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Post by Brad Phipps on Apr 14, 2014 22:25:49 GMT
I'm just wondering what it would have been like if the BBC sold DOCTOR WHO in AMERICA in the early 60's. Would we have more copies of those episodes. It would have been another place to look But there are a lot of variables. For example, the early colour pertwees were shown in the usa, but many are missing. That being said the colour pertwees were video. If they were shown on film then it could have helped, but since the bbc has this destruction clause, it's probable they could have been efficient like Austrailia. Colour pertwees are irrelevant imo. With colour recovery etc most of them have been 'recovered', leaving just Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 needing a better colour copy. Given that story wasn't sold overseas at all (Australia received but never screened it) then having the show in America is a moot point. Heck, BabelColour will probably do that episode in a few years and then we'll have the lot back. |
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Post by George D on Apr 14, 2014 23:21:46 GMT
I understand where your coming from.
I guess the thought I was trying to make was that if some one believed that if the Hartnell troughtons were sold in AmErica,they would exist, its still a big question mark.
I was simply using the pertwees in America as an example of shows not existing. Not whether one cared.
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Post by Brad Phipps on Apr 15, 2014 3:34:59 GMT
I understand where your coming from. I guess the thought I was trying to make was that if some one believed that if the Hartnell troughtons were sold in AmErica,they would exist, its still a big question mark. I was simply using the pertwees in America as an example of shows not existing. Not whether one cared. True, and my statement was only if all things are considered equal. IF America threw heaps of money at it and said "we'll buy the lot" then we might have extra copies of other stories floating about. |
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Post by mikeberke on Apr 15, 2014 5:13:45 GMT
Reminds me of about a year ago when they found a whole host of lost BBC material in a vault somewhere and returned it, the article pointed out that there was Patrick Troughton material, unfortunately none of it was DW.
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Post by Alex Dering on Apr 15, 2014 12:51:01 GMT
However, keep in mind there's still the expat angle. Some mad collector from England moves to Canada with all his films. Then one of his children moves to America, taking the whole pile with him. Ta-da! All I have to do now is figure out which estate sale to go to and when.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Apr 15, 2014 13:10:05 GMT
I'm just wondering what it would have been like if the BBC sold DOCTOR WHO in AMERICA in the early 60's. Would we have more copies of those episodes. For example, the early colour pertwees were shown in the usa, but many are missing. That being said the colour pertwees were video. If they were shown on film then it could have helped, but since the bbc has this destruction clause, it's probable they could have been efficient like Austrailia. I see two points here. One, as you say, the Pertwee stories were distributed on 2" Quad NTSC tape rather than 16mm B&W film. As the distributor, Time-Life would have been very interested in having the physical tapes returned so they could wipe and reuse them just like the BBC did, whereas once a 16mm film print reached the end of its bicycle chain it would be more likely to languish there. I speak from experience: the station where I worked bought the rights to show "Full House" and they sent us 3/4" U-Matic copies of every episode which have labels that say "BIKE - Do Not Erase" and a Return To label for the distributor. Given the cost of shipping 200 tapes halfway across the country, we didn't go out of our way to ship them back in a timely fashion and the distributor never asked to have them back -- apparently by the time we were done with them, no one else wanted that show on that format and the distributor didn't want to deal with the cost of processing and destroying the tapes themselves. So the whole syndication cut of the series sat in the attic for years and since our station no longer used 3/4" as a primary medium we had no use for the tape stock either, so eventually it just went in the dumpster. Two, this may sound stupid but I really think it would have mattered who was doing the distribution. Time-Life was such a huge company back in the '70s, if they had handled the B&W episodes I think there would have been stricter accounting, because in those days you didn't f*ck with Time-Life. Whereas if Enterprises had set up an office in New York City and done it themselves, I think you might have a better chance of prints showing up from west of the Mississippi River. This is in part due to the distance/shipping cost axis, which also makes it less likely that a BBC rep might show up in person to audit you in Des Moines, Iowa (halfway across the country) as opposed to if you were a station in, say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (virtually next door). And also, with apologies to folks across the pond, but back in the '60s nobody in the US at the local station level would have given a toss about the BBC. |
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Post by George D on Apr 15, 2014 13:26:48 GMT
The big problem that would have occurred is the bbc destroy clause.
A lot more would exist if that didn't occur regardless of the country.
Because of that, it appears most of the finds, are coming from smaller, less organized counties than the larger ones.
Someone suggested that if there was a us investor likec with the avengers more might exist, I can understand That thinking but
I don't know of anything occurring similarly with a bbc production in the 60s Where another country owned some rights, but I'm open to learning.
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Post by charles drummel on Apr 15, 2014 16:30:07 GMT
The big problem that would have occurred is the bbc destroy clause. A lot more would exist if that didn't occur regardless of the country. Because of that, it appears most of the finds, are coming from smaller, less organized counties than the larger ones. Someone suggested that if there was a us investor likec with the avengers more might exist, I can understand That thinking but I don't know of anything occurring similarly with a bbc production in the 60s Where another country owned some rights, but I'm open to learning. Ah, if only Australia and/or New Zealand had been lazy and just left their episodes in storage. |
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Post by Alex Dering on Apr 15, 2014 16:46:22 GMT
Okay. We'll take it as given that everyone was trying to run an above-board operation. Hypothetical:
Station X in County P gets copies of Doctor Who. You're the person in charge of the destruction of the tapes. How do you KNOW the person you handed the task to actually destroyed THOSE episodes and not, say, someone's old training film on foot hygiene? Similarly, if someone at your station toted the whole batch of films out the door, what would you do? Jump up and race to call the BBC? "Blimey, I'm an idiot! Someone nicked the lot! Oh, I hope my boss gives me a thorough dressing down!!!!!!" Probably, you'd simply keep your mouth shut, feign ignorance, and then do the old, "Gosh. Gee. I was SURE we destroyed those!"
Clearly, something like this DID happen at least a couple times because episodes BELIEVED to have been destroyed DID come back.
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Post by Jeff Haynes on Apr 15, 2014 19:54:46 GMT
I'm just wondering what it would have been like if the BBC sold DOCTOR WHO in AMERICA in the early 60's. Would we have more copies of those episodes. I've often wondered why that didn't happen. I grew up in Chicago, and I'm telling you it would have been great as a Friday - Saturday late night program. Back then there were the 3 networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, that were nationwide, then there were the local PBS stations and your local commercial station, ours was WGN, and later WTTW, on UHF. WGN showed locally produced kid shows, news, and talk shows in the day, and mostly syndicated reruns at night, and movies late night. Dr Who would have taken off like a rocket. Oh well, what might have been. |
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Post by lousingh on Apr 15, 2014 21:24:21 GMT
I'm just wondering what it would have been like if the BBC sold DOCTOR WHO in AMERICA in the early 60's. Would we have more copies of those episodes. I've often wondered why that didn't happen. I grew up in Chicago, and I'm telling you it would have been great as a Friday - Saturday late night program. Back then there were the 3 networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, that were nationwide, then there were the local PBS stations and your local commercial station, ours was WGN, and later WTTW, on UHF. WGN showed locally produced kid shows, news, and talk shows in the day, and mostly syndicated reruns at night, and movies late night. Dr Who would have taken off like a rocket. Oh well, what might have been. Remember that there was no PBS in the US until 1970. Who the heck would have purchased Doctor Who in the 1960s? Independent stations were scattered all over the country - many on a shoestring budget that looks like Al Yankovic's characters' shows in "UHF". PBS stations had very limited budgets for many years. 1973 or so would have been the earliest that Doctor Who could realistically have been on in the US. Even so, there was such a bias in the American media at the time, so not only would the PBS stations have been reluctant to buy B&W episodes, but BBC would have been reluctant to sell B&W episodes. It's kind of a shame because I was eating up science fiction at the time - even "Man from Atlantis" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." |
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Post by Robert Lia on Apr 15, 2014 22:26:03 GMT
US stations were still rerunning black and white programing in the early 1970'a but were not purchasing new black and white programs. Not that any US program makers were producing in black and white any more.
I gre up in Los Angeles were we had the same 3 networks plus about 15 independant stions many of whihc showed quite a bit of black and white programing or cartoons imported from Japan (Ultra Man, Speed Racer, Kimba The White Lion are 4 that come to mind.
So black in white Doctor Who would have fitted in for sure on KBSC 52 a UHF station in Corona-Los Angeles. Now years later they would show Tom Baker.
But for black and white programing, it all depends upon the size of the USA television Market. San Diego to the south had the same three networks plus one independant station.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Apr 16, 2014 1:04:23 GMT
I grew up in Chicago, and I'm telling you it would have been great as a Friday - Saturday late night program. WGN showed locally produced kid shows, news, and talk shows in the day, and mostly syndicated reruns at night, and movies late night. Dr Who would have taken off like a rocket. Remember that there was no PBS in the US until 1970. Who the heck would have purchased Doctor Who in the 1960s. Lou's correct about WTTW not being a viable outlet in the '60s, but having grown up outside Chicago myself I hadn't considered it previously but Jeff's right, this would have fit WGN's profile and they would have been able to afford it. I'm not sure it would have taken off though, I think it might have been seen as "too stagey" -- a criticism I've often heard recited about the first couple seasons of "The Avengers". |
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Post by Robert Lia on Apr 16, 2014 2:00:27 GMT
The Patrick Troughton episodes if stripped in say 1970 or 1971 even in black and white would having given about 13 weeks of new episodes Monday to Friday in the afternoon even on a comerical station. And lets not forget many of the BBC foriegn sales were to comerical broadcasters.
I could see them running in tandem with The Addams Facily, The Munsters as well as Thunderbirds, Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea all of whihc had many black and white episodes as well.
Still it depnds on the TV station and the size of the broadcast market
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Post by dennywilson on Apr 16, 2014 2:13:27 GMT
Yes,but their was their predecessor, NET - National Education Television, plus the other services such as "Eastern Educational Television Network" (Now APT which actually distributes Nu Who to PBS stations for the BBC) Who shared station. Public Broadcasting was around since the early 1950's. Sure some of them were on UHF which had limited viewership but they were around.
But Doctor Who wasn't a PBS fed "network" show, but bought by the stations on an independent basis.
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