Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
No, "Betty Boop" was not a TV series in 1930
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15180956/ is a supposed TV series titled "Betty Boop" which supposedly debuted in 1930.
As I'm sure everyone reading this already knows, television broadcasting existed on only a very limited basis in 1930. The Betty Boop series of theatrical short films began in 1930 -- these films were not broadcast on television until years later.
What's worse, apparently every Betty Boop theatrical cartoon has been converted into an episode of the supposed TV series -- they are no longer entered as theatrical films. I was just looking for The Old Man of the Mountain (1933) and didn't see it at first, because it had been listed as a TV episode (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024404/) instead of a film.
This isn't even the first time someone has created a pseudo-TV series for "Betty Boop" starting in 1930. As discussed in the thread here, there was another entry for "Betty Boop" (1930) in 2019, which was deleted. Why was this series allowed to be re-created when it was already determined to be an invalid entry before?
IMDb claims to be "the world's most popular and authoritative source for information on movies, TV shows and celebrities." Yet how can IMDb be considered authoritative if it doesn't demonstrate basic knowledge of television history, like when television came into common use?
As I've said before, any television program submitted to the database with a start date in the 1930s or earlier ought to be scrutinized by an IMDb staffer to see whether it actually existed or has been submitted erroneously. In this case, the submission was erroneous.
Accepted Solution
Bethanny
Employee
•
5K Messages
•
53.3K Points
2 years ago
Hello all!!
Thanks for all your insights and patience with this issue and sorry for the delay solving. Actions have now bee taken.
"1937 Coronation"(1937- ) This page has been deleted.
"Allen and Kendal"(1940-2015) This page has been deleted.
"Andy Panda" (1939-1949) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Barney Bear" (1939-1954) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Betty Boop" (1930-1939) All "episodes" were converted to theatrical shorts and now have their own page
"British Movietone News" (1929-1979) All "episodes" now have their own pages and "British Movietone News" was included in their title.
"British Pathé News" (1910-1970) All "episodes" now have their own pages and "British Pathé News" was included in their title.
"Color Classics" (1934-1941) This page has been deleted.
"Comicolor cartoons" (1933-1936) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Grand Prix Motor Racing" (1906-1949) All "episodes" now have their own listing, I did see @gromit82 's comment on them probably being bogus, please do let me know from what year and below you would consider we should double check and probably delete?
"Hunky y Spunky" (1938-1941) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"John Wayne Classics" (1935-1963) All "episodes" now have their own pages and merges were done where duplicates were found
"John Wayne Colorized Collection" (1934- ) All "episodes" now have their own pages and merges were done where duplicates were found
"Parrotville" (1934-1935) This page has been deleted.
"Puppetoons"(1932-1942) (I) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Puppetoons" (1932-1942) (II) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Rainbow Parade Cartoon" (1934-1936) This page has been deleted.
"The Three Stooges" (1934-1959) Duplicated listings were deleted, any "episode" that did not have their own page was converted to theatrical short and now has it's own page
"Toonerville"(1936) This page has been deleted.
"US Presidential Elections"(1928- ) This page has been deleted.
Casper the Friendly Ghost (1945) All "episodes" were converted to theatrical shorts and now have their own page
Please if you see any merge I missed please submit it and paste your submission reference here for me to review, or of course you can link the pages that need merging and I will do it for you. Any other mistake that could've happened during this conversions like a wrong title or date for example please let me know. Any other thing that I might have missed I will do my best to solve ASAP.
We are also still working on the most important part which is stopping this from happening again at all.
Cheers!
15
ACT_1
8.2K Messages
•
173K Points
3 years ago
@gromit82
IMDb Community Forums | IMDb | Data Issues & Policy Discus...
Related Conversations
- - -
similar problem here ? ?
.
(edited)
0
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
Here are some other problematic "TV series" from the early days of television as listed by IMDb.
"Andy Panda" (1939-1949): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"Barney Bear" (1939-1954): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"British Movietone News" (1929-1979): Newsreels for theatrical release. This title even has a trivia entry that says, "This popular series was produced for showing in cinemas. Interestingly, it was also shown on experimental BBC TV during the 1930s." Produced for cinema ... first shown in cinemas ... not a TV series.
"British Pathé News" (1910-1970): Another series of newsreels for theatrical release. Note that the first television station did not begin operations until 1928, eighteen years after this supposed TV series debuted.
"Color Classics" (1934-1941): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"Comicolor cartoons" (1933-1936): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"Grand Prix Motor Racing" (1906-1949): Grand Prix motor racing, as a sport, started in 1906, but they weren't broadcasting it on television then. Vladimir Zworykin hadn't even started experimenting with television in a laboratory yet.
"Hunky y Spunky" (1938-1941): Another series of theatrical short cartoons. For some reason, this title is in Spanish; it's an American series which should be listed as "Hunky and Spunky".
"John Wayne Classics" (1935-1963): These are theatrical feature films. I'm not sure what someone had in mind to submit them as a TV series.
"John Wayne Colorized Collection" (1934- ): See above, with the additional note that color television was still experimental in 1934 and there had not yet been any over-the-air color broadcasts.
"Parrotville" (1934-1935): Another series of theatrical short cartoons. The plot summary on IMDb says, ""Parrotville" is a classic U.S. animated series that first appeared in 1934 and was produced by Van Beuren Studio. It was created to showcase the new color technology possible for television." Maybe to showcase color technology for films, but definitely not for television.
"1937 Coronation" (1937- ): Probably a real television special, but the British don't crown their monarchs often enough to make it a regularly scheduled television series. In fact, they only had one 1937 coronation, another in 1953, and none since then.
More to come ...
4
bderoes
Champion
•
5K Messages
•
117.9K Points
3 years ago
Wow, so we have to search every quarter to see if these things get re-implemented? <sigh>
0
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
And here are some more ...
"Puppetoons" (1932-1942) (I)
"Puppetoons" (1932-1942) (II): George Pal's series of stop-motion animated theatrical shorts -- entered into the database twice.
"Rainbow Parade Cartoon" (1934-1936): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"The Three Stooges" (1934-1959): A series of live-action theatrical short films.
"Toonerville" (1936): Another series of theatrical short cartoons.
"US Presidential Elections" (1928- ): While I assume that the BBC News would have reported on presidential elections in the United States as part of their regular news coverage, I am skeptical that they had a television series called "US Presidential Elections" in 1928, which was before the BBC even began to make any television broadcasts.
"Allen and Kendal" (1940-2015): I pointed out two years ago that this series appears to be some kind of YouTube production (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xeOPcRxgBM), not something from the 1940s. Note that the supposed "S1 E1 Pilot" on YouTube was streamed live on March 7, 2019, which would be 79 years after this series is supposed to have debuted.
0
Marco
2.7K Messages
•
82.3K Points
3 years ago
I think the fact that they changed their ambitions from being the most up to date/most complete/most accurate movie & tv database to being the most popular and authoritative movie & tv database is very, very telling...
0
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
I'm bumping this thread, because the titles above being listed as supposed TV series is a problem that merits a response from the IMDb staff. I thought about taking the problem to the Help Desk, but given that the "Betty Boop" (1930) TV series was added once before and deleted, then re-added, that means that a systematic problem needs to be addressed, not just by having the individual titles deleted.
(edited)
0
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
I'm going to keep bumping this thread until we get a staff response.
0
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
I'm going to bump this again, since we have had no staff response to this thread after three weeks.
3
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
@Col_Needham -- if you are getting notifications, this thread is one you might be interested in, as it reflects a serious problem with data accuracy.
0
Michelle
Employee
•
17K Messages
•
308.8K Points
3 years ago
Hi gromit82 -
My sincere apologies for the delayed staff reply on this thread. I have collected all the titles reported and requested an extensive clean-up with our editorial team. I have also opened discussion for improvements regarding flags and approvals surrounding TV Series title submissions with a start date of 1930 or earlier.
As soon as I have any updates on the status of the clean-up I will post them here.
Thanks again for catching these titles and reporting the inaccuracies!
1
niall_williamson
114 Messages
•
3.1K Points
3 years ago
The Betty Boop cartoon film series from the 1930s has some reason been placed as a TV series on IMDb even though they are theatrical cartoons and not a televison series, other theatrical cartoons film series from the same time period have not had the same treatment on the site.
Link to the IMDb page: tt15180956
1
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
As it's been two months since this thread started and one month since Michelle acknowledged the problem, I think it's time for a bump.
1
gromit82
Champion
•
7.3K Messages
•
274.2K Points
3 years ago
I think this issue needs another bump, as it has been three months since I raised the problem and the fake "Betty Boop" (1930) TV series is still listed.
3
timothy_gray_el34lojg1aih1
307 Messages
•
7.1K Points
3 years ago
In the 1950s-1960s, many theatrical shorts from the 1930s-1940s were anthologized into TV shows. For example, The Bugs Bunny Show (1960-1975) and The Road Runner Show (1966-1973), both of which were real shows made up of old Looney Tunes cartoons. In both of these cases, IMDb managed to add these actually-existing TV shows without altering the original titles for the original shorts. In the case of the Road Runner show, they did this by creating duplicate titles for every short/episode. The Bugs Bunny one combines three shorts into each episode. The important thing is that these new episode titles do not in any way affect the original shorts, except perhaps by luring voters away from the originals.
The abominable act of vandalism masquerading as the "Betty Boop" show breaks this precedent by retconning the original titles into "TV episodes". In addition to being factually incorrect, this change also results in loss of genre data as IMDb does not individualize genres for TV episodes. Bimbo's Initiation (1931), for example, no longer carries the genre 'Horror', and Minnie the Moocher (1932) featuring Cab Calloway no longer carries the genre "Musical" despite obviously being one. Falsely designating these as TV episodes also results in them being buried at the bottom of search results and user-created lists when sorted by popularity.
According to Wikipedia (the only source I could find on this subject), Betty Boop was briefly syndicated on television in 1955, but was phased out by the 1960s as color cartoons overtook black-and-white cartoons in popularity. It's possible, then, that there might be a legitimate case for adding Betty Boop as an anthology series if more reliable evidence can be found. However, if this is the case, and the anthology series is added, it should have a release date of 1955 or later and it should not have an effect on the original shorts.
I understand the appeal of having something like this to gather all of the Betty Boop titles in one place (it makes it easier for people trying to put together a list of "favorite cartoon series" or whatever), but there is simply no excuse for the sloppy, misleading, counterfactual way it was attempted in this case. IMDb has already set a precedent for how to add an anthology TV series and this does not even follow that protocol.
(edited)
1