rather odd ideas

[William Martin]

we've had some rather odd ideas for episode recovery lately, mind readers, reflections of tv signals from space, all insane but I like them, perhaps it might be profitable to throw our minds wide open and dredge the depths of our imaginations for further ideas for material recovery, you never know something may result from this.

to start us off, the FBI have equipment that can recover partial signals from erased video tape, this is obviously classified, but if they can do it, then a bunch of geniuses like us should be able to deduce how their system works.

[Greg H]

I think the video tape idea has been mentioned before. Afaik, the original Video tapes arent still held, I think there might have been one, but it was recorded over and, erm, was it enemy of the world 3 or something anyway? Let me know if im wrong.

Now the goetia is a valid avenue for exploration, some of the entities in that deal specifically with recovering lost treasure...............

www.churchofsatan.org/pdf/goetia.pdf

[Daniel O'Brien]

gh said:

I think the video tape idea has been mentioned before. Afaik, the original Video tapes arent still held, I think there might have been one, but it was recorded over and, erm, was it enemy of the world 3 or something anyway? Let me know if im wrong.

Now the goetia is a valid avenue for exploration, some of the entities in that deal specifically with recovering lost treasure...............

www.churchofsatan.org/pdf/goetia.pdf

IIRC, the mastertape of 'Enemy of the World' 3 was erased and reused to record an episode of 'Blue Peter', still held by the BBC. I don't know if there are any other surviving tapes that once held 1960s 'Who' episodes.

[Rich Cornock]

i wonder how many tapes in the archives have been checked to see if bits of programs survive at the end of a tape that has been reused to tape another show at a later date

[Greg H]

Not a bad point actually. But I doubt that that many video tapes from the 60s are held in the BBC archives, not that I have any specific info on this.

[William Martin]

great postings keep them coming, don't be afraid to voice way out ideas

[William Martin]

gh said:

Not a bad point actually. But I doubt that that many video tapes from the 60s are held in the BBC archives, not that I have any specific info on this.

I have a dim memory of this being discussed about a year ago, as I remember it sometimes tapes were not wiped before being re-used so this is a possibility

[Peter Bradford]

william said:

gh said:

Not a bad point actually. But I doubt that that many video tapes from the 60s are held in the BBC archives, not that I have any specific info on this.

I have a dim memory of this being discussed about a year ago, as I remember it sometimes tapes were not wiped before being re-used so this is a possibility

True, but very unprofessional. If you didn't bulk erase the tape first then you would be relying on the master erase facility on the vtr itself. No reason to think it would go faulty more often than any bit of electronics - but all the same you'd get a 'hell of a mess' of unplayable RF on the tape if it were faulty.

Having said that, I readily accept that if this routine had been followed rigidly to the letter then a few gems on the end of tapes wouldn't have been retrieved!

[RWels]

As I said in another thread some time ago, there are a lot of people who love to tinker around with old video systems but who give little thought to the programmes. Some have websites or some may even be on youtube.
Perhaps some day missing episodes will be rediscovered on youtube, who knows!

So perhaps there should be an effort to make this group of technical people aware of what they might contribute just by checking tapes. They have their websites and forums for example, couldn't we reach them there?

[Rich Cornock]

i think the best hope of recovering missing TV is still with the general public. There are still a large % of the population who have no idea that early TV programs are missing. whats really needed is an on going campaign in the media via newspapers, radio and TV and contact with various groups via their relevant magazines (eg saga, the WI etc) to inform them that they could have a missing gem in there loft. The recent tv retrospectives on Swap shop and Tiswas both relied quite heavily on viewers home recordings as the original tapes had been wiped. It is quite likely that further shows are out there, especially if people saved a tape due to an appearance by a member of the family on a program. The biggest problem here is time, not only because of the potential deterioration of the tapes but mainly due to the threat of recordings being thrown out by the uninformed as they think they are no longer interesting or of an obsolete format. typically when an older relative dies, it is possible that a member of the family may just bin an entire collection of beta max tapes just because they are out of date!. the main thing as ive stated before is to increase public awareness of missing TV so that even if people are not in possession of something interesting now they may stop and think if they find something interesting in the loft or at car boot in the future.

[Simon Winters]

This very thing happened to me in 2004. A friend of mine was in email contact with Stan Brehault, who filmed virtually all of 'Out of Town' plus a lot of other Southern TV material - including some of 'Freewheelers'.

He had about 25 betamax tapes recorded from Southern TV and TVS, from 1979 to his retirement early in 1982.

I borrowed the tapes, bought a betamax player from ebay, and transferred the best of the material onto dvd.

The old chap died just as I was completing this project, but lived long enough to see some of the resulting dvds.

I have been in contact with Southern Star and ITV, the joint copyright holders, so the dvds are here with me if they want to borrow them. I'm also now in contact with Chris Perry and will forward copies of all material recovered shortly.

I recovered about 10 editions of Out of Town - virtually all of the final series, plus about 3 hours of the regional news programme 'Day by Day' (Stan had recorded off-air all of his film inserts for the programme).

Perhaps the most interesting find is a 10 minute live studio interview on Day by Day, where David Bobin interviews Jack Hargreaves about his life and work. As Southern did not record Day by Day (except the final edition), and as Day by Day does not appear on Meridian's database, then it must be a missing interview.

It would make a fantastic dvd extra.

I hope this story encourages others to keep looking!

[tim3000]

i know the BBC wiped the pete and dud series
the series of cliff and oliv newton john etc
prob because they wanted to reuse the vid tape
I suspect there are tons and tons of other shows wiped

wonder when they finally socially aware up and began to save and preserve stuff ?

[William Martin]

peter cook tried to stop not only but also from being wiped he offered to buy the tapes, or give the bbc the money to buy new tapes to replace them he even asked for home video copies but the beeb wouldn't agree to any of this

[B Thomas]

william said:

peter cook tried to stop not only but also from being wiped he offered to buy the tapes, or give the bbc the money to buy new tapes to replace them he even asked for home video copies but the beeb wouldn't agree to any of this

Yes - quite a slap in the face too, considering John Cleese managed to save the first series of "Monty Python's Flying Circus"...

[Rich Cornock]

crikey thats amazing about peter cook, such stupidity and short sightedness on the bbc's part