TV historians fear that pulled problematic episodes could become lost to history

The New York Times

The New York Times examines what actually happens when controversial episodes are pulled, like the blackface episodes that were yanked in June amid the George Floyd protests. Nowadays, with most shows entirely shot and stored digitally, pulling one of them 'is just to take the digital file down,” says Ron Simon, a senior curator at the Paley Center for Media. An episode or an entire series can be ordered down, fully removed from streaming and access-restricted in less than 24 hours. Jane Klain, who has worked to recover and save lost footage as the Paley Center’s research manager, says she understands why a company “may want to pull (an episode) because it’s uncomfortable to show, or it’s wrong or improper.” But Klain -- pointing out that many historic TV shows have been lost to history due to "very lax" preservation -- argues that it is the network or streamer’s responsibility to preserve it until they decide how and when to “put it into a good context” regardless of the content. Dan Wingate, a filmmaker and former technical specialist in film and television preservation at Sony Pictures Entertainment, warns that each instance of removing an episode of a digitally produced show increases the possibility of accidentally losing or destroying the content, whereas series or movies shot on film can survive for 100 years when preserved correctly. He also worries that the churn in employees at many digital companies could lead to the "letting go of people with specific, valuable knowledge.” “With new distribution companies popping up that don’t have these asset protection structures in place, and metadata requirements for their inventories, a lot more digital assets could be lost," says Wingate.