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Topic History of: Brilliant TV show last night Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
JK2006 |
Even Ian Hyland (who's excellent) in today's News of the World raves about Thirties In Colour - the smash series of the month. |
Mart |
A statistic that every home film maker should note. |
JK2006 |
From the Guardian
BC4's historical documentary series The Thirties in Colour debuted with a record audience for a new factual show on the digital channel last night, Wednesday July 16.
The first of the four-part series, featuring archive material of amateur film-makers, averaged 653,000 viewers from 9pm, according to unofficial overnight figures, a 3.6% share in multichannel homes. |
Mart |
One of my aging relatives was a BBC techie, I must check his memoirs on this subject.
It is fascinating though, I fail to believe these missing tapes did not go home with somebody at some point.
One of my first jobs was printing publicity material for , bands, etc , pretty much everything.
I brought the Alvin Stardust original artwork home, from his first campaign.
You guessed it, I no longer have it. In many lofts around the UK, I bet these "lost" tapes exist. |
emmapeelfanclub |
Mart wrote:
Incredible though isn`t it?
We have personal documentation on film from the thirties of the royals, Hitler in colour and some idiot "lost" the BBC moon landing tapes from 1969.(BBC4 last Sunday)
Unfortunately, the Moon landing is the tip of the iceberg as far as the BBC "losing" or wiping tapes. It seems preposterous and outrageous that they could "lose" such a historic moment but until 1978, the BBC - and many ITV stations as well - had this policy whereby two years after the original transmission, tapes would be wiped. Why? Back then repeats cost a lot of money, not to mention Equity fees and Equity would demand higher fees for a repeat after two years.
The junking began in earnest at the end of the 60s. BBC employees were given lists and the archives were cleared out. Videotapes were recycled and film recordings, thrown into skips and sent to rubbish tips or thrown into a furnace. However, some members of staff secretly smuggled films and tapes out the archive to prevent them from being destroyed and occasionally, items do turn up.
Sadly though, this means there are enormous gaps in the archive. Some examples...
Juke Box Jury ran for 8 years from 1959 to 1967. All that's left are two shows from late 1960.
Thank Your Lucky Stars ran for 5 years, 1961 to 1966. Just three are left, one from 1963 and 2 from 1966.
Top Of The Pops... of the first ten years, 1964 to 1974, just around 20 shows are left, 4 from the 1960s...
That's just music shows, but it goes across the board... current affairs, comedy and drama serials were treated in the same way, some better than others. Either way, you get an idea of just how much history has been lost. Whilst one can never guess what may suddenly turn up again, sadly the BBC archive will never be complete.
Typically these wipings came to a halt in 1978, the very year that home video recorders became affordable, hence home video recordings from before 1978 are few and far. |
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