Louisiana Hayride

At least a dozen hour-long episodes survive, all in color but without sponsor messages and plugs. KOPB in Portland, OR, gave it a weeknight run for a while. I watched 2 or 3 for its historic significance, though I had no interest in the country genre or any decades-old music. Surprisingly, the show looked and sounded so pristine it seemed to have been originally made using a 35mm film camera, yet it played like a live broadcast. It did not look like a kinescope, nor like a colorized film, but rather like a broadcast-quality videotape of a new print made fresh from a well-kept original negative.

The radio show of Louisiana Hayride went on for eleven years, enough to justify a TV series -- for who knows how may seasons? It was either live and caught on film, or filmed for a broadcast print, and either all color, all black and white, or in color for a season or more. The state of Louisiana likely had no color TV stations, if not one or two. Very likely the TV show has more surviving episodes in black and white than in color. Have other local TV stations around the US made and preserved shows as well as this one?

If the Louisiana Hayride that appeared as far north as Oregon was just a kinescope that was colorized, then it had the best quality of its kind. Fans would be happy to have this show available to watch, again or for the first time.