It's an interesting show. In-studio footage includes scenes of the guys talking about and working on the then-unreleased "Goin' To The Beach". For the "live" performance, I seem to recall that local BBFUN members were invited to comprise the audience. At one point, right before the sax solo on "Goin' On", Carl's lip syncing is off; he realizes it, and gives one of his famous "faces". He then carries on, while smiling and briefly nodding at someone off-screen (the director, or someone in the audience), as if to acknowledge it and say, "Yeah, I know - but it's OK". Priceless. Also interesting is that there is absolutely no mention of Dennis; he was ostracized from the band at this point, but you'd think they would have at least acknowledged his absence somehow, especially since they make a big deal about how these album sessions marked a newfound "togetherness" and sense of unity for the band.
January 28th (two days before the onstage video shoot) was a busy day indeed for our Boys, who worked their balls off at Rumbo Recorders: not only did they spend three hours adding some vocals to "Some Of Your Love" and "Oh Darlin'", guitar and horns were added to one song during another three-hour session, four hours were devoted to tape-copying and editing together the 24-track master of "Sunshine", an hour was spent dubbing cassette copies for the band, and 1.5 hours were allocated to making mono TV mixes of "Some Of Your Love" and "Goin' On" (yes, the TV special's audio is in mono - and this would seem to indicate either that mono mixes for the other tunes included in the program were made on another day, or simple stereo-to-mono fold-downs were made from rough mixes of those tunes). This information all comes from a CBS Records work order.
Many of the rough mixes used in the television program are indeed unique - for instance, the song "Keepin' The Summer Alive" lacks the eventual Joe Walsh slide guitar solo, enabling us to hear Carl's original "place-holder" solo; and "Goin' On" lacks the tympani overdub that was added on January 31st (the very next day after the video shoot). Also of note is that three of the album's songs are not included in the live "performance", and are absent from the special altogether: "When Girls Get Together" (likely because it was a ten-year old recording, and wasn't well suited for a psuedo-live setting), "Santa Ana Winds", and "Livin' With A Heartache" ("Winds" was not completed in its final form until January 31st-February 1st, and "Heartache" was not tracked until January 31st, with overdubs following on February 5th, 14th, and 17th).
The quote in bold above brought back some memories, and triggered the thought that so many people born after 1980 would most likely not remember watching TV when it was *all* in mono. No stereo to speak of. TV sets (there's an old term, right?) either had one speaker, or dual speakers that amplified the same signal on both, i.e. mono signals only when it came to broadcasts and cable.
I know there were various tests and experiments done going back to the 50's, where networks would try to simulcast and sync up a TV video broadcast with an FM radio audio simulcast, or in one test I think they even split one channel to AM and another to FM. But the caveat was you had to have all this gear at home, not to mention being in a location where you could receive all of this. Again, all of it was very experimental in nature and would take several decades to actually translate into a true stereo broadcast that people with stereo TV's at home could receive.
If I remember, NBC started running episodes of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in stereo in July 1984, and that Fall there was buzz around their new show Miami Vice which was set to be their first series and regular broadcast to be available in full stereo. Imagine, nothing consistently broadcast in stereo for the vast majority of viewers until late 1984 and beyond.
Reading this about mixing mono for TV just triggered a memory when we got a new GE television set to replace others which I burned out the tube thanks to a Magnavox Odyssey video game console...It was Summer 1986 or '87 if I recall, and I got home from an event at the local park in the afternoon to see the delivery guys carrying it in the front door.
It was stereo, real stereo, which was the first time we could experience that. However, not all programs even by 86-87 were broadcast in stereo - You could tell because on the display an icon would appear in yellow that said "STEREO", and if it were mono it wasn't there. And at that time, a big deal that never really did much later on was the SAP (second audio program) feature, which would show up as an asterisk if it was available. Not many channels bothered with it, and most times - if anything - it was a Spanish audio track, and again it wasn't much compared to the potential some had for this new tech.
The only thing with the TV was it only had RCA stereo input jacks...no outputs to connect to a receiver or amp for better or fuller sound. It only came through the console's built-in speakers. I still have that TV and it still works. The first VCR we got was around 1989, and due to cost factors even that was only in mono. The hi-fi stereo feature on VCR's added what I remember was a decent increase to the price.
But reading that about mono mixing for TV triggered those memories, and it's amazing to think how long it took TV to start broadcasting in stereo despite FM being around for quite some time by 1984, and the fact that prior to 1984 and even in the next years after people were not able to receive TV programs with stereo audio, and it was all in mono.