Beta Gems: Another Youtube Channel Filled with Wonderful and Weird Lost Video Objects
Culled from over 1,000 videotapes, little snippets from a pop culture world that's disappeared
Beta Gems is a Youtube channel of converted and digitized videotapes, from the 1980s and 1990s that describes itself thusly:
BetaGems are culled from an archive of over 1000 beta video tapes recorded from 1983 into the 1990s. Most feature live music performances broadcast on television in San Diego CA, though there are also rarely seen commercials, comedy clips, old TV news segments, made-for-TV movies and documentaries, religious programming, variety shows, talk show interviews, and other material that doesn't seem to be anywhere else on Youtube or online. Most of the tapes were recorded on a Sony SL-HFT7 Super Beta Theater Hi-Fi Stereo - the same model was refurbished and is being used for these transfers/uploads.
The channel is the creation of Jay Allen Sanford who writes for the alternative newspaper San Diego Reader (which I thought had gone out of business - but it hasn’t.) Sanford’s had an eclectic career, writing for MTV, launching comic book series and even starting his own publishing house.
Sanford’s channel reminded me of Eleanor Patterson’s great book Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution (University of Illinois Press, 2024). Communities of avid fans, from the 1940s (starting with radio shows) to the 1990s would record radio and TV programs and send them through personal networks. They would create their own communities, and expand the reach of fandom. In a sense, Sanford’s channel is an updated, synthesized evolution somewhere between those fandom tape traders and broadcasting on the internet.
Patterson’s book, and Sanford’s channel, reminded of what it felt like growing up at a time when if you missed a TV show when it aired - it was gone. You missed your chance, unless somehow you learned of a re-run months later. It turns out, some people were taping those shows, and some lived long enough to upload them to Youtube.
I first encountered Beta Gems through the YouTube algorithm. There it was, on the right-hand side of the screen, I clicked over and then clicked on the homepage. It’s the perfect time-waster for the Lint Trap, as you can imagine.
I think you need to click over and look around (try the “Popular” tab, or the “Playlists” to facilitate browsing) to get a sense of the full diversity of video. But here’s a few links that I’ll offer as a sample, to give you (barely) a sense of what’s available:
A 1:33 1988 British advertisement (I believe for use before movies) for Schweppes featuring John Cleese mocking subliminal advertising:
An edition of ABC News “Nightline” from 1987 (guest-hosted by Charles Gibson) in which Tipper Gore and Frank Zappa debate obscenity, parental warnings, and governmental regulation (with a special guest appearance, midway through, by Gene Siskel, who offers some perspective as a critic).
A :30 second 1984 British TV commercial for the satirical magazine Punch
Sanford’s playlists are brilliantly organized as well (he’s found amazing stuff on Youtube). For example, on his “Anthology Television, 1950s - 1990s” Playlist, you can find this - a restored kinescope film version of Orwell’s 1984 that aired on Studio One, on CBS, on September 21st, 1953. The video is hosted on a different channel, but can be found via Beta Gems’ playlist.
The only way to get some sense of this channel is to pop over to the Playlists. I’m sure I’ll be referencing this channel in the future, which is why it got caught in the Lint Trap.