what is a Broadcast master?
In general/simple terms… TV stations used (much) higher end media (tapes) compared to home recording (VHS, Betamax). You’ve surely seen those bits of “reveal footage” from news programs and game shows and such where you get a glimpse of those HUGE studio cameras (which has always been the case). Those million-dollar monster cameras wouldn’t be recording to just flimsy little VHS tapes and their weak signals, right? (And that’s putting aside that TV stations were of course recording way before VHS or Betamax existed.) Yes, the resolution was still the same — NTSC in the U.S. — but there was much more detail packed into the signal over VHS and other home formats.
(Taking about after things switched from reel to reel…) These TV broadcast cassettes generally looked similar to home VCR tapes, but were larger, the tape wider, more inches of tape moved for recording, which gave them much higher fidelity (within the locked resolution) than their smaller home cousins. I.e., it was a much higher end realm of (video tape) media.
You seem very knolegable about this so just one more question, do these high end tapes get more washed out with each time they are copied? Also even with your answer I still do not quite understand what a broadcast master is, Is it a copy of the tape distributed to TV stations? Is it the immediate finished product?