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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2014 21:02:39 GMT
still might - just might - be prints lurking out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered... Or sitting in Phil Morris's lockup ready for release on Itunes.
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Post by Greg H on Jun 10, 2014 21:06:12 GMT
All that being said, Ms. Nash is guilty of short-sightedness at the very least. The BBC Engineering side of things is pretty well documented in terms of why VT was erased and recycled, but the BBC Enterprises side still seems murky to me. I don't think Pamela Nash is guilty of any such thing. You have to bear in mind that the storage facility for BBC Enterprises telerecordings was not some purpose built archive. It was a small windowless room in Villiers House fitted out with Dexion racking. It's only function was to house the current stock of programming that was selling at that particular moment, so there was absolutely no point in filling the space with dead stock, the rights to which had expired. Think of it in these terms - over a three month period in 1972, when the Doctor Who telerecordings were first being disposed of, Enterprises sold and distributed 3534 separate programmes covering 360 different series. The BBC yearbook covering that year indicates that they were despatching an average of 1600 films and videotapes each month. With that in mind, I think it's quite clear why they couldn't hang onto material indefinitely. I'm afraid that's just Ian talking total nonsense, not for the first time in that interview. Nash was one of several people who authorised the telerecordings be made in the first place and it was her job to manage the programme supply stock. She didn't need authorisation from anyone to dispose of BBC Enterprises bought and paid for stock that was no longer selling. In all honesty, knowing what I know of Ian now, I think I can say that his interview in DWB did shape a lot of my attitudes and misconceptions about events and so forth. It is quite sad really. I very much don't accept what I read without proof these days, but at the time reading Ian's shtick really did send me off on a wild goose chase of hating Pamela Nash and completely misunderstanding the real situation. It is just scape-goating her instead of showing a more complicated picture. She was just some administrative cog paying her bills, not a wrecker of cultural history. I really wish he hadn't misrepresented the whole deal; it would have saved me a fair old bit of teeth grinding.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2014 21:20:09 GMT
In all honesty, knowing what I know of Ian now, I think I can say that his interview in DWB did shape a lot of my attitudes and misconceptions about events and so forth. It is quite sad really. I very much don't accept what I read without proof these days, but at the time reading Ian's shtick really did send me off on a wild goose chase of hating Pamela Nash and completely misunderstanding the real situation. It is just scape-goating her for a more complicated picture. She was just some administrative cog paying her bills, not a wrecker of cultural history. I really wish he hadn't misrepresented the whole deal; it would have saved me a fair old bit of teeth grinding. I would love to hear this from Pamela Nash's point of view. There dose seem to be the danger of this turning out to be some one big massive show trial like in Blackadder. We need to hear from the people who authourised the junkings (If they are still alive). I however am in two minds about this. I absolutly deplore what they done with the prints. Not just Doctor Who but the other programes like Z-Cars and United! (Which dosen't have a single frame left in the archives) However I understand that these people who did this weren't massive fans of the shows they destroyed and to them it was just a job. Sometimes I need to take a deep breath because I usually get carried away in my resentment but it's not like I can't enjoy the Evil of the Daleks or the Highlanders anymore. I am still over the moon about the fact that their soundtracks still exist.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Jun 10, 2014 21:29:37 GMT
I spoke to Pamela Nash a few years ago. A very nice lady, but didn't really want to discuss the subject in any great detail. I get the feeling that she's fully aware of the way she's unjustly vilified by Doctor Who fans, and that's all down to Ian.
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Post by Greg H on Jun 10, 2014 21:53:11 GMT
I spoke to Pamela Nash a few years ago. A very nice lady, but didn't really want to discuss the subject in any great detail. I get the feeling that she's fully aware of the way she's unjustly vilified by Doctor Who fans, and that's all down to Ian. I think it is a sad deal. Shame history seems to repeat :/
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Post by John Wall on Jun 10, 2014 21:56:59 GMT
It's not difficult to work out why things like United! don't survive. I worked it out from Mr Bignell's excellent organ. In those days TV was seen as a second rate, ephemeral medium and its survival was largely down to chance - or if it could be sold abroad. If there was believed, or known, to be a market telerecordings would be ordered and the necessary hoops jumped through to be able to sell it. Something like Dr Who almost seems to have been designed for overseas sales with 25 minute episodes. However, there must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of programmes that either wouldn't sell, or were believed not worth trying to sell. In those cases the videotapes would have been kept for a while and then reused. The chances of recovering any of those programmes are now as close to zero as makes no difference.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jun 11, 2014 1:49:53 GMT
Ms. Nash is guilty of short-sightedness at the very least. I don't think Pamela Nash is guilty of any such thing. Don't misunderstand me. I'm singling her out here, yes, but there is plenty of short-sightedness to go around as others have mentioned in this thread, from others within the BBC to the people who structured the Equity rules: She is not alone, not by a long shot. My alma mater has an "archive" of 8 years worth of student programming which is made up of a closet and a metal cabinet. I've offered to donate my time and the disks necessary to digitize and index it if they'd only ship it to me and make the result available to alums afterward. I even gave them plans on how to monetize it. But they would rather throw it away then take the effort to ship it to me. They're just doing their jobs. They're shortsighted too. I appreciate the detail and perspective, that does help quite a lot. And I've long believed that Enterprises was never the facility to be a final resting place for material. Which brings me to another impression that Ian makes, which is that Sue Malden would have gladly taken the films if only someone at Enterprises would have picked up the phone. I recognize that Malden wasn't around to do this in 1972 when this started, but what about afterward? How valid is Ian on that point?
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Post by Alex Dering on Jun 11, 2014 5:11:17 GMT
Pamela Nash is getting both barrels of the 20-20 hindsight shotgun. VCR machines were commercially available since 1957. When did the first service emerge to record programs for actors? I don't think any such service existed. No agents are mentioned as having offered it, no actors have come forward to offer their episodes. I have not seen a single post anywhere that mentions such a recording enterprise as even as a notion existing. Why? In an era of two viewings and gone forever, I am seriously to believe actors would not have jumped at a chance to have a permanent clip of a performance? Nonsense. Except that they didn't. TV was a step down for an actor. You did it to pay the bills but you didn't treat it seriously as a professional accomplishment. You came in, did your best but, holy hell, it wasn't Shakespeare. Being outraged at Pamela Nash is like being furious that Abraham zapruder didn't point his camera at the grassy knoll or up at the textbook depository Windows the whole time.
Perhaps PN and PM can commiserate down at a pub somewhere.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Jun 11, 2014 7:33:55 GMT
I appreciate the detail and perspective, that does help quite a lot. And I've long believed that Enterprises was never the facility to be a final resting place for material. Which brings me to another impression that Ian makes, which is that Sue Malden would have gladly taken the films if only someone at Enterprises would have picked up the phone. I recognize that Malden wasn't around to do this in 1972 when this started, but what about afterward? How valid is Ian on that point? As I indicated in the last post on Page 1, Ian was wrong. Until the formation of a proper archive, which came about after the years of work of the Advisory Committee on Archives that had been formed in the mid-1970s, you had two entities - the Engineering Department (which looked after the videotapes) and the Film Library. The library wasn't a general repository, but was created specifically to house news footage and material that had originated on film. Until the BBC's attitude to archiving their programming changed in the late 1970s (and Sue Malden's promotion to the position of Archive Selector in 1978 was part of that process), the staff I've spoken to who worked there (which included Sue) have confirmed that they wouldn't have taken any 16mm ex-sales telerecordings, even if they had been offered to them. It simply wasn't their remit.
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Post by Ken Griffin on Jun 11, 2014 10:51:10 GMT
VCR machines were commercially available since 1957. I think that you are a little confused with your timeline. Quad machines would have been available at that point but there wasn't any commercial available VCR-type machines until the mid-1960s IIRC. Anyway, the first really workable system was U-Matic and that was launched c. 1971.
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Post by Martin Dunne on Jun 11, 2014 11:27:42 GMT
A cautionary note. Someday a crazy wild-eyed guy who claims to be a scientist or a kid may show up asking about those tapes.
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Post by Alex Dering on Jun 11, 2014 12:38:40 GMT
VCR machines were commercially available since 1957. I think that you are a little confused with your timeline. Quad machines would have been available at that point but there wasn't any commercial available VCR-type machines until the mid-1960s IIRC. Anyway, the first really workable system was U-Matic and that was launched c. 1971. Wikipedia, uh, "reports" that "Ampex introduced the Quadruplex videotape professional broadcast standard format with its Ampex VRX-1000 in 1956." [Which cost $50,000 so only a TV station or a James Bond villain would have one.] Wikipedia also mentions Helical scan came in 1959 with Toshiba's reel-to-reel videotape recorder. The money shot: "In 1963 Philips introduced their EL3400 1" helical scan recorder, aimed at the business and domestic user, and Sony marketed the 2" PV-100, their first reel-to-reel VTR, intended for business, medical, airline, and educational use." Also, "The Telcan, produced by the UK Nottingham Electronic Valve Company in 1963, was the first home video recorder. It could be bought as a unit or in kit form for £60. However, there were several drawbacks: it was expensive, not easy to assemble, and could only record 20 minutes at a time. It recorded in black-and-white, the only format available in the UK at the time." You're right that the classic shove-a-tape-in-the-slot VCR didn't come around until later. But my point was that in 1963 the technology existed -- albeit in a very spit-and-bailing-wire sort of way -- to provide an actor with a copy of a performance. And no one did it. Why? Because no one was of that mindset. Actors retain scripts with notations, photographs in costume, reviews, playbills, and so forth. They are notorious packrats in some cases. No one did it, but here come the pitchforks and torches for Pamela Nash for failing to perform what was, at that time, the equivalent of saving the envelope the gas bill came in. "Why, oh why, didn't Pamela Nash save items that even the actors themselves expressed no interest in?" Now, if some actor or actor representative or librarian had come forth and said, "Ms. Nash. Please. Don't just destroy them. We'll take them away and store them in our library. We think they'll be of cultural value in the years to come!" and Nash had twirled her mustache and cackled, then it'd be another issue. I've mentioned it before, but I do wonder if anyone ever tried to find the records of the UK Nottingham Electronic Valve Company and find out who purchased machines in the first five years. Wouldn't it be delightful if there's some 70-year-old rich member of the lower aristocracy in a London suburb: "Oh, yes. I bought two. I had the money. If you start the second one about two minutes before the first tape ran out, you'd get a complete episode. I'd simply record them all back-to-back. Swapping as needed. Oh, I've got them all in a box in the second bedroom. After I burned them to DVD 10 years ago, I didn't want to throw them out. ... What? The DVDs? Oh, after a while I got rid of them. I needed the space. Put them all on a flashdrive. You do know what a flashdrive is, sonny? Here it is. I've got multiple copies. You can borrow that one if you like. Are they valuable?"
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Post by Rob Moss on Jun 11, 2014 13:44:53 GMT
Of course, if by some miracle they did have the records of who they sold machines to 50 years ago, and if they still happened to be alive and living in the same house, unfortunately, Data Protection laws would preclude them from passing the details on...
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Post by Patrick Coles on Jun 11, 2014 16:57:10 GMT
Not UK but in the USA there were some doing home recordings yonks ago - recently I was going through the second season of 'Laramie' from 1960 and they advised a episode was missing from the NBC Universal archive...BUT a guy, who is named and thanked, had recorded a home copy and this was donated by him for a fresh copy to be made and thus to be included on the DVD set - it featured a young pre-Man From UNCLE Robert Vaughn as guest star
the tracking was a bit out very early on and the picture 'wavered' a little bit when the camera moved about but overall the picture WAS quite watchable
- I have no idea what equipment the guy had used - and maybe he recorded it a bit later during an American rerun - tho' as the original copy of episode has long been mislaid from the archive it most likely dated from at least an early sixties screening...!
so you never know what might survive in a private collection...!
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Post by Simon Jailler on Jun 11, 2014 17:10:09 GMT
Of course, if by some miracle they did have the records of who they sold machines to 50 years ago, and if they still happened to be alive and living in the same house, unfortunately, Data Protection laws would preclude them from passing the details on... I don't want to go bothering people unnecessarily but perhaps instead the company could pass on the enquiry to the original customer and then it's up to the individual customer whether he or she wants to get in touch with the enquirer. As you point out though Rob, it's all a bit of a long shot.
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