Owners of VTRs in the 1960s

[John W King]

In the recent books on John Lennon's Letters an entry for 1968 records Lennon had a video recorded and used it often. On what and if anything remains perhaps Yoko knows?
Frankie Howerd I believe also had a VTR and Peter Cook.
Out of curiosity did any of the Royal family own recording equipment? If so what did they record? Did they archive anything (other than Royal Broadcasts?)
The big, big question is who, out there would have the Brassneck to ask? And if any of them said "Oh, One has a pile of old videos in the Blue Room in Buck Pal. if you want to sift through them."
Who amongst us would have the time or equipment to go through old tapes?
I bet not all collectors are as meticulously documented as Bob Monkhouse.

[Rob Moss]

Hi John,

I believe the Royal Archive has been asked about BBC programmes and apparently had nothing of interest.

Certainly it's worth thinking about other organisations who might have recorded material in the 60s and 70s though.

Pretty sure I read that BFBS has also been debunked.

[Neil Megson]

One problem is that blank video tapes were incredibly expensive at the time, so early VTR owners tended to record over the same tape again and again. To give an example, in 1965 a Sony CV-2000 recorder cost about $695, with $40 for a 1-hour tape - almost 6% of the price of the machine, or the equivalent of £190 GBP today.

I'm sure that viewers / recorders at the time also thought, "no point keeping this, the BBC will have their own copy"...

[Rob Moss]

Mar 12, 2013 13:22:52 GMT Neil Megson said:

I'm sure that viewers / recorders at the time also thought, "no point keeping this, the BBC will have their own copy"...

I expect most of us have recorded stuff off-air to keep at some point, even though we know full well it's being preserved by the broadcaster.

On the whole, people in the 1960s would have decided whether to keep their home recordings on the basis of the cost of the tapes and whether they were likely to make use of it again - much like the BBC and ITV companies did in fact!

[Sue Butcher]

It wouldn't have mattered to the recordist if the BBC or ITV kept copies of the programmes, because programmes usually weren't repeated anyway. You'd record it if you wanted to watch it again, that's all, and only keep it if you thought it was really good.

[Deleted]

Yes, I had the same philosophy with my first reel to reel audio recorder in 1970 / 71. Whether or not you thought the TV company was keeping its own copy was neither here nor there (the concept of any TV being missing / wiped was not something I'd even considered until I learned of the Doctor Who junkings in the early '80s and would have assumed everything was being kept and available for potential repeating until then).

Early on, I just kept things that I really liked but which also stood little chance of ever being repeated; I would never bother with something like The Avengers, for instance (beyond recording the title theme anyway), as it was a show which was repeated at regular intervals. Things like Top Of The Pops, OGWT or Timeslip were programmes which I would have been more likely to tape as they were rarely (if ever) repeated; Timeslip eventually had one repeat, although I didn't know that at the time.

[RWels]

So basically tapes made by the public will simply contain the last thing they recorded before they stopped using that system altogether.

[John Green]

Each recording will be the last thing he or she recorded on that section of tape.Anyone who keeps a 10-year diary might have recent entries and older ones in the same volume.

[Rob Moss]

Mar 13, 2013 14:43:38 GMT RWels said:

So basically tapes made by the public will simply contain the last thing they recorded before they stopped using that system altogether.

Most likely, yes. This is why lots of Betamax tapes that you tend to find at car boot sales are full of movies recorded in the 90s rather than lovely early 80s stuff.