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Post by Gareth R on Sept 3, 2004 23:56:25 GMT
My opinions about Equity, Gareth? For what it's worth, pretty much the same as those about TV archive policy at the time But of course, TV archive policy at the time was a direct result of Equity's policies. If Equity hadn't deliberately set out to make repeats or overseas sales of rights-expired programming so expensive that it made more sense to make new programmes than pay to keep old ones, there could well be an awful lot more stuff in the archives than there is now. In the 70s, Equity was still enforcing the same policies vis-a-vis rights-expired programming that it had been in the 50s! The situation didn't change significantly in the broadcasters' favour until the early 90s.
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Post by Laurence Piper on Sept 4, 2004 10:20:35 GMT
True, things didn't change in broadcasters' favour till the '90s or thereabouts, although archive policy had changed significantly many years before that. So archive policy wasn't totally influenced by union policy. Whereas previously, unions did a lot of good things generally for working conditions of the average person, by the '70s their stranglehold on so many areas of the workplace (not just in TV) had a very destructive (and counter-productive) effect on so many areas of British life. It can't really be blamed on solely TV company policy or restrictive union regulation - but both undoubtedly were equally guilty of acting in a philistine and short-sighted manner, and against advice from comparitively more enlightened voices of the time (such as the BFI). There are none so blind as those who refuse to see (or something like that anyway)
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Post by Rob Moss on Sept 4, 2004 12:55:19 GMT
True, things didn't change in broadcasters' favour till the '90s or thereabouts, although archive policy had changed significantly many years before that. So archive policy wasn't totally influenced by union policy. No, but of course by the early 80s, home video recorders were becoming more widespread, so the potential value in keeping these old programmes was at last starting to become apparent. That's why archive policy would have changed. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see (or something like that anyway) I'm so glad you think that, Laurence.
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Post by Andy Henderson on Sept 4, 2004 13:03:16 GMT
Laurence, most tv companies were factories for producing new television, not archiving old. As far as I know, there aren't queues of people every week at Virgin Megastore asking for a DVD box set of 'What's My Line'. With some well known exceptions, the public at large couldn't give a damn about b/w television and it looks as if it is getting increasingly difficult to repeat. We are unlikely to see even Hancock's Half Hour on BBC-1 primetime Sundays as we did in the 1980s. So, in effect, apart from enthusiasts, no one else is interested. In many cases all we need are a few examples to see what the programme was generally like and in the case of the BBC, this was often very much the case.
Ah, but you might say, the public haven't been given even the chance to appreciate these old classics, after all they lap up old b/w film. Unfortunately, those films are cheap to run and have usually higher production values. They are also shot on 35mm and far more generous with location work (fantasy films being an exception).
I don't think the public would want to see (for example) Maigret repeated in any form. An archive channel would attract interest, but the technical quality of the recordings would put many people off.
That doesn't stop me or you liking this material, of course!
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Post by Gareth R on Sept 4, 2004 22:38:29 GMT
Ah, but you might say, the public haven't been given even the chance to appreciate these old classics, after all they lap up old b/w film. FWIW, the public *doesn't* lap up B&W films at all! They have almost no value in terms of attracting an audience, which is why (as you point out) they are so dirt cheap for broadcasters to use as schedule-fillers - in fact, many of them are effectively thrown in for free as part of the packages of modern blockbusters that broadcasters buy. B&W films do the job of keeping the transmitters ticking over in dead parts of the schedule, and that's about it. Even the rock-solid classics like Casablanca or The Third Man pull next to no audience. Just like archive television, old films are the acquired taste of a tiny niche audience!
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Post by Andy Henderson on Sept 5, 2004 11:45:00 GMT
I should have added 'in comparison'. I realise that old b/w films don't reach the heights of a modern film in broadcast terms, but they dp seem to still attract interest and enjoyment for a wide range of people. It must be a fairly large niche market! As we all know, there are scores of b/w films on DVD, mostly in restored versions. There must be money in them or the studios would not market them. Of course, far less than a release of a new film. My original point was that the film recordings look inferior to commercial films. The public don't appear to have rejected b/w. A good few 'modern films have done very well. Along the lines of Ed Wood, Raging Bull and Schindler's list. But, the number of old b/w television programmes on DVD which are taken from film recordings is much smaller.
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Sept 6, 2004 6:16:29 GMT
I think anyone who's waiting for the Beeb (or any tv or radio company) to apologise for the past actions of their predecessors will have a bloody long wait. Personally I think their embarrassment is more than adequate. I remember Bill Cotton Jnr on 'This Is Your Life' being reminded by David Jacobs that Cotton hadn't bothered to save The Beatles' appearance on Juke Box Jury, or the concert that followed it 'It's The Beatles!'. The look on his face was worth a hundred apologies.
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Post by Laurence Piper on Sept 6, 2004 7:46:21 GMT
Quite, Peter! As you say, the errors are silently acknowledged with embarrassment these days.
I'm replying to more than one person's posts here, by the way...
Regarding Andy's points about old films. True, old films don't pull in big audiences any more but that's partly due to severe repetition; where once things like Ealing Comedies, Bogart films or The Sound Of Music were proudly premiered on TV in good slots, they have over the years been shunted further and further into low-audience graveyard slots (because most people have already seen them many times / have them on video). Old TV never had an equivalent pattern though and vast quantities of worthy series were just consigned to the vaults after initial transmission! No wonder there is no audience for some things now as no one knows what they are!
Part of the job of broadcasters (particularly the BBC) should have been to give exposure to it's back catalogue; it would have been a good, resource-conscious thing to do too (rather than just junk everything). If they had promoted a more responsible attitude towards vintage series then things may have been different. They still can be.
Again, it's silly to make direct comparisons between the past and now (with people queueing for box-sets of DVDs etc) but the fact of home video being common by the '80s was not directly the initial reason for TV archives stopping junking! There was a slow, begrudging recognition by then anyway, brought about by a number of things. It may have had some kind of influence but some junking was still taking place in the early '80s (and many archives were VERY slow on the uptake with exploiting their material - some still are!) but it wasn't as a direct response; if it was, the junking may have stopped earlier as home video was being advocated many years before!
Why pick out Maigret though, Andy? You can't say that as if the right circumstances were created, i'm sure a run of the series on one channel or another would be welcomed by a sizeable niche audience somewhere. It's not something I want to see myself but I wouldn't rule it out for others. At the moment, we don't have a dedicated archive channel; UK Gold etc are NOT archive channels. But who really who knows what will be possible in future if the rules can be changed again (as they did once before when union regulations were freed up and thus a new area of the market was suddenly open)? By saying "no one wants this stuff" in a defeatest manner then that's just supporting the point of view of the junkers (i.e. there's no point in keeping the stuff). If that's the case, why keep ANYTHING? We're supposed to be defending our interest here!
I think the climate needs to change considerably for the general public at large to appreciate vintage material more fully (even to be made aware of it at all); there's an educational role here for the BFI and others (in a far more hands-on way than they have had previously though); we have all these large quantities of visual history that NEED caring for and recognising for what they are - if we don't do that, much more will be lost in future. We now live in a visual culture but are still not appreciating the fact nearly enough!
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Post by Andy Henderson on Sept 6, 2004 8:11:05 GMT
Didn't save 'It's the Beatles'? Most of it is still there on 405 VT.
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Post by Andrew Doherty on Sept 6, 2004 10:57:23 GMT
If, and at the moment it is a big if, there are future changes to copyright agreements which permit much better access to archive material then the following could be the case:
The whole concept would be one of 'it is there if you want it, but at a price. Of course it requires a dedicated archive channel and a video/DVD/internet structure; a suggestion with respect to the internet would be downloading programme material from an archive server, which is now technically possible, again at a price.
All this could, one day, happen and, in my opinion, will happen.
However, a start has to be made somewhere, which is where a lobby group would be useful in encouraging such efforts,
Yours sincerely,
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Sept 6, 2004 12:52:08 GMT
Didn't save 'It's the Beatles'? Most of it is still there on 405 VT. Only three or four complete songs : can't remember which ones off the top of my head. What remains starts part-way through a song.
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Post by Laurence Piper on Sept 6, 2004 17:01:53 GMT
That's right - it's just a ragbag of a few off-cuts and outtakes, with a lot of the main camera shots missing. Certainly nothing like the whole programme (and surviving more by accident than design).
Certainly - with something that was clearly already an established phemenon like The Beatles - there was a clear reason for keeping their TV appearances. But several key performances (made well after their rise to worldwide fame, such as the 16/6/66 TOTP) were clearly not.
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Post by William Martin on Sept 6, 2004 17:14:43 GMT
do you think it was a deliberate act on the part of the bbc, to "rise above" the popular culture and treat it all as if it was of no real importance?
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Post by Laurence Piper on Sept 6, 2004 17:21:15 GMT
Not really, no. Just total indifference to the cultural value of the programmes they were making - a staggeringly dumb attitude for an organisation supposedly dealing with the arts and creative effort! They should have appointed advisors comprising a selection of "the great and the good" to help them select material for preservation on a much larger scale than was the case at the time.
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Post by William Martin on Sept 6, 2004 17:31:29 GMT
sometimes the hierarchy at the bbc didn't seem to actualy like TV at all, Reith Certainly didn't,
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