mentioning. Cheers!

[brandonakaxerxes]

You know what's odd. I did a search on The Angry Beavers (a cartoon from Nickelodeon) to see if I could get episode airdates from that series. It's strange, every singe episode has a "Date of Copyright" of 2008. How is this possible when Angry Beavers only ran from 1997 to 2001?

[GarrettCRW]

It depends on the studio to report episodes properly. In the animation world, Sunbow (makers of G.I. Joe, The Transformers, and other Hasbro-based properties) has very accurate and detailed data, while Filmation's records (even the ones not currently submitted by Entertainment Rights) are hit and miss, with the two 65-episode orders of He-Man having one entry apiece (making the assignment of airdatesusing US Copyright Office records essentially impossible).

[mst3ktemple]

Very interesting. To be honest most of the air dates on my site (mst3ktemple) were based on only a few memories by early MST fans. Most said they seemed to recall that nearly the whole season ran on consecutive weeks, so that is why I listed them premiering one right after the other. To be honest this information looks a lot more typical of what I would expect to see. Even for a brand new channel. Good work. I'm sure I'll incorporate some of this into my broadcast schedule.

[mst3ktemple]

So what are your thoughts on the airdate of 104 being 1990-02-27, which is a Tuesday and as far as I know MST only aired on Saturdays back then?

[nomad]

Hmmm... curious. Not only was February 27th a Tuesday (a night that MST3K never ran new episodes on), but it's also listed by Best Brains as the date that they delivered their final episode to The Comedy Channel, as seen in this mailing sent out to fans:
_{SOURCE: www.mst3ktemple.com/season1.html}

Now that mailer doesn't say what the final episode was, but if we assume they're talking about 104, then I don't think it's possible that Comedy Channel aired it that same day.

I also noticed on the US Copyright Office website that most of the season 1 episodes were registered during the last week of March 1990. That's probably when Jim Mallon filled out all the forms to make sure that each episode was fully protected under copyright.

So here's my theory: I think all of the "publication" dates are, in fact, the premiere air dates, with the exception of 104. In the case of 104, they knew the actual date that the episode had been completed and sent to the network because it was obviously a significant date for the Brains (since they had no way of knowing if they'd return to make more episodes). They probably would have used the dates that they delivered each episode to the network if they had kept track of it, but I'm guessing since they were all still pretty new at this, nobody bothered to keep track of when they turned in every single episode. That information, along with any other production schedules, were probably thrown away at the end of the production season--before the copyright forms had been filled out. For later seasons, they probably decided to just keep using the airdates, because that was easier to keep track of.

Obviously, I'm making educated guesses here. I'm hoping to make it down to the library next week to see if I can dig up any old TV listings from that year, so hopefully I can figure out if CC aired 104 on 2/27/90 or not.

[duane]

Hm... I'd like to believe the copyright dates, except it states that Project Moon Base was the 1990-01-27 episode. However, according to mst3kinfo, it has an airdate of 1990-01-06 with the following comment:

Tom Noel has somehow unearthed a Cable Guide from the week this first aired and has confirmed the debut date, one of only two confirmed debut dates for season 1.