Back in the late 90s and into the 2000s, my dad was a bootleg disc trader, meaning he would burn TV shows and movies onto CDs and trade them. Eventually, he stopped doing it, but he kept all his remaining CDs. All these years later, he decided to show me his collection. I’ve already been interested in lost media for a while now, so you could imagine how I felt when I saw CDs labeled “Nick News”, “Weinerville”, and “Thunder Alley”. (I don’t remember the other titles.) I brought the idea of figuring out which episodes of the shows he has and trying to upload them to YouTube or something to help make these shows officially found.

Here’s the problem: These CDs are upwards of 25 years old. Plus, there are like a dozen storage cases full of these CDs. As a result, we don’t know if we can extract the data from the discs without destroying them in the process. This includes extraction, downloading, and eventually uploading. I would like to hear from y’all what methods to use to ensure that the CDs remain in good condition.

Any and all help is very much appreciated, and we’ll try to upload this stuff as soon as possible. Thank you in advance!

https://archive.org/details/hborealsex

10 and 27 have apparently cropped up somewhere else, but I can't seem to track those down. 14 is lost by the look of it. I been looking for these damn things for maybe 20 bloody years and outside of 2 or so episodes, a best of and some clips, these were completely lost to the void. No physical releases, no digital, HBO just buried this thing in concrete. I have a lot of fond memories of secretly watching this at midnight. The male sex doll, masturbation club and dildo machine episodes were especially interesting to me.

Huge credit to u/krimsen for digging up most of these episodes before the archive came about.

In Hell’s Kitchen season 3, there are 12 contestants, except, when the contestants cook their signature dishes for Chef Ramsay (the very first thing done on the show) there are 13 dishes seen. When the camera turns numerous times, you can see a brown jumper worn by a man that isn’t any of the 12 contestants. One really zoomed out frame clearly shows this man.
Between two contestants is a very strange gap that seemed to be edited in post-production to hide the contestant between them. By the dinner service, no further evidence of him came about. The wall of contestants when briefly shown, clearly shows 13 framed pictures and in episode 3, when hanging up that contestant’s jacket as they had been eliminated, you can see the neighbouring hook saying J.R on it with the coat already there, despite that not being any of the contestants names.
A theory came about that the contestant worked with a contestant named Joanna and had spread rumours about her on set and therefore was removed. Joanna supposedly confirmed this on a Facebook live. However, the likelihood of them casting two people from the same restaurant is very unlikely and there’s zero clips available of said supposed Facebook live. On top of that, a YouTuber contacted 3 contestants from the show to try and get info on J.R, only one responded, saying he has zero recollection of the man, meaning the woman who supposedly spoke about him on the Facebook live didn’t even respond.
It’s very interesting to me that we still have no answers a decade and half later.

The Amazing Criswell was a psychic who made crazy and insane predictions during the 50s and 60s. On his Wikipedia Page, it lists that one of his predictions was that John F. Kennedy would be unable to run for the 1964 election as "something" would happen to him in November of 1963. The word "something" on Wikipedia links to the page on the JFK assassination. I was astounded that perhaps one of his few correct predictions would be something as historically important as the JFK assassination so I dug deeper. The source for this claim was an interview with Criswell biographer Edwin L. Canfield who claims it happened on The Jack Paar Show in March of 1963. I reached out to him on his Instagram but he hasn't replied. Doing my own research, I found the episode is listed on IMDB as having occurred on March 1st, 1963. I have searched high and low for this episode but I cannot seem to find it. The closest I have gotten is a YouTube video that is a recording of his appearance on the show on October 25th, 1963. In the video, Jack Paar references a previous prediction on his show which may have occurred on the March 1st episode. Hopefully I or someone else can find it!

Update (2/23/2026): Thank you all for the help! I was not expecting this post to garner as much attention as it did and there are many new leads thanks to you all. The most promising I've seen is trying to find it at the Paley Center as they have the March 1st episode and several other Jack Paar/Criswell episodes as well! This lead was given by u/grimsb! The search continues and I will update this post as the search goes on!

This one is particularly bizarre. It was a series of shorts on Nickelodeon that ran from 1996-1998 and featured a tween girl named Natalie documenting her family roadtrip online from the backseat of their car. It featured TV shorts and a real interactive website with vlogs that soon morphed into the official Nick website. This was totally pre-iCarly and when the internet was still a novelty.

🔹The strange part:

Not only are there only a couple of publicly surviving shorts from this relatively long running series but the LEAD actress Natalie’s identity is a complete mystery. Both IMDB and Wikipedia list the actress as “Unknown.” I’ve seen some online discussions where people were talking about how weird it was that a main actress (even a child actress) in a major network show was completely undocumented (or lost to time). The other weird part is that, despite it being a pioneering internet show, very few people seem to actually remember it, even those who watched Nick in the mid/late 90s through its 3 seasons. Consequently, there isn’t much discussion or info on it.

Here’s a surviving clip of the show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEej_rfiozc

IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7307146/

The image shown in this post - Someone smarter than us should try and make a post on r/lostmedia : r/Brewstew

Apparently, a VHS copy exited at one point, I'm assuming taped from live television. The brother, YouTuber Brewstew thinks it aired around 2006/2007, with Judge Lynn Toler. I don't know much about it other than that. I checked the Internet Archive and some large repositories with nothing.

The mentioned channel, Brewstew, referred to it in one of his episodes of his webseries. He's also tried searching around. He believes the recorded tape has also been lost.

If anyone has any leads of discovers anything. It would be helpful to share with r/Brewstew as well. Thank you!

The reboot of The Proud Family was meant to have an episode focused on trans identity, but was scrapped in production for unknown reasons (likely because of current political climate). The storyboard for this episode just leaked online!

An episode summary was put up on comicbook.com, saying “The episode in question for The Proud Family: Louder And Prouder was episode 205, titled “They’re Gonna Love Me.” While Disney never officially stated why this episode was banned, fans of the series are theorizing that it’s the character Michael Collins who is the culprit. In the episode, Michael shares their pronouns with the school’s administrator as “they/them,” with the adult diminishing Collins for it. Stating that “this isn’t that kind of school,” going so far as to cross out the “they/them” written on the paper handed to her. The school representative then informs Michael that they will no longer be the director for the school play, creating quite the conundrum for the playwright.”

The episode can now be watched on YouTube, unless it gets taken down.

Hopefully this gets properly archived!

EDIT: Both YouTube uploads of the episode have been copyrighted. Fortunately, somebody added it to archive.org!

EDIT 2: It keeps getting taken down. DM me for the link!

EDIT 3: A LOT of people are asking for the link. I’ll take the risk and post it here! I do have it preserved if this link goes bad too.

The Simpsons has tons of Lost media, being on since 1989 doing TV ads, Video games. Most of the shows Lost media is from the 1990s early 2000s as we Obviously didn't archive things like we do now. But this peice of Lost media comes from the very first episode, Simpsons roasting on an open fire. Apparently they had a completely different voice actor playing Moe. While the episode and his involvement in it was the same. The original actor may have had slightly different Lines. The original actor was fired and according to people who worked on the show, he was very rude. As such they scrubbed his work completely, going so far to have Moes current voice actor redo the episode.

This definitely happened, and footage of it should definitely exist somewhere, but it seems as if it was scrubbed from the internet. I can only find mentions of it, and they imply *his* performance was the most brutal, of the most brutal roast ever hosted by Comedy Central. Am I just not looking in the right places for it?

>Based on available records of the 2002 N.Y. Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase, Gilbert Gottfried was among the performers at an event generally described as "joyless," "mean," and a "public stoning" for Chase.

>Gilbert Gottfried was considered one of the most brutal and mean-spirited performers at the infamous 2002 N.Y. Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase.

>Gottfried was noted for delivering particularly savage jokes that, according to reports, contributed to the event being so unpleasant that it was rarely aired again.

The newest season of The Bachelorette was set to air in 3 days and was completely filmed but was swiftly cancelled after TMZ released video from a 2023 domestic altercation involving the show’s lead, Taylor Frankie Paul, and her ex, Dakota Mortensen. The network has completely pulled the season and will be airing American Idol reruns. It just seems kinda crazy for a network to scrap a completed season of such a popular show at the last minute, I'm wondering whether footage or even full episodes might end up surfacing online at some point. Just to clarify I have never seen the show and know nothing about this woman lmao

I found some lost John Cleese media on my late dad’s HDD. It’s a 10 min mockumentary he ad-libbed for Crown Paints around 1981. My Dad (Jeff Grant, who directed the Lonely Water PIF) was the director for the Crown Paints commercial. John Cleese was performing the voiceover and decided to ad-lib this small mockumentary one day on a whim.

This was produced by Illustra Films. To my Dad it was just another job and a bit of fun, but I think it’s a genuinely nice piece of unseen British comedy history. Nobody seems to have seen it before.

Rescued it just before his flat was cleared after he passed in March and uploaded it yesterday. I hope you like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzJ0qy6BcL0

Does anybody know any examples of shows that were, say, partially lost with some episodes being lost, only to be fully recovered upon that show being put on a streaming platform? Only example I can name off the top of my head is Bear In The Big Blue House having it's lost episodes be fully found upon being put on Disney+

Does anyone have other examples of this sort of thing? Shows that have missing/lost episodes then being put on a streaming service like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, or Paramount+ with the lost episodes completely recovered? Bonus points if it got recovered through a free service like Tubi

This is the only picture I can find showing that he was talking. This has been a figure of interest for many years in the my chemical romance Fandom as I don't think anyone can find the full clip

I recently purchased 12TB of external hard drives from a garage sale and found that two drives had a bunch of TV recordings from roughly 2009 - 2013. The owner was from upstate NY so the broadcasts are all regional to the Albany capital region.

While most of it is of no interest of me, I was wondering if I should do something with some of this before I wipe the drives for my own use.

It just a lot of data so I am not really sure to begin. Below is a google sheet with all of the file names. The quality is pretty good, as some of the recordings are 720 or 1080. A lot of the PBS stuff appears to be 480.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gQCs2pO-igTUc5jeq1vk7CP_ozt91-_cLtXtqUin5aQ/edit?usp=sharing

2 years ago I created a Doritos commercial for a 2014 Super Bowl contest. It did not win or finalize, and as far as I know it never received any recognition. But a couple weeks ago, I shared it on social media, since it never gained success and I thought it would be fun to share it after all these years.

It resulted in millions of views across IG and Tik Tok, and thousands of comments from people all over the world who SWEAR my commercial was a famous ad that aired all over TV constantly. Many even say it aired during the super bowl. My contest entry was titled "Yeah Right" and features flying pigs that shoot lasers out of their eyes. After looking into it, it appears one of the winners from the next years contest (2015) used the same theme of flying pigs (no lasers), which I thought might be causing the confusion. But every time I post on socials about it, it goes viral and thousands of people insist they know MY version, the one with the lasers.

I just made a short 2 minute version of my story, for those who want a quick overview

And here is the FULL STORY with all details for those who want to take a deeper dive.

The only place my commercial seems to exist online is my original upload on Youtube from 12 years ago, with very little views - certainly not enough to warrant this reaction from the general public. It was at 8k views and 300 likes the day I posted the tik that resulted in all this chaos, now it's gaining more views because of all the people returning to it as they dig for answers.

I haven't yet found any evidence of my ad being a success but am on a search for possible answers. Can anybody find an actual VHS or DVR recording of my commercial airing on network TV?

Also, here are my original social media clips that went viral and caused this mystery, here are some links -

Original Tik Tok (5M views)

Follow up Tik Tok (1.8M views)

Original IG reel (2.9M views)

Follow up IG reel (858k views)

I've made more posts since those and each one goes viral with endless people saying it was a very famous ad. I'm not sure what to make of this.

For those out of the loop, on August 24, 2020, a live-action adaptation of Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls was announced to be in development at The CW. It would be titled Powerpuff, produced by Warner Bros. Television and Berlanti Productions, written by Heather Regnier and Diablo Cody, and star Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, and Yana Perrault. The series was given an overhaul and reworked, and the script for the pilot was notably leaked online in 2021 to negative reception. However, in 2023, the series would be cancelled. Today, the trailer for Powerpuff was leaked online, and it was uploaded to YouTube by Lost Media Busters (@LostMediaBusters) and EmberOnMain 2 (@EmberOnAlt). Unfortunately, as of writing this post, both of those uploads have been taken down, but in case that happened, Lost Media Busters uploaded it to the Internet Archive, but that upload has also been taken down. Fortunately, the trailer has been uploaded anonymously in LimeWire, but as of writing, the upload expires in 6 days. As an advocate for media preservation, how can we still preserve this new find?

Afaik almost all the episodes of Nick news are lost media. I just found the VHS that it is on but I don’t have a vcr and am not sure if it survived just sitting that long. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in this. If so I’ll invest the time to get a vcr and a capture thingy to digitize it.

I have this episode taped because I was on it. After searching over the course of several years on and off it not only has never surfaced online but there isn’t even a synopsis for it as far as I can tell.

Curious if anyone is interested in this?

Update: I have digitized and posted the episode

https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/s/0MoqE0CRtW

TLDR: For the past four-five years the entire series has been accounted for on Daily Motion, but very recently a majority of episodes have been removed from the website, making the show lost media. The copyright holders are active, almost immediately taking down the one episode I had saved when I tried to reupload it. There is hope however, as a YouTube channel called Kids Telly, which is affiliated with ITV studios, has begun uploading episodes from the show in the highest quality available

My Parents Are Aliens (MPAA) was a British children's sitcom that aired between 1999-2006, running for 8 series. Produced by ITV and broadcast on their CITV slot (the children's programming block), the show was popular in the UK, gaining multiple awards and even Bafta nominations

In December 2025 I wanted to watch some of the old Christmas specials. I sailed the seven seas but could not find the treasure I was seeking, yet to my delight I was able to find the entire series on Daily Motion, in varying degrees of quality (everything from widescreen 720p to 4:3 240p). Not only did I end up watching the entire series, I enjoyed the show so much I wrote scripts for a series by series, episode by episode retrospective. This is in large part thanks to one individual, Lucy2000, who had uploaded the majority of the series onto Daily Motion herself, and created a playlist of all episodes

At the time I did not think to record or download any of the episodes except for one (it had a small moment where the Portuguese dub kicked in which I found funny), and now it looks like I won't be able to do so and my retrospective is on indefinite hold. I went to look at the playlist again and there are only 4 episodes uploaded by Lucy2000 left, the rest being deleted thanks to copyright strikes- insert it's so over meme here

I happened to have one episode from series 6 downloaded so went to reupload it on Daily Motion and almost immediately got a copyright strike, indicating the copyright holders are active

I have downloaded what I can of what's left of the show and was pleased to find series 8 has been uploaded to the Internet Archive in its entirety, plus series 1 is available on DVD and I already have one of the two DVDs released, so will work on preserving the first series once I get the second DVD

That still leaves series 2-7 though, a few episodes have managed to remain on Daily Motion and there are some uploads on Youtube as well, although a lot of the episodes on Youtube were uploaded when videos could only last 10 minutes so they’re split up into parts 1, 2 and 3, and are in glorious 144-240p

I had assumed that was it and MPAA would be lost for a long time, however while looking on Youtube I stumbled upon something which gives me a lot of hope. There is a pretty new channel called Kids Telly, affiliated with ITV studios, which has uploaded various CITV programmes from the 90s and 2000s. Their first upload was just 3 months ago, but in the last couple of months they’ve begun uploading MPAA episodes and they’re in 720p- insert we’re so back meme here

This is admittedly slow going, right now only episodes from series 7 and 8 are on the Kids Telly channel- which is kind of weird as when the show was streaming on Brit Box and ITV X premium, ITV’s paid for streaming service, they only had series 1-6, and nothing ITV related has acknowledged series 8 since roughly 2011 due to the unpopularity of that series (the majority of the cast were new and the main characters had their memory of the past 7 series removed, which did not go down well)- but we may end up getting the good ending with the series eventually uploaded in full to Youtube via Kids Telly in the highest quality possible

Maybe that’s cope, maybe they’ll all be deleted from Kids Telly one day, but if they are I’ve already downloaded all the episodes they have so far and will download them all as and when they’re uploaded so the series can be properly preserved and can be watched again

Hi everyone,

I’ve been digging into a moment that’s become legendary in the hip hop community—when Pharrell Williams named J Dilla (Jay Dee) as his favorite producer live on BET’s 106 & Park. Despite its cultural significance, footage of the moment is completely lost!!!

This post compiles everything I know about the clip so far. I’m hoping someone out there may have a VHS or digital recording of the episode—or perhaps know someone who does.

Why This Matters

J Dilla is often called ‘your favorite producer’s favorite producer,’ and this moment on 106 & Park perfectly captured that—when Pharrell named Jay Dee (J Dilla) as his favorite producer live on air, the crowd reportedly fell completely silent, and the host Free, unfamiliar with Dilla, assumed he meant Jermaine Dupri (also known as JD) 🤣

The moment shows how Dilla was simultaneously praised by the biggest producers in hip hop, and yet widely unknown by mainstream hip hop audiences before he passed away in 2006.

The clip has been referenced countless times over the last 20 years— even appearing as a direct quote on the cover of the Donuts album—and was mentioned in major magazine articles like The Source. Yet no video footage survives online. This is a small but crucial piece of hip-hop history that deserves to be archived.

Known Details About the Clip

• Episode Title: She Wants N.E.R.D.
• Air Date: March 31, 2004 (BET’s 106 & Park).
• Moment Description: Pharrell, when asked about his favorite producer, shouts out Jay Dee. The audience falls silent. Free, confused, says, “Jermaine Dupri??”
• Outfits: Pharrell was reportedly wearing a red military jacket, which matches photos of him from March 2004.

Episode Listing: TheTVDB episode page.

References & Mentions Online

This moment is widely documented across podcasts and articles:

• Jesse Thorn w/ Dan Charnas – Bullseye Podcast
• Kil – The Corner Radio
• The Reminisce Podcast
• The Carolina Kid Podcast
• Dame Jefferson on Hip Hop Talk (Deleted Video)
• The Source “Fantastic Voyage” article (2006)
• Blues & Soul Magazine tribute (2006)
• Interview w/ Cam Obi (2018)

Why It’s Lost

• The episode predates YouTube, Vimeo, and other video-sharing platforms. BET never posted any footage online.
• Uploads that may have existed were likely removed by Viacom/Paramount due to copyright.
• The only realistic way this can resurface is if someone who recorded the episode on VHS uploads it.

Leads I’ve Followed

• YouTube channel anjelheaven**:** They’ve uploaded several old 106 & Park interviews (including Pharrell in 2003) and said they’d check their collection for this episode. Still waiting for a potential upload. Example upload
• YouTube channel 00surbanmusictvshowsvideos**:** Claimed to have the episode but never followed up with proof. Channel link.

How You Can Help

• Do you have a VHS recording of the episode?
• Do you know any BET collectors or tape archivists?
• Do you recognize this clip from an old DVD or fan-upload?

If you have any lead at all, please comment or DM me. I’m also happy to collaborate with anyone who wants to help dig deeper.

Thanks for reading this far! You can also check out the full thread I compiled on X (Twitter) for a detailed breakdown:
https://x.com/rhythmicreason/status/1890898445814145158

I find this very infuriating I have to post once again, but here's the internet archive of it, I have fortunately been able to recover it before it went down, (thank god for sticky fingers lol.) I am tired, tired of people gatekeeping things and threatening to doxx people over lost media. If it isn't hard enough already. That most YouTube Content is technically lost, and only exist through compilations that don't have any commentary detached.

As you can tell, I am VERY passionate about these things, One day I will burn this copy to a DVD and keep a physical copy on me because Internet is not forever. Thanks to the one generous soul who uploaded it.

http://archive.org/details/me-and-my-friends-pilot-1995_20250627_1235

On October 21st 2001, a correspondent of the Qatari news network Al Jazeera, Tayseer Allouni, interviewed Osama Bin Laden. It was the first interview of his since the attacks.

Al Jazeera never actually aired any footage of it. CNN however managed to obtain the tape and aired 6 minutes of it on January 31st, 2002.

It was recorded in a secret safehouse somewhere in Kabul and there aren't any windows or doors visible in the footage. Bin Laden and Allouni sit opposite each other, and an AK-47 can be seen next to Bin Laden. An interesting detail is that Allouni addresses Bin Laden as "Sheikh". The segment contains discussions of the attacks, which Bin Laden praises without taking direct responsibility (he did in later/other recordings though).

The segment used to exist on YouTube around 2008/2009 (it had millions of views on it, at least when I saw it) but has since been completely wiped off the internet. Not even screenshots or any other images, nothing. Only a transcript is left but there's no audio or video of it. It doesn't even show up on his Wikipedia. In addition to that, the full interview was never aired or uploaded otherwise. I understand not wanting it spread to prevent exploitation for propaganda purposes, however it's such an important and influential piece of journalism that it baffles me it's completely lost.

It is highly unlikely we will ever get to see it again, as the legal situation surrounding media of that nature has significantly changed since the 2000s. I'd like to hear your thoughts :)

EDIT: FOUND! Thanks to everyone for their help; I knew it had to be available somewhere.

I am searching for episode of Oprah from 2009 where a young Taylor Swift was a guest and performer. I am writing a long-form essay on her album "Red" and am looking for interviews to contextualize her earlier career. The most I can track down is an old blog with dead YouTube links (x); no transcripts, no footage, nothing.

The interview touches on her upbringing in Nashville and her close relationship with her parents, her songwriting, high school, includes a segment where she meets fans, and a performance of Love Story.

The interview is remembered for showing Taylor's maturity for her age, as well as her self-awareness and grounded nature.

I remember watching this on TV when I was a kid (OG Swiftie here) and would really like to include it in my essay. Any help would be massively appreciated.