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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 21, 2023 2:17:51 GMT
I can't remember a time when Dad's Army wasn't repeated! Lucky you! In the ten years after the show ended in 1977, almost no repeats were aired at all, as you'll notice in BBC Genome. From the late 1980s it began to get repeats on Sunday afternoons but only a few episodes at a time, which considering there are 80 episodes in all was very frustrating. Repeats picked up in frequency during the 1990s, but as this began to happen they began cutting the episodes to reduce their running time, which was equally frustrating. Eventually, the fans gave up on tv and we turned our attention to the video releases, which weren't from the BBC, and which were uncut (as the cuts, in those happier times, were only made for timing reasons).
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 20, 2023 23:35:13 GMT
Ed, do you happen to know that, for example, this 'complete' editions of ROUND THE HORNE on this page are the same as the ones on the official BBC CD releases or were those edited? Sorry, I've no information about cuts made on the CDs. No one I know has those CDs. It's my understanding (from reading it) that the cuts list is drawn up primarily by comparing the recent digital repeats on 4 Extra with recordings of the repeats which aired on BBC 7 (mainly in the years 2008-2012). There are only a couple of episodes of RTH that are known to have been cut since 2012, i.e. since BBC 7 went off the air. So it has not been worthwhile buying all the RTH episodes on CD, since there are (for RTH) recent uncut 320 kbps radio repeats available from 2018. I do know that the guys who draw up the list don't have access to many CDs. Nor is that a disadvantage. They are trying to identify radio cuts, after all. Also, most CD releases (for 1960s shows) were issued before 2020, the year the current wave of cuts began, so I presume (tho' it's only a guess) that they won't be affected. There are cuts that go all the way back to 2004, but they are fairly few and reasonably well known. And they don't affect RTH. It's a big job to compare all of the RTH seasons aired on 4 Extra against the BBC 7 broadcasts. I don't think it would be feasible to also compare all the BBC 7 broadcasts against the CDs. But if your question was motivated by an interest in comparing a CD with the 4 Extra repeats, please post your findings here.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 19, 2023 20:55:53 GMT
I wonder if anyone can shed any light (no pun intended) on the Episode 'Put That Light Out' from Series 4 not having the normal 'You Have Been Watching' at the end missing? Has the end been cut for some reason? I don't offer this as a definitive answer, but when I met Harold Snoad I *think* he said he directed Put That Light Out, whereas David Croft normally directed the episodes. Put That Light Out is possibly just suffering from being prepared for transmission by Harold, who only directed a handful of the 80 episodes, and was not as familiar as David Croft with how the episodes were normally formatted for broadcast. It is entirely possible that Harold Snoad's relative inexperience with directing the show led to him overlooking the 'You have been watching...' credit.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 19, 2023 7:35:31 GMT
I hadn't heard of this episode being skipped over, I can't remember seeing it during the many repeats though. During my time with the various fanclubs and fan groups which existed in the 1990s, it was speculated that 'L3' was considered by the Beeb to be too long to repeat, being just over 30 minutes in running time, after David Croft said that the Corporation was unhappy with repeating Dads Army at all because they had adopted a new policy, under which sitcoms produced at that time were not allowed to exceed 27 minutes for a standard half-hour timeslot, as the new management was demanding extra screen time in each half hour to advertise its new shows. Dads was for some years not repeated at all, since nearly all of its episodes ran to 28 or 29 minutes or more. You will recall that many repeats of Dads in the '90s were cut, to meet this demand for shorter episodes. 'L3' had more dialogue than most episodes -- some were extremely heavy on visual gags, which were easy meat for cutting, or so it was said at the time; and we presumed that any episodes not being shown were ones which it was more difficult to cut because they needed dialogue cuts, not just the cutting or trimming of sight-gags.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 19, 2023 7:23:37 GMT
All of the Dad's Army 15 minute sketches from Christmas Night with the Stars exist, the so-called "mini episodes", although some survive only as audio. 1968 - Santa on Patrol : Multiple Father Christmases (Ed Doolan's open reel soundtrack) 1969 - Resisting the Aggressor Through the Ages (2-inch PAL videotape) 1970 - The Cornish Floral Dance (DAAS fanclub recording, soundtrack only) 1972 - Broadcast to the Empire (2-inch PAL videotape) There is no Guarding Buckingham Palace sketch. That was from the 1970 Royal Television Gala performance, aired 24th May 1970, taped by the BBC in the presence of HM Queen. This item survives on film. The 1968 mini-ep is NOT called Present Arms (that's from the radio series, where it was the title of the 1974 Christmas Special). The 1968 mini-ep had no official title, but the name Santa on Patrol (sometimes called Santa on Parade) seems to have stuck. Be aware that there are many extant versions of the Floral Dance sketch. In addition to being used in 1970 on Xmas Night with the Stars, it also featured in the radio series on one episode (replacing the Morris Dance routine used in that episode on tv, which was deemed too visual for radio). The radio sketch is often confused with the Xmas night soundtrack. It also exists on video, as an extract from the 1975 Stage Show, filmed by ITV as part of the 1975 Royal Variety Performance in November 1975 at the London Palladium (the venue of the Royal Variety Performance that year). This item survives on film: archive.org/details/royal-variety-performance-1975It also exists in a 4th version, a further separate audio version, derived from the 1975 LP release of songs and sketches from the West End run of the Stage Show (although, IIRC, part at least of the material was recorded during the 1975 pre-London tour, during a week at Billingham). These various versions are not the same sketch, there were many dialogue changes made as the sketch evolved through its various incarnations. One noteable change was the presence of James Beck, in the 1970 recording, but who had passed away before the Stage Show was presented in 1975/76. The Cornish Floral Dance recorded 1970-12-04 Tx 1970-12-25 The platoon are rehearsing 'The Cornish Floral Dance' alongside the Wardens and some of the ladies of Walmington-on-Sea. These are the correct details for the Cornish Floral Dance sketch which formed part of the December 1970 edition of Christmas Night with the Stars. Yes, this soundtrack is the Floral Dance sketch, which was the sketch performed on Christmas Night with the Stars in 1970.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 15, 2023 15:26:35 GMT
Why is The Love of Three Oranges "rare"? When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Dad's got very few repeats. But when the Beeb did start repeating it, in the mid Eighties, 'L3' (as it was mysteriously known) was about the only episode never repeated. Or, at any rate, it was one of the very last to be repeated. Almost no one I knew had ever seen it since its first broadcast, and it wasn't even available on a pirate VHS from Australia. So it sort of acquired a reputation for being the rarest (non-missing) episode of all.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 15, 2023 12:52:01 GMT
It has come to my notice that the website dedicated to the Radio 4 series Saturday Night Theatre ( saturday-night-theatre.co.uk) is now defunct, in that only the home page still works. I have no idea when it became defunct, but for all I know this may have occured several years ago. Anyone who is looking for information as to which editions of that series are known to be missing/lost might be interested to know that the site's defunct database can still be accessed. If you go onto the Internet Archive's website (at archive.org/web/) the Wayback Machine can serve up an archived copy of that database. At present there are several stored copies of the database held within the Wayback Machine, any of which you can open manually. They each store a copy of the database as it existed at a particular point in time. At least for the present, here is one working link (opening the database as it was in 2016): web.archive.org/web/20160111181141/http://saturday-night-theatre.co.uk/broadcasts.phpI don't believe it was ever possible to access any recordings through the defunct site, but it stores the details of all editions of Saturday Night Theatre aired since 1943, so provides a comprehensive episode guide to the series, at a glance, as well as indicating all those editions known to be held by BBC Archives, and indicates (but without giving details) which editions are believed to survive in private collections. Sorry if this information is already well known. Possibly, though, the details about the Internet Archive still retaining copies of the database might be of some help. While I was looking into Saturday Night Theatre, I also discovered that the RadioListings.co.uk site had died. This was more perturbing, as it was a gigantic resource, of considerable value for research purposes. However, again I found a solution in the Internet Archive, where the dead site's database still survives. At present the following link will open one of the stored copies preserved in the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/20151125015303/http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/Index-S.htmlI shudder to think what becomes of us if anything bad happens to the Internet Archive!
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 15, 2023 6:33:58 GMT
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 13, 2023 2:40:35 GMT
Umatic was never considered a home entertainment system. But I think the Philips N1500 and some other models were marketed to domestic consumers.
The snag was they were very expensive. Also, a big snag, especially after 1970, was that they only recorded in black and white, but tv had gone into colour. Galton and Simpson wrote the colour episodes of Steptoe and Son for tv in 1970, and had bought a video recorder, but ended up with a lot of black and white 405-line recordings, although their show was in colour on the new 625-line service.
Consumers were not likely to buy home video recorders, which became avilable in about 1968 IIRC, because (a) they were too expensive (certainly for your average 11-year-old 'Who' fan in 1970), and (b) they could only record in b/w but everyone knew in 1968 that tv was about to go into colour: BBC2 began a colour service on UHF in 1967.
A kid could afford a cheap battery operated portable cassette recorder for £15 or £20 in 1969, but what kid could afford £200 for a b/w video recorder? And adults knew better than to buy a black and white machine that was going to be obsolete in 12 months time when colour came in.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 13, 2023 2:23:37 GMT
Barry Hill created the Old-Radio Collectors Association because he only had an interest in radio, but he wasn't typical. He was unusual, from our point of view -- I mean, from the point of view of people who were kids when Dr Who was running in the Sixties.
Barry was a good deal older than us. That meant he had grown up in a world where there was no tv. Before ITV was invented in 1955, the tv service didn't exist. What tv there was before that was mainly limited to London. So he developed his teenage interests with only radio to be interested in.
I grew up in the Sixties, and there was a lot of tv about, and so I recorded a lot of it. Nothing worth mentioning: a lot of sci fi shows, all of which survived because they were on ITV (Thunderbirds, etc), or because they were American shows (Lost In Space, Star Trek, etc). I ended up with a lot of audio recordings of Bewitched, The Munsters, MASH.
It isn't possible to make generalisations. Graham Strong was older than me, so he was recording tv in the mid Sixties. I had school friends who also recorded Dr Who, but no one ever was interested in audio tapes of Pertwee serials in the early Seventies. No one knew that tv of the Sixties would be lost forever, but that Seventies tv would survive. Lots of people taped tv soundtracks because VHS hadn't been invented. If Seventies tv had gone down the same black hole that swallowed Sixties tv, there would have been a lot of surviving tapes, but that never happened.
But let's not have a rumour start up that no one was taping tv, just because those tapes turned out to be not needed and so got thrown away, instead of becoming collectable.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 10, 2023 22:00:03 GMT
We don't lack audios on other shows! I belong to various old-radio groups, and there is certainly no lack of recordings from 1960s radio shows.
You are confusing tv with radio. TV might lack audio recordings, but radio is very well supported by off-air recordings made by listeners. Mostly these exist because of the continuing strong popularity of radio in the Sixties, which was very well established, having been around since 1922.
Popular radio shows don't lack recordings, because they were popular. Dr Who doesn't lack for audio recordings, because it was popular.
The introduction of the tape recorder in 1955, when it was first marketed to the general public, received a boost in 1965 when the first Phillips cassette recorders went on sale to the public. Cassette recorders were cheaper and easier to use than open reel, too. This boosted the number of listeners/viewers who, by the mid-1960s, had the means to tape shows live off air.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 10, 2023 21:33:32 GMT
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 10, 2023 17:05:03 GMT
Most episodes seem to be available at Archive.org However how many have been cut by those alert to racial prejudice and discrimination is a moot point. Beyond Our Ken has not had many recent repeats, so the chances are good that no episode you might find online will contain any socially aware cuts. Those cuts have, in the main, only been applied to repeats aired on BBC radio in the period 2020 to 2023, but BOK has not aired during that time, save for Series 4. Repeats aired in 2019 or earlier were not cut for that reason. However, the BBC Transcription Service did, as is well known, release many editions of BOK in the 1960s on vinyl discs, which releases were cut to 25 minutes duration because the discs were sold to overseas commercial stations, who wanted 5 minutes of each half-hour for playing locally originated advertisements. BBC 7 inherited a huge number of such discs from the old BBC Transcription Service, so any repeat of BOK aired on BBC 7 or its successor might be a Transcription Service edit. If a recording runs about 25 minutes it's likely to be a Transcription edit. The current location of the Episode Guide to BOK published by the GBCC.info website (its new location is thegbcc.selfip.info), the guide is edited by David Moore and John Lucas - BOK Episode Guide, revised 12-Feb-2012 : thegbcc.selfip.info/w-cy/Beyond_Our_Ken.htmlAlthough this 2012 guide might not be completely up to date (it still lists as 'missing' one or two episodes which have aired on Radio 4 Extra since 2012), it does provide detailed quality descriptions for the various episodes which the GBCC's collection preserves as off-air recordings. You were asking for exactly this information, to identify those episodes which only survive in poor quality. It seems that the CD 'Beyond Our Ken, The Collected Series 1-4' includes all 60 surviving episodes from the first four series, according to: westchester.overdrive.com/westchester-greenburgh/content/media/6114557
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 17:06:03 GMT
We also know that, in the 1970s, one episode of The Tenth Planet went missing from the Blue Peter production office in London, and is also now 'at large' somewhere in England. Off the top of my head, TP4 went back to Enterprise and was junked - it was DMP4 (The Traitors) which didn't go back to where it came from - the film library IIRC. Though, people far more knowledgeable than I have said on multiple occasions that it's believed it got mistakenly sent to Enterprise instead of back to the film library, and got junked there. Though it would be very nice to think that it might still be out there somewhere. It's always bothered me that, while people will say that the Blue Peter production office supposedly made an error and sent the TP4 film to Enterprises, nevertheless it was the only episode of that serial which was destroyed (if it was). The fact that the rest of the serial survived suggests that Enterprises had not issued a destruction order for that serial. But if it went missing, it clearly went missing in London. So its most likely location today would be London or the home counties, rather than overseas. Since the BBC existed in scattered premises all over London, London is always going to be the logical place to look. Since Enterprises had offices outside London, for instance in Bath, that would also be a logical place to look. Must we always assume that there is more joy to be had in Algeria?
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 16:17:17 GMT
What you need is this link (in fact posted above already, I see), which gives all the details of which fans of the show recorded which episodes - missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/soundtracks.htmlNo one can answer the question asked, because audio tapes and other details were not collected for serials which exist in full. Hence there are no fan recordings prior to 'Marco Polo'. David Holman and Graham Strong were not the only people who recorded the show, there was also Richard Landen, James Russell, David Butler and Allen Wilson. But Graham's tapes superceded everything else because they are such high quality. He didn't record the early serials, and for those David Holman's recordings are the best of all those which have come to light. In fact, the latest find is the Randolph tapes, a collection of recordings from 60 episodes. I haven't heard them, myself, but presumably they have been deemed not useful, because none of the David Holman or Graham Strong episodes have been removed from the blogspot table (see above link).
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