No, "Betty Boop" was not a TV series in 1930

Good news. The Tsarina's Slippers has been moved to be a 2009 title, instead of 1887.

I realize that this error stemmed from the fact that a contributor must have misunderstood what the Release Date section was for, and instead of listing only when this particular production of this opera was broadcast on television, also submitted the date when the original opera by Tchaikovsky premiered as a live performance.

But it should be the job of the IMDb staff -- or, I suggest, software which has been programmed to reject television release dates before television was invented -- not to accept data like that which is obviously wrong for the database.

As they said in a great movie, referring to a Stonehenge stage set that was only 18 inches tall:

Ian Faith: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told.

David St. Hubbins: But you're not as confused as him, are you? I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes/qt0261740

@ACT_1​ Popeye the Sailor (1960-1962) is in fact not an anthology, but an actual TV series with new episodes. (You can read about it here on Wikipedia). The original shorts had started airing on TV, but the original studio wasn't making any money off of them, so they decided to capitalize on the old shorts' popularity by creating a new series.

@Marco​ 

There's this ? ?

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@ACT_1​ "There's this ? ?"

Thanks, but I meant priorities when it comes to dealing with issues such as the one mentioned in this thread as well as new ideas that should get implemented (for example, the infamous five new genres). I would be interested to see a list of things IMDb is currently working on so we have a better understanding of what's in store for us and why things sometimes take much longer than expected.

Bump.

@gromit82​ Something I reported 16 months ago still hasn't been fixed and I'm not expecting it to ever be, I hope you have better luck.

@gromit82​ I'm disappointed that important movie shorts from 1930s have been listed in the Internet Movie Database as TV episodes for more than eight months.

I wonder if Col Needham has seen this thread. This seems like an issue that might interest him.

@gromit82​ 

I can't tell you how much this bothers me. To my mind this is urgent. When the same thing happened to the Tom and Jerry cartoons, the matter was handled quickly. Col Needham got involved. Why is this different?

cc @Michelle 

And the shame of it is, because IMDb is such a revered source of information, this false "TV series" may be propagating to other websites and/or books.

If it's being kept on IMDb because there's a "series" on Amazon of these cartoons, all that needs to change is the release date of the series itself, with a trivia item explaining why the series has such a different release date than the individual episodes, which should be shells referring to the short films originally released in the 30's.

@Col_Needham,  Can we get an explanation for this?

@bderoes​  The most likely explanation is that the Sprinklr team are just not seeing the updates on this thread, sorry.  Unfortunately there are bugs in Sprinklr which keep some active threads out of the admin view and this must be one.  I tried to reset this thread to "No status" a while ago, but that does not appear to have helped, sorry (the admin view definitely hides threads which are marked as "Solved").  I do not use the admin view myself, but for people whose core job responsibilities include managing Sprinklr, it is not practical to use the same view as end customers like us (despite the bugs).  I will reflag this for the team tomorrow. 

The title should not be a TV-series dated at 1930 and these "episodes" should exist as separate shorts given that is how they were originally released.  However, they were shown in a compilation TV-series later which complicates how we represent them.  There are arguments for not including the later TV-series at all since it is just a repackaging of existing material which could create a bad precedent elsewhere; there are arguments for creating the later series and duplicating the shorts as empty shell episodes; there are arguments for creating the later series and allowing all of the data to be duplicated.  All the options tend to just lead to both customer confusion and "contribution wars" wherein different sets of contributors insist we are doing the wrong thing and constantly correct each other's work (or get frustrated at us for not approving their updates).  It's not an obvious decision and there's clean-up and policy (re-)definition work involved in wherever we land.

An additional factor here is that right now a huge amount of time is being spent training the newly expanded data processing team on literally thousands of IMDb policy points, and therefore reducing the much more visible processing inconsistencies being reported elsewhere on Sprinklr. The team are less likely to be able to address a complex corner case ticket like this (see above). 

Hope this helps. 

@Col_Needham​ Thanks for your reply.

With regard to the problems with Sprinklr, I note that unlike what Get Satisfaction once had (but later got rid of), Sprinklr has no public (end-customer)-facing support function that I can find. Hence, any issues with the Sprinklr web site itself will have to be dealt with by you and your colleagues. In the meantime, rather than bumping my old threads that have not been answered, I will try creating new threads instead.

Regarding the issue of how to report the compilation TV series for "Betty Boop," I would question the idea of treating each of the shorts as an episode of that series, simply on the grounds that it implies that the TV series was shown in episodes of 6 to 8 minutes each. I don't know about other countries, but when theatrical short cartoons have been shown on television in the U.S., typically they have been "packaged" into episodes of 30 minutes, 60 minutes, etc., each episode containing multiple cartoons. And I don't know where IMDb would be able to find the records of which cartoons appeared in which syndicated TV episode, which might have been broadcast 60 years ago.

I'm also skeptical of the idea that there was ever a TV series consisting solely of Barney Bear cartoons, much less Hunky and Spunky, the latter of whom only had 10 cartoons ever made. A half-hour TV series for Hunky and Spunky would have run out of material before completing its fourth episode.

Fortunately, though, I am not that emotionally invested in how IMDb manages the data for these TV series, so I would probably not get involved in the "contribution wars" you are describing.

Mostly I just want to make sure that (a) the theatrical cartoons are actually listed in IMDb as theatrical cartoons, and (b) no phony TV series from before television came into common use are listed or dated to be much earlier than they could have existed.

@Col_Needham : "there are arguments for creating the later series and allowing all of the data to be duplicated. "

What would such arguments be? I see no reason to duplicate credits. It can only confuse customers and clutter up name pages.

Edit: thanks for taking the time to answer though.

@paul_penna_3vyh933ru92u2​ I'm reluctant to provide any sarcastic suggestions on this message board, because someone might take us up on them.

@paul_penna_3vyh933ru92u2​ 

? ?

Million Dollar Movie (1955-1966)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016963/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016963/reference/

This series began in NYC, on local station WOR TV 9, 
in 1955, and ran for over a decade.
It featured top-tier movies, 
where each feature would run for an entire week, airing twice nightly.
This format, that simulated the local neighborhood  movie house, ... See more »

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016963/plotsummary

.

@ACT_1​ Completely different situation. That's an appropriate entry for a television program that showed movies. The movies they showed are not entered as "TV Movies," or "TV Episodes." That's how it should be for theatrical cartoons that happened to be shown on television programs, not the way imdb is doing it now, which makes a mockery of film history.

Christ, that's depressing. I assume that reversing the edit is hard due to sheer quantity of titles integrated as "episodes" into this monstrosity.

I don't get people who do this. Is it that hard to read guidelines and not go against them, making edits that we will need to reverse with garagntuan effort?.. I mean, unlike what's going on with my filmography it doesn't seem malicious, just ignorant. 

I should note that some of the submissions of these fake TV series may have come from users who did not really understand IMDb policies and were not trying to mislead. ("Allen and Kendal", on the other hand, doesn't have that excuse.) But that just means that the IMDb staff should have blocked the fake TV series from being created.

In the prior thread, I quoted dialogue from This Is Spinal Tap which still seems pertinent, in which a rock band's manager attempts to explain why a "Stonehenge" stage set was only 18 inches tall:

Ian Faith: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told.

David St. Hubbins: But you're not as confused as him, are you? I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes/qt0261740

Here's the complete list of fake, or at least very inaccurate, TV series mentioned in the thread I started last year.

"1937 Coronation" (1937- )

"Allen and Kendal" (1940-2015)

"Andy Panda" (1939-1949)

"Barney Bear" (1939-1954)

"Betty Boop" (1930-1939)

"British Movietone News" (1929-1979)

"British Pathé News" (1910-1970)

"Color Classics" (1934-1941)

"Comicolor cartoons" (1933-1936)

"Grand Prix Motor Racing" (1906-1949)

"Hunky y Spunky" (1938-1941)

"John Wayne Classics" (1935-1963)

"John Wayne Colorized Collection" (1934- )

"Parrotville" (1934-1935)

"Puppetoons" (1932-1942) (I)

"Puppetoons" (1932-1942) (II)

"Rainbow Parade Cartoon" (1934-1936)

"The Three Stooges" (1934-1959)

"Toonerville" (1936)

"US Presidential Elections" (1928- )

@gromit82​ For that list, are you able to provide an alternate list of what the starting and end years should be? That would probably help IMDb staff quickly fix the problem.

@keyword_expert​ Not really, because most of them don't appear to be TV series at all. 

• "1937 Coronation" is either a 1937 TV special or a 2017 TV special; the current entry is unclear as to which one is meant, nor am I confident as to whether that is the correct title for either of them.
• "Allen and Kendal" might be eligible for listing as a TV series, but I can't find it on YouTube anymore.
• "Andy Panda", "Barney Bear", "Color Classics", "Comicolor cartoons", "Hunky y Spunky", "Parrotville", both versions of "Puppetoons", "Rainbow Parade Cartoon", and "Toonerville" are all series of animated films that have probably all been broadcast on television, but I'm not aware that any of them were TV series under those titles.
• "Betty Boop" cartoons may have been syndicated as a TV series somewhere under that title but I don't know when or where.
• "British Movietone News" and "British Pathé News" were series of newsreels made for theatrical release.
• "Grand Prix Motor Racing" might have been broadcast on television at some point before it was replaced by Formula 1, but I have no information on whether it actually was. If it was, the end date would probably be 1949 because Formula 1 began in 1950.
• "John Wayne Classics" and "John Wayne Colorized Collection" refer to compilations of theatrical movies, not to TV series.
• "The Three Stooges" shorts were definitely syndicated and aired on television under that title (among other titles), but I'm not sure that such a program is even eligible for listing in IMDb, much less when it began or ended or how to keep track of it.
• "US Presidential Elections" appears to be a topic within news programs on the BBC, not a TV series in itself.

@gromit82​ Okay, I admit that I was not fully comprehending the subject of this post. I reviewed a couple examples, like "Allen and Kendal," and thought that the main problem here was incorrect start dates and end dates. 

But my overarching feeling is that although you have clearly identified a problem, the solution(s) is not clear in your post. Maybe that's because there is no solution. Are you suggesting simply deleting a lot of these titles? Converting them into another type (other than TV series)? Or maybe the solution is different for each item on the list.

I do have recommendations for these entries.

"Betty Boop": This is the only series I have found on this list where theatrical shorts were completely changed into TV episodes and not left as theatrical shorts. Convert all the episodes to theatrical shorts and then delete the series. (Make sure to block the series from re-creation, too.)

"Andy Panda", "Barney Bear", "Comicolor cartoons", "Hunky y Spunky", "Puppetoons" (1932/I), "The Three Stooges": It appears that the theatrical shorts still have entries of their own and have not been completely merged into these series. Merge each episode into its corresponding theatrical short and then delete the series.

"Color Classics", "Parrotville", "Rainbow Parade Cartoon", "Toonerville": The episodes shown on IMDb are only numbered and not titled, so I think these series can be deleted altogether (with their episodes disappearing because they are unidentifiable).

"Puppetoons" (1932/II) and "US Presidential Elections": These are not actual TV series and have no episodes. They can be deleted altogether.

"British Movietone News" and "British Pathé News": The episodes should probably become theatrical shorts but they will need to have the words "British Movietone News" or "British Pathé News" included in their titles. Once the episodes are converted to theatrical shorts with proper titles, delete the series.

"Grand Prix Motor Racing": Probably the majority of these episodes are completely bogus in the sense that the races were not broadcast on television (and for the earlier years, television did not even exist), but perhaps some of the later races were broadcast. I recommend asking the original contributor to provide evidence of actual television broadcasts, not just that the races were held. 

"John Wayne Classics" and "John Wayne Colorized Collection": Merge each episode into its corresponding feature film and then delete both series.

"1937 Coronation": Change to a TV special instead of a series and remove the phrase "BBC Parliament marks the 80th anniversary of" from the Plot Outline.

"Allen and Kendal": Ask the original contributor to provide evidence of the actual Internet release dates of the episodes. 

@gromit82​ This list of potential solutions is helpful. I think the more you can make it easier on IMDb staff to simply pursue an identified list of solutions, the more likely it will happen.

I'm very concerned about the duration of this problem given the possible propagation of this incorrect idea (TV series before TV), and of the specific titles/characters originating on TV. Since IMDb is supposed to be so trustworthy about this topic, how many books, articles, websites, etc. now quote this misconception?

Hi gromit82-

We actually are aware of the issue from your last post, there is still a ticket for the concerned team pending to solve this, and it will be cleaned, but we have to wait for now. Will do a callout to prioritize given the time it has been pending.

Thanks!

Based on the Amazon link on that title, it looks like all these episodes were compiled and released together on Amazon (and somebody created the fake IMDb series to match):

https://www.amazon.com/Casper-Friendly-Ghost-Seymore-Kneitel/dp/B075SMSTRK

@keyword_expert​ 

How is there no safeguard against transforming old theatrical movies into TV episodes? It's just incredible.

Meanwhile, after years, the Betty Boop theatrical shorts are still listed on IMDb as TV episodes from the 1930s!

@jay_spirit​ If it makes you feel any better, it's only been about 14 months since IMDb allowed the Betty Boop theatrical shorts to be converted into TV episodes.

On the other hand, IMDb was notified of this problem 13 months ago and hasn't done anything to fix it. See https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/data-issues-policy-discussions/no-betty-boop-was-not-a-tv-series-in-1930/61417e5e7999fd0798c634a5.

So now that I think about it, it doesn't make me feel any better.

Hi jay_spirit-

I have created a cleanup request for this.

@gromit82 we do still have the request to clean Betty Boop pending, but it will be done.

Cheers!

@jay_spirit​ 

If you do not specify what should happen with each episode, can you have faith in the results of a cleanup by IMDb staff, who may not have any particular knowledge of the films?

Alternatively, you could submit the edits yourself and post the reference numbers here.

@Peter_pbn​ It shouldn't be our responsibility to review every episode and figure out what should be done with each, when the IMDb staff can just change them back to what they were before before this problem occurred. I would hope that they have a change log they can refer to.

But if they need further guidance, for "Casper the Friendly Ghost" (1945), they should do the following:

1. For each episode, see if there is a theatrical short with the same title and year. If so, merge the episode into the theatrical short with a title change.
2. If there is no theatrical short with the same title and year (which is the case for all the ones I have checked), do a title change to change the episode into a theatrical film.
3. Once all the episodes have been dispersed into theatrical shorts, delete the series.

@Peter_pbn​ 

Title type corrections are the only kind I submit that routinely get rejected—somewhere between 25-50%. The rejections are always reversed on appeal, but the process is tiresome.

God knows how some contributor is able to convert theatrical shorts into TV episodes. I have trouble enough making legitimate title type corrections.

Title type corrections are also one of the few types of corrections that don't appear on the beta update history page. That means I don't know if they are rejected until the time for their acceptance has expired, which may be a week or more.

Just the same, I attempted to convert one of the fake Betty Boop TV episodes back into a theatrical short, just to see if the staff would let me do it, and they did not. And so obviously, I would not to try to do more of that kind of clean-up.

I'm loathe to do clean-up work for IMDb for another reason. I stopped contributing to IMDb for six years because someone was routinely corrupting certain cast data that I had submitted. I cleaned it up, the contributor would corrupt it again, I cleaned it up a second time, the contributor would corrupt it a second time, and on and on.

The staff agreed with me that my data was correct and that the contributor's data was a corruption, yet for a year and a half this situation persisted, often along with shabby treatment by certain staff members. Col Needham apologized to me personally, and yet still the corruption continued.

I came back only because it seemed the situation had changed. I like IMDb a lot better these days, even though I'm experiencing similar corruption with my keyword submissions. (Keywords are less important to me than cast data, but it is still aggravating.) And seeing theatrical shorts converted into TV episodes is particularly disheartening.

Hold one there. Let me point out a few facts that animation studios did to complicate this situation and should be a reason why the IMDb should be let off the hook. I say this from the viewpoint that I grew up in the 60’s and watched cartoons on tv, and saw what was going on in the 60’s when network tv stations ran at least 3 to 4 hours of children’s or cartoon programming on Saturday morning, and figured it happened in the 50’s too. And then I saw what happened when video (aka: videotapes and dvds & blu-rays).

1) Casper, along with Wendy the good little witch, and Richie Rich are all orginnally Harvey comicbook characters that got translated into animated shorts.

2) in the 60’s, 70’s, and 50’s., all the studios took their old theatrical shorts re-released them on tv and mixed them with new shorts filmed for television. And they kept rearranging the line-up (for lack of a better word) from episode to episode from season to season. This was done because tv was the first large mass secondary market for these old shorts. Their is gold in them shorts. And it was done for ALL OF THEM, not just Casper alone. Looney tunes, Tom & Jerry, Pink Panther, woody woodpecker, Mighty Mouse. All of them. Except for Disney. So much you really can’t separate them.

3) pay attention to the trailer. It says the video is a collection of shorts that haven’t been released on home video. Which brings me to fact 4) - what happened when home video started another secondary market for old movies and shorts.

4) without repeating myself too much of what was said in the last paragraph, all the studios, Disney included, did re-release their cartoon shorts - both tv and theatrical - in various video collection compilations in various combinations . 
So how can you blame the IMDb for the unholy mess the studios, and network tv, and the video companies created?

@dgranger​ 

The blurred distinction between theatrical cartoons and television cartoons has indeed created an unholy mess, and it's always been a mess on IMDb.

And I agree that the confusion is not entirely IMDb's fault.

But allowing a contributor to change a theatrical cartoon, that has been listed on IMDb as a theatrical cartoon for decades, into a TV episode? That's embarrassing.

This is not a case of a theatrical cartoon being duplicated as a TV episode. The theatrical cartoon has been converted into an episode.

We've always had duplicates, and fake series, and general misinformation, but never this.

In most ways, I believe IMDb is better than ever. But this is just awful, and would not have happened five or ten years ago.

@dgranger​ While I agree with some of your premises, I disagree with your conclusion.

Did theatrical animated shorts, including Casper, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Pink Panther, and Mighty Mouse, get shown on television, with the lineups being rearranged from episode to episode and season to season? Definitely yes. And would it be extremely difficult, if it were possible at all, for IMDb to keep track of which shorts were shown in which episode of which syndicated series 50 or 60 years ago? Yes, extremely difficult and maybe impossible. If anyone was keeping a record of that, I doubt those records would be available to the public in 2022. 

But the good news for IMDb is that I -- and many of the other contributors here -- don't expect IMDb to have that data. To the extent that this information is missing, I'm not bothered by that at all.

What I do expect from IMDb is that the data that they do include should be true. In the case of "Casper the Friendly Ghost", there was no TV series by that name in 1945. By the end of 1945 -- in fact, by the end of 1947 -- there had only been one Casper cartoon released at all. And IMDb's Company Credits correctly indicate that the first distributor of Casper cartoons was Paramount Pictures, in 1945, for theatrical release. (See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6280432/companycredits .) But what the IMDb entry at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6280432/ claims is that there was a TV series titled "Casper the Friendly Ghost" which made its television debut in 1945. That isn't true, and nobody has provided any evidence that it is.

And when IMDb takes theatrical shorts and turns them into TV episodes, that means IMDb is claiming that the title was not originally a theatrical short and was originally a TV episode, when that is not the case.

As discussed in my other thread, this problem doesn't exist just for Casper, but for some other theatrical cartoons from the 1930s before television broadcasting came into common use. In some of those cases, the "TV series" are just blatantly wrong. It would be like someone going to a music collectors' convention and trying to sell a compact disc personally autographed by Elvis Presley. Either you should already know that the item is a fake, or with two minutes of research you could learn that it must be a fake, without even looking at the CD.

So, yes, I do blame IMDb for allowing some of their data to be turned into an unholy mess, when it wasn't an unholy mess before.

@gromit82​ some one didn’t look to hard and even I got corrected. Casper bounced around between studios. But his first tv appearance is in 1959 to 1960 in Matty’s Funday Funnies (with Beanie and Cecil) which the show introduced the Barbie Doll and also ran cartoons of not just Casper, but  Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey and Baby Huey. you see “Matty” was the cartoon logo for the Mattel toy company at the time.  There is a lot of crazy connections here. 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casper_the_Friendly_Ghost

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matty%27s_Funday_Funnies

then Casper gets his own show in 1961 and more shows listed in the 1st article. Again a ton of crazy connections.

@dgranger​ However crazy those connections may be, none of them are crazy enough to have put a "Casper the Friendly Ghost" TV series on television by 1945.

@dgranger​ here is more evidence linking Casper to Matty’s Funday Funnies.

https://youtu.be/nHi4k2DxucI?t=184

@gromit82​ read it again. It proves that Casper wasn’t on air until 1959 in “Matty’s Funday Funnies. Every thing made of Casper before 1956 , when - “

The other Famous produced Casper cartoons had already been acquired by television distributor U.M. & M. TV Corporation in 1956. U.M. & M. retitled just "A Haunting We Will Go", but credited "Featuring Casper The Friendly Ghost" as "Featuring Casper's Friendly Ghost".

New cartoons were created for The New Casper Cartoon Show in 1963, also on ABC. The original Casper cartoons were syndicated under the title Harveytoons (initially repackaged as Casper and Company) in 1963 and ran continuously until the mid-90s. Casper has remained popular in reruns and merchandising.” aka before 1956 were theatrical shorts! It proves you case. And it basically says the all of the ones ran on “Matty’s Funday Funnies were theatrical shorts reran on tv.

@jay_spirit​ Regarding this persistent correction you fight with: boy, can I relate.