And it was two Lorimar execs who pioneered the use of electronic film to video editing back in the 80's. They just didn't see the future.
An interesting story: To save 20,000 dollars on the weekly budget, Aaron Spelling considered having The Colbys second season edited on the Ediflex system, which was used on Dallas from 1986-89. As a test he had one episode edited the old fashioned way and the same episode edited on the Ediflex. When he saw the results he was horrified at the poor quality of the Ediflex episode and vowed not to have The Colbys or Dynasty edited on to a video master. He kept his word.
I recall Spelling saying in an interview in the '70s that he would never use the videotape that was being used by his pal Norman Lear (still alive today at 173) for his sitcoms because "we'll be watching CHARLIE'S ANGELS in beautiful film" in twenty years.'
The irony to that, though, was that DYNASTY's original broadcast prints from '86 thru '88 (late-S6 thru S8) were also horrendous --- but they were horrendous in a different way. While DALLAS and the Lorimar shows had that blurry low-resolution video look (because of the new processing) DYNASTY took on a ridiculously splotchy, hot, ultra-grainy washed-out visual look which was every bit as awful (I still don't know what that was) such that one couldn't believe they were broadcasting it that way on network TV for fully
two years.
The Region 1 DVDs have since been corrected for that period of DYNASTY, but it was jaw-dropping at the time, such that it couldn't have helped the already-dropping ratings.. So Aaron traded in one ghastly optical mistake for another. In fact, even some of the press photos at the time, presumably lifted from the episodes themselves, looked exactly the same way.
1986: Super-grainy versus moderately blurry:
