BBC North East

[garygraham]

Does anyone know how well regions like the north-east are represented in the BBC Archive? Will Newcastle have its own archive? I have a retrospective programme that was broadcast in 1987 (possibly it was a segment within Look North) as they left the studios for New Bridge Street for the Pink Palace at Fenham. It's full of clips of programmes they made over the years. Also I have the programme from the following day showing the move. Will these have survived?

I know in the past the BBC has struggled to find clips of Mike Neville and that the news archive in Manchester was only saved because it was taken in by the NW Film Archive in the 70s or early 80s. When the BBC's Oxford Road studios were demolished about six years ago I talked with the man who was heading up the demolition and he said they had found tapes in the rubble. A Question of Sport he said. He wanted to know what format they were. 

[markboulton]

I'm starting to get a horrible sneaking suspicion - we've all heard the tales on "I Love 19xx"-type shows, "unfortunately, the first 3 years have been lost to the mists of time"... and we all accept that shows from the 60s and 70s were routinely lost back in the day.

But the number of times people say tapes have been found when a studio has been cleared, leads me to wonder - do many shows get the claim that they're missing, but are known by insiders to survive all along, but that they're instructed to say they're missing, because management want to dispose of whatever tapes may be in any buildings being planned for demolition/decommissioning, so they don't have to pay to have them transferred or answer to anybody as to why they weren't put on the relevant inventory?

Just what if, QoS and other Manchester shows from 1969, say, were in Oxford Road all along but nobody wanted to own up to them so began claiming that they were missing, so that when they DID go missing, nobody would think anything HAD gone missing - if that makes sense?

[Richard Marple]

I heard the master tapes of Sapphire & Steel were stashed away in the Central archives by staff in case the management tried to wipe them, but were never proclaimed to be missing.

[garygraham]

It's a bit mind boggling that certain programmes have had such an impact on millions of people. But then in the end it comes down to a broadcast tape sitting on a shelf somewhere and if you're lucky there's a back up copy. They are so vulnerable and in some cases can be destroyed at the tick of a box by an accountant.

Having filmed things myself I've always been struck by the vast difference it makes for the future when something (say an event) is recorded versus not.

I definitely think some ass-covering goes on. So often it isn't until ten or twenty years later that we find out, after the individual who was responsible has moved on.

However I suspect the current time is a golden age and that continuing to store so much will prove to be unviable in the digital era. Unless a more sustainable format can be developed very soon. I wish the BBC would do that and surely could with the resources it has? Instead of relying on off the shelf products which need migration every decade.