Duration: 2:24:40

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Back in the 90s when you couldn't go a week without finding a magic special on television, PBS station KSTC Television produced 'The Art of Magic,' a 2.5 hour documentary featuring, among others, magicians Lance Burton, Jason Byrne, Hiawatha, Jeff McBride, Jonathan & Charlotte Pendragon, Peter Samelson, Luna Shemada, Jamy Ian Swiss, David Willamson and the late Eugene Burger, Siegfried Fischbacher, Pamela Hayes, Roy Horn, Max Maven, James Randi and Johnny Thompson.

I happened to catch and record the airing on my local PBS network back around 1997/1998, though it may have originally aired in 1996. It is a little hard to track down a definitive date for the first airing.

Sadly, with the decline of magic specials over the next few years, it was never aired again in my area, and, quite possibly, anywhere else. Others have uploaded the special over the years, but most versions are either cut up, deeply washed out contrast levels and/or low resolution. And although my copy recorded remained in decent condition and was converted to my digital archives around 10 years ago, I kept hoping for one in better quality. Thankfully, PBS released the special on VHS in 1998 and I was able to track down an sealed copy over the summer.

Since it has been a quarter century and PBS seems to have now abandoned this special for all of eternity, I figured I would go ahead and upload a new conversion I just created. If this is ever officially released on DVD or something like that, I would gladly buy it and remove this upload. But it does not seem that will ever be. So to all, it will live on again in shoddily upscaled 1080 format.

Copyright KSTC Television / Corporation for Public Broadcasting & Public Broadcasting Services