Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes and telerecordings (kinescopes), are erased, reused, or destroyed after several uses. The practice was prevalent during the 1960s and 1970s, although is now less common since associated storage costs have decreased, and especially since the advent of domestic audiovisual playback technology (e....
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Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes and telerecordings (kinescopes), are erased, reused, or destroyed after several uses. The practice was prevalent during the 1960s and 1970s, although is now less common since associated storage costs have decreased, and especially since the advent of domestic audiovisual playback technology (e.g. videocassette and DVD), with broadcasters and production houses realising both the economic and cultural value of keeping archived material for both rebroadcast and potential profits through release on home video.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is known to have erased much of their early output, and they continued erasing older TV programs and series into the early 1980s. Australian broadcasters did not gain access to videotape recording technology until the early 1960s, and as such nearly all programs were broadcast live to air in...
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