The NBC Master Books broadcast logs, which are available on microfilm at the Library of Congress Motion Picture and Television Reading Room on the third floor of the Madison Memorial Building (and possibly also at other reference sites), are the only paper records of the Art Fleming-hosted Jeopardy! in public hands, and since only a handful of Fleming-era shows survive on videotapes and kinescope films, they may be the most complete records of the show extant. For many shows, they list contestant names and production notes, but often the contestant names are illegible or missing. Information about winners and their winnings is almost never included. For a large number of programs, complete teleprompter scripts have been included; they bear the production notes and doodles of some crew member, possibly the assistant director, and are sometimes the most valuable in terms of contemporary information about the show and its context in the 1960s and 1970s. The Master Books have 2-4 days of broadcast log per reel of microfilm and have no index, so locating information is difficult without knowing approximately which dates you need to be looking at, and time consuming even when you do.
The best-preserved information in the Master Books pertains to the television commercials aired with the show. Complete scripts, and frequently photo storyboards, of every television advertisement are retained. Art Fleming often delivered cheeky custom-written segues into the commercials, something that can no longer be done in the modern days of syndication, re-running and market-specific ad-buying. While simply an artifact of the production and record-keeping practices of the network at that time, the irony that the advertisements survive--some of them for brands that no longer do--while most of the program information has been lost reinforces the impression that television programming exists for the purposes of sponsorship rather than vice versa. It says that the ads were then--as they are today--the programming, and the entertainment and information value of our favorite TV show is purely incidental.
Using date information provided by Burns Cameron* from his Tournament of Champions trophy, I was able to locate a lot more information about the Tournament of Champions during the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy! in the NBC Master Books broadcast logs. My findings are produced here. I hope to get information about the remaining Fleming ToCs on return trips to Washington, D.C. in the future.
*On 2007-12-20 at 09:11 PM, Third Degree posted:
Y'know, I have been wrong for a long time. I just looked at the trophy for the first time in a long time and it said October 21, 1966. My original air dates were November 1965 I think. There was no purse for TOC back then. Just what you won. $7070 + $4040=$11110. Hell, it was over 40 years ago. One of my air dates conflicted with a space launch or recovery. I don't remember much about it nowadays.
3D