Have all episodes of Sesame Street survived?

[minor muppetz]

While I doubt any full episodes were erased, I'd like to say that if they did destroy master tapes, they sure do seem to have kept many from the first ten years, considering all the early episodes that were shown on Noggin and later iTunes (and it's not just the really important episodes that have shown up). Plus, sesamestreet.org has several rare street scenes which I doubt were inserts. And even in the 1970s they reused street stories after a couple of years.

Plus, they seem to have kept early stuff that wouldn't be broadcast. There's a number of clips online which begin with a dirctor yelling "Action!" I wouldn't have thought they'd keep stuff like that. And one clip at sesamestreet.org (can't remember which one) ends with a second of pre-roll for the "Gimmie Five" sketch, where the clapboard is shown before the scene begins.

I wonder if they saved all the episodes because they needed to reuse segments for many episodes. Though I would assume that the inserts would be stored on special tapes/reels/discs/files/whatever in addition to being in the episode master tapes, though I wonder how it is all done (I suspect they might put several clips on certain tape reels, see above comment about an online clip ending with pre-roll for "Gimmie Five"). The CTW Archives has the "first season show content" files, listing practically every insert from the first season, plus a list of all episodes they appear in. That would make it seem they maybe just copy clips from episodes they were in when needed again, but then again the same files do put "dump" by some segments (if the clips were all on seperate master tapes I wonder if they actually destroyed or got rid of those), and of course some segments have been shown with post-rolls in later broadcasts.

 

[minor muppetz]

This thread kind of reminds me of something that was stated in this article http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/editorials/unseen_work.shtml though it really has to do with The Jim Henson Company and not Sesame Workshop: Pretty much everything since Sesame Street started had been well-preserved and documented, but a lot of stuff before Sesame Street hadn't.