Kraft Suspense Theatre; Crisis; RTV syndication issues; Equity Media Holdings Corporation; Universal-NBC

I wrote previously about various syndication issues, including the apparant failure of RTV to broadcast certain Kraft Suspense Theater episodes. A commenter named "T.V. Barnum" has posted an explanation that I will repeat here in its entirety:

All the Shows do exist - the only one not in the syndication packages (Either as "Suspense Theater" or "Crisis") is the Two-parter as it was later released theatrically.

RTV doesn't have all the episode for a plain simple fact - they don't want to spend the money for master-tapes. The current owners of RTV didn't receive all the master-tapes to most of the shows they air when Equity Media Holdings Corporation severed the partnership.

Equity is holding them for ransom, literally, as well as owning Universal-NBC back rerun fees. So, RTV only ended up with some of the episodes and only slowly getting a few episodes across the board here and there.

The story is "Not all the episodes are cleared for Broadcast" is Bull. I've spoken to several people involved with the affiliates.

RTV's other issue, not running what they have in the proper order is due to the way they program the automated system.

I believe that RTV does run their KST episodes in order of the original broadcast. But they obviously leave out many episodes from that order. Over the past two years, RTV has broadcast some episodes nearly half a dozen times, while other episodes have not been broadcast at all or have been broadcast once or twice only in the past month or two (or only a year or two ago and never again).

I have no explanation other than Barnum's, so I will use it as a working theory until I learn something different.

Equity Media Holdings Corporation was a founding owner of RTV and declared bankruptcy in 2008. RTV is now independent of Equity's ownership, but apparently suffers from insufficient funding at times. The details of RTV's ownership status and the financial dealings with Equity are beyond the scope of this blog.

It is my hope that by promoting Kraft Suspense Theatre and its various qualities, we will hasten the day when it becomes a true classic that is not dependant on one fledgling network.