Gilda Radner's final TV appearance, broadcast 3-18-88, wasn't announced in advance to the studio audience, who flipped out when she walked onto the set of this cable TV sitcom. Radner even mentions battling cancer, before swiping the star's schtick by making direct eye contact with the camera/audience several times, a reportedly ad-libbed bit that becomes increasingly funny in this compilation of Radner clips from the episode. The show's creators were working on a new Radner TV program that would have featured her playing the host of a TV variety show, but her cancer returned and she never appeared on TV again.

BetaGems are culled from an archive of over 1000 beta video tapes recorded from the early 1980s into the 1990s. Most feature live music performances broadcast on television in San Diego CA, though there are also rarely seen commercials, comedy clips, and other material that doesn't seem to be anywhere else on Youtube or online.

Most of the tapes were recorded on a Sony SL-HFT7 Super Beta Theater Hi-Fi Stereo - the same model was refurbished and is being used for these digital transfers and uploads. In rare occasions where a BetaGems clip does appear elsewhere, we're only uploading if our own beta master is better quality or contains material not seen previously. Much footage comes from public television and public access broadcasts that the taper, who worked for a local cable TV production company in the 1980s, monitored nightly for several years. Some of the programming is strictly regional, mostly from the San Diego area.