Mass wiping of BBC children's tv programmes in the early 90s

[Mark P]

I have been reading online about The Adventure Game (BBC 1980-86) and how no broadcast standard episodes exist in the BBC archives any more, thought a few off-air home recorded copies do, due to a mass wiping of children's television programmes in the early 1990s.

What other series were affected?

As the BBC policy on junking had changed by then with Sue Maldon and her successors why/how did this occur? 

[Christopher Perry]

Hi Mark

Your information is incorrect about The Adventure Game. The vast majority survive in broadcast formats, and have been repeated on satellite television. A few do not survive but they are un-related to the wiping of some children's programmes circa 1993. The Adventure Game was not targeted in that cull from what I understand.

Archive policy remains broadly the same or better than when Sue Malden established the guidelines in 1978. One of her successors, Adam Lee, was faced with a situation where there was a financial shortfall to pay for 2" transfers. He chose to wipe a number of tapes because he felt they contained little cultural value.

I don't agree with him, but it's an interesting discussion point. He mainly wiped Play Schools. His argument being that they would never be repeated; and one Play School is much like another. So does it matter if the BBC keep 200 or 20 Play School if they have identical scripts and will never be repeated???

Duplicate copies were often destroyed as well rather than make two expensive D3 masters and sometimes this led to wipings. A 1975 TOTP studio recording was wiped because the actual ep survived. Alas, the out-takes of Jasper Carrott gone forever :-(

Chris

[StevePhillips]

Nov 30, 2013 9:19:49 GMT Christopher Perry said:

I don't agree with him, but it's an interesting discussion point. He mainly wiped Play Schools. His argument being that they would never be repeated; and one Play School is much like another. So does it matter if the BBC keep 200 or 20 Play School if they have identical scripts and will never be repeated???

That didn't apply to the "Rentaghost" eps that were wiped, though. I suppose we're lucky it wasn't early "Grange Hills".

[Mark P]

Sorry misread the article where it said 4 episodes were missing/not broadcast quality rather than 4 survived.

+++++

Missing episodes

Following a mass wiping of children's television programmes in the early 1990s [1] no copies of the following episodes are present in the BBC's archives:

Series 1, Episode 2^^ - Saturday 31 May 1980. Liza Goddard, Michael Rodd, Stephen Cox.
Series 1, Episode 5* - Saturday 21 June 1980. Paul Darrow, Lesley Judd, Robert Malos.
Series 2, Episode 2* - Monday 9 November 1981. Madeline Smith, David Yip, Derek Gale.
Series 2, Episode 4 - Monday 23 November 1981. Tessa Hamp, Nerys Hughes, Derek Griffiths.
*Off air recordings of these episodes have been returned to the BBC (they would still be interested in obtaining better quality versions).

^^A domestic off air recording of this episode does appear to be in existence, though it has yet (as of August 2011) not been returned to the BBC.

[robincarmody]

I'd be surprised if the wiping of four editions of The Adventure Game *wasn't* part of the 1993 children's junkings. When else would it have been likely to happen?

Play School did indeed suffer badly from the wipings - it has a substantially worse survival rate for 1981 than for 1966 - but it was by no means the only programme to suffer; among other series to have a significant number of episodes wiped were Play Away (which has an appallingly bad survival rate for something so popular and well-remembered), Animal Magic, Take Hart, Why Don't You, Screen Test, We Are the Champions, Finders Keepers with Richard Stilgoe, a number of pre-school shows (How Do You Do, Ragtime, Playboard, the Alberto Frog segments of Bod) and some others less well-known.

In some cases children's programmes made after 1982 on 1" VT were also wiped at this point; Screen Test has missing episodes right up to the last series in 1984, and in fact the only missing episodes of Cheggers Plays Pop are 1983 and 1984 editions made on 1" - all the editions made on 2" from 1978-1982 *were* transferred to D3. The logic behind all this is twisted and tortuous (to say the least). Seemingly the BFI were offered the 2" tapes the BBC was no longer interested in, but turned them down. It's all a shame, because I think it would all seem much more important as modern history *now* than it did when its original production and broadcast was more recent than 1993 is now.

Blue Peter was unaffected (in fact I wonder if part of the reason why the wipings happened was that every BP *had* to be transferred, thus taking up a lot of the restricted budget), every Vision On from September 1970 until it ended in 1976 still exists, Record Breakers exists in full from its launch in 1972, and every edition of the Johnny Ball 'Think' series still exists. I'm pretty sure all bona fide BBC children's drama from around 1973 onwards exists. Every episode of Rentaghost still exists in some form, but we can count ourselves lucky that UK Gold had repeated the series in its launch schedules shortly before the wipings happened, because BBC Enterprises (as it still was at the time) had made Beta copies of all the wiped editions in broadcast quality, and these then became the only survivors. Had the UK Gold run not happened, they might have been gone for good.

Should anyone wonder which satellite channel has shown The Adventure Game, to my knowledge the only non-BBC channel to have repeated it is Challenge (before it was on Freeview).

[Marty Schultz]

Does anyone know how Words and Pictures fared? It was shown for many years here in Australia.

[robincarmody]

There was also insufficient budget to transfer the 2" VTs of most schools programmes, but in most cases they were kept in the old format rather than junked. The Kal guide reveals a very full archive of Words and Pictures - the earlier editions largely still held on 2" in the late 1990s; indeed even the recent Kal guides have the schools series 'Talkabout' partially held in that format - and indeed Lost Shows says that W&P exists complete.

Out of interest, was the 'Play Away' I've noticed in Australian listings the BBC show or an ABC show based around the same format, a la their version of Play School?

[Marty Schultz]

Thanks for info. Appreciated!
The Australian version of Play School is also called Play School. It uses the same format etc as UK. Sorry but I have never heard of Play Away. (Which is probably why I initially missed your point!) I would assume it was the BBC version of it.

[Neil Megson]

Nov 30, 2013 9:19:49 GMT Christopher Perry said:

One of her successors, Adam Lee, was faced with a situation where there was a financial shortfall to pay for 2" transfers. He chose to wipe a number of tapes because he felt they contained little cultural value.

I don't agree with him, but it's an interesting discussion point. He mainly wiped Play Schools. His argument being that they would never be repeated; and one Play School is much like another. So does it matter if the BBC keep 200 or 20 Play School if they have identical scripts and will never be repeated???

I really don't understand his [Lee's] reasoning here - if these programmes were all almost identical, and could never be repeated, why were they ever kept until as late as 1993 ? Why weren't they wiped within a few months of being shown ? Someone prior to Adam Lee must have thought they were worth keeping.

[Deleted]

That's archive "logic" all over for you, Neil!

[Rob Moss]

Dec 2, 2013 10:09:25 GMT Neil Megson said:

Nov 30, 2013 9:19:49 GMT Christopher Perry said:

One of her successors, Adam Lee, was faced with a situation where there was a financial shortfall to pay for 2" transfers. He chose to wipe a number of tapes because he felt they contained little cultural value.

I don't agree with him, but it's an interesting discussion point. He mainly wiped Play Schools. His argument being that they would never be repeated; and one Play School is much like another. So does it matter if the BBC keep 200 or 20 Play School if they have identical scripts and will never be repeated???

I really don't understand his [Lee's] reasoning here - if these programmes were all almost identical, and could never be repeated, why were they ever kept until as late as 1993 ? Why weren't they wiped within a few months of being shown ? Someone prior to Adam Lee must have thought they were worth keeping.

I suspect that when they were made, they were deemed worthy enough to be retained (at relatively little cost), but the crucial thing that Chris mentions is that in 1993, they weren't deemed worthy enough to go to the expense of transferring them. Let's face it, the object of the exercise was to phase out 2" tape as an active format, so presumably it was a choice between keep (ie transfer to digital tape) or not keep (ie chuck in the skip) - retaining on 2" wasn't really one of the options.

Feel free to correct me on any of the above.

[Mark P]

Dec 2, 2013 2:55:29 GMT Marty Schultz said:

Thanks for info. Appreciated!
The Australian version of Play School is also called Play School. It uses the same format etc as UK. Sorry but I have never heard of Play Away. (Which is probably why I initially missed your point!) I would assume it was the BBC version of it.

Whilst both were made by the BBC and often had the same cross-over presenters on both, Play School ran 1964 to 1988 whilst Play Away ran 1971 to 1984 and the latter was aimed at slightly older kids as with the BBC's CBeebies and CBBC channels being targeted for different age ranges today.

Personally being born in the late 60s I prefered Whirlybirds (US 1957-60), Champion The Wonder Horse (US 1955-56), Disney's Zorro (US 1957-59),  Skippy (AUS 1966-68) and Robinson Crusoe (FRA 1964-65) that seemed to be on in the early to mid-70s plus the East German shows such as The Singing Ringing Tree (1957) the BBC showed for kids. That one should have an '18' rating and even then you shouldn't be allowed to watch it until you are 110. 

[Marty Schultz]

Play School UK got axed! Shows my ignorance. The OZ version has been going strong since 1966. They even did a regional exhibition tour for the 40th with all the props! Some of the older props are on permanent display at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. They are proudly displayed alongside the Mad Max Interceptor and Captain Featherstones sword.

[robincarmody]

Similarly, the toys from the UK version ended up at what is now the National Media Museum in Bradford, I think (not sure whether they're still there).

[trevorhilton]

What about "Puzzle Trail" (1984)?