You seem very knowledgeable about this so just one more question
Note that I don’t have any direct experience working in TV. I’ve been in TV stations and on TV, and once needed to provide my short film on one of those big formats for a movie festival (cost a relative fortune), but my info here is in the general realm, I do not have good hands-on knowledge of all this by a long shot. If others with more hands-on info had replied I would’ve kept my mouth shut for sure. 😃
I still do not quite understand what a broadcast master is, Is it a copy of the tape distributed to TV stations?
Again, I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing you really want to know here (unless I’m mistaken): The tape behind the EditDroid SW Holiday Special, was it a/the top master tape that was used to make copies for TV stations or was it one of the copies that was sent to TV stations? My guess is the latter as there were surely a LOT of those sent out in 1978 and with these kinds of things getting some highest tier master just doesn’t happen it seems.
However, I’m just guessing. I don’t know the ins and outs of how TV broadcast tapes were reproduced or the specifics of this tape we’re talking about. It just seems most likely the tape source for EditDroid was one that a TV station had as there were surely a good number of those put out into the world then for the airing. Hell, since VCRs were so rare back then, maybe there were actually more TV broadcast tapes of SWHS in existence at the end of 1978 than there were home recordings of it! 😮 It seems we’ll never be closing to knowing though, huh? It would be interesting if there was a record of info on this ala “There were a total of ____ tapes of SWHS sent out to TV stations during {timeframe} 1978,” but something like that is just lost to time I assume.