Here’s something that made me happy to read. For quite some time I’ve been annoyed by the fact that the audio series of Srila Prabhupada’s spoken lectures and morning walks are actually truncated from the original recordings. Often there are entire dialogues with essential teachings missing from the versions we can read in the Bhaktivedanta Vedabase. I’ve always wondered what the explanation was for such an editing decision. My concern was addressed in the letter below:

“As you may be aware, in 1972, Golden Avatar processed their Ministry master reel tapes based on 90 minutes and 60 minutes cassette tapes in house.

In 1973 the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry came into existence and the distribution had picked up steam as many devotees signed up as regular subscribers. It was decided to redo the entire Ministry to an even higher quality standard. The master reels were sent out to a duplicating house and the length of the tapes would vary from C-48 C-70 to accommodate the actual program duration exactly.

Gradually, after Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance, many subscribers didn’t extend their tape subscription and lost interest in listening, unfortunately, and as a result the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry in a cost cutting effort was forced to duplicate their tapes in house again.

There was however one problem, the new master reels didn’t match exactly a particular pre-purchased tape length. The decision was made then to use 2 standard lengths again to fit the program, being C-60 and C-90. The volunteer devotees engaged in duplicating weren’t always exactly careful matching the masters with the cassettes so the result was sometimes the tapes were cut off prematurely.

However, efforts are being made to eventually bring the whole collection into a better presentation format but it might take a while. Thank you for your understanding.”