Missing Presumed Drowned.

TV While some of us still have nightmares about the furnaces the BBC employed to cremate old episodes of Doctor Who, if reports are to be believed, spare a thought for those seeking information about shows broadcast on The DuMont Television Network in the US which shut up shop in the 1950s. During his search for old episodes of The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, the first US network show starring an Asian-American actress, he discovered a pretty horrifying bit of testimony:

"As it turns out, there wasn’t much to hear. The DuMont Television Network made and aired ten episodes in 1951, canceled the show in 1952, then shuttered for good by 1956. According to the 1996 Library of Congress testimony of actor Edie Adams, most of the DuMont series kinescopes — including, presumably, any remaining episodes of The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong — met a watery end following a legal dispute over the network’s archives in the ’70s: “[One of the DuMont lawyers] had three huge semis back up to the loading dock at ABC, filled them all with the stored kinescopes and two-inch videotape, drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty, and dumped them in Upper New York Bay! Very neat, no problem!”

The rest of piece will ring bells for anyone who's read about the search for old archive shows in the UK [via].