After I'd read in Variety that Art Wallace's suit against DC was settled and the way was finally paved for DS to be syndicated, I kept expecting to hear that DS had indeed popped up on stations, but it wasn't until I just happened to be reading the LA Times in the college library one day in October of '75 that I came across actual evidence of a TV station running DS: an ad promoting DS on LA's KHJ:
(And of course I promptly made sure that the librarian would give me the paper once the microfilm came in for the issue instead of tossing it in the junk (no recycling in those days
![[ghost_nowink]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/ghost_nowink.gif "No Wink")
))
From then on I kept expecting that any week I was going to be reading my TV Guide and discover that DS was on some station in my area - but months went by without that happening. In fact, it wasn't until I read an article in the April 14, 1976 issue of weekly Variety that I learned there was a possibly that DS would be in my area because the Kaiser Broadcasting Group, which owned a station in my area, had picked up DS and was going to begin running it on their stations. But I wasn't absolutely sure that my local Kaiser station was going to be running DS until I came across a full page ad in the same issue of Variety that indicated that it was:
(And I've always thought it was odd that the ad said the first ratings were in because DS had already been running in LA for 6 months. But who knows? Perhaps they were testing DS in LA before branching out wider.)
So, I finally got to see DS in syndication - and for the first 5 months it was actually like watching brand new eps because I hadn't originally discovered DS until September of '67. But at the end of that first package of syndicated ep the show went off because Worldvision didn't release more eps.
![[ghost_sad]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/ghost_sad.gif "Sad")
And even though I did see in my TV Guide that DS ran in New Hampshire in '77-78, I never saw any of those eps because I couldn't get the stations they were on. It wasn't until September of '85 that I once again noticed that DS was on again in my area. But as I've mentioned before, by that time I had packed away all my DS stuff and it had been years since I'd put the show behind me as nothing more than a fond memory. However, after learning of its return, from time to time I would think about DS and wonder what I would think about the show if I saw it again. But that wasn't about to happen anytime soon because I was working full time and I didn't own a VCR and DS was on at 11:30am. But one day when I had the day off from work curiosity got the better of me and I tried to see if I could get the station (which was a new station in the area and not part of the cable package). I did - not too well - but well enough to see that I'd stumbled upon Ep #233, the one in which Barnabas tells Carolyn and Vicki the story of Josette's suicide. And it was like no time had passed since I'd seen a DS ep as all the old feelings for the show came flooding back. But even so, I resisted getting involved with it again. But by the time I'd had a few more days off and came across eps like the one in which Julia opens Barnabas' coffin, I knew it was a losing battle. And before too long I'd bought an amplified antenna, a VCR, and I was recording DS every day and watching it soon after I got home. And along the way not only did I reacquaint myself with the eps I'd already seen back in the day, but I finally also got to see the eps I'd missed between September of '68 and early January of '69 while DS had originally been moved from 4pm in my area. And I continued watching right up until the run on the station ended with 1970PT Ep #1007 in September of '88. But at that point, like most of us who were active in fandom back then (yes, by then I had really given in and was a subscriber to The World of DS, Inside The Old House, and SG, and the proud owner of My Scrapbook Memories and the newly issued soundtracks, among other things) I feared we might never get to see the final year of eps because the station I'd watched and others had tried to get them with no luck. And never in my wildest dreams did I think we might ever see the pre-Barn eps! But little did any of us know that not much longer than a year later a video company called MPI would start to issue eps on VHS. And four years later a new cable station called Sci-Fi would begin showing DS from the very beginning. And before long every DS ep would be available in some fashion or another. And as they say, the rest is history.
![[ghost_wink]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/ghost_wink.gif "Wink")
