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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 15:43:31 GMT
Beyond Our Ken Looking at the BBC 7 etc repeats, these are the episodes which are never repeated : Series 1: 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22 Series 2: 1, 4, 7, 9, 14, 16, 19 Series 3: - Series 4: 12 Series 5: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 (but poor off-airs exist for all except 3, 4, 12 and 17)) Series 6: Only episode 8 gets repeated, the other 12 are never repeated; but all 13 episodes exist as off airs. Series 7: - There is a .pdf file containing a guide to the surviving recordings - https://pirate site/file/tj4LqWnF1zG3/beyond-our-ken-pdf
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 12:18:01 GMT
Home recording on discs appears to have been introduced to the United Kingdom no later than the start of 1931 (there are recordings of dance bands taken off-air known to exist from early 1931), and studios that would record programming off-air via commission also were around by the 1930s (there are a couple of recordings that have recently emerged with such an origin). My technical knowledge is rather limited. But as I understand it, the type of early discs being discussed had very short durations. I seem to recall hearing of some home formats sold to the public which had a playing time as short as 5 minutes. One reason why these discs have very limited importance is that even a professional disc recorder could only store about ten minutes of audio on a commercial 78 rpm disc, at most, and consumer equipment only did about half of that, and in poor quality. There are no recorded comedy or drama shows pre-dating 1939, in the UK, because you would have needed many such domestic discs to store a single half-hour programme.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 11:33:30 GMT
The earliest example of a recording of a comedy show that I'm aware of is a 1939 broadcast of 'Band Waggon', starring Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch, from Series 3, aired 30th September 1939. This has been repeated on BBC 7, and exists online at Archive.org, though in fact it isn't actually an off-air broadcast recording.
EMI's records division appear to have sent an engineer and a mobile recording unit to the BBC studios, and recorded a transmission of 'Band Waggon' live on stage as it went out, in the presence of the studio audience, not off the air. It was recorded on disc for a commercial release as a 78 rpm record.
It's apparently the only complete recording of Band Waggon, and nearly qualifies as pre-war, as it was broadcast in the first month of 'the phoney war' in autumn 1939.
From 1940, an edition of the variety show 'Garrison Theatre', aired on 13 April 1940 and hosted by Jack Warner, exists. On 20th December 1944 they recorded one edition of the situation comedy 'The Will Hay Programme'.
There don't seem to be any other comedy recordings prior to 1945. But in April of that year, they recorded an early edition of 'Much Binding in the Marsh'. Also in April a variety show was recorded, 'Studio Stand Easy' with Charlie Chester. And in August they recorded an edition of 'HMS Waterlogged', a situation comedy with Jon Pertwee and Eric Barker.
In December 1945, they recorded a second broadcast of 'The Will Hay Programme'.
Those are the earliest surviving scripted light entertainment broadcasts I'm aware of.
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 11:12:56 GMT
Awesome news that The Cornish Exercise has been found by the team at Radio Circle UK. What a great few months this team have had, finding a lost Hancock and now an episode of The Navy Lark. From my understanding this means The Navy Lark is now complete, is that correct? Any news of the new discovery? Like a date for airing? I have heard that the recently found episode of Navy Lark was discovered by the indefatiguable Keith Wickham, whilst transfering some open reel tapes found by one of his friends, from an off air collection. I'm told it's been restored and delivered to 4 Extra, and that, subject to rights issues and copyright clearance by the legal department, it's hoped the episode will be broadcast by the station sometime in the Spring. It's interesting. The BBC might try to publicise this find by claiming that The Navy Lark is now complete, but this would be untrue. Although this one episode has now been found, and might be broadcast, the BBC has already begun banning other episodes. For example, the show's 200th episode, 'Sir Willoughby at Shanghai', has already been banned. So has an episode of the spin-off series 'The TV Lark', the episode known as 'The Portarneyland Election'. How many more episodes will they be banning?
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 5, 2023 10:05:53 GMT
Are we still interested in R4Extra cuts - I see the previous thread has been closed? If so, I noticed two in the recent Betty Witherspoon Show run, compared with the 2003 repeats - 1.6.1974 had a bit with Chinese & Japanese accents cut & 15.6.1974 had a Jimmy Savile reference cut. Thank you for posting these details, I'll see that they're passed on to those who are trying to preserve our radio heritage. There is also a revised list of affected broadcasts (latest revision: 2023/02/23), which currently lists 70 items: oldradiocomedy.wordpress.com/2022/07/27/radio-4-extra-censored-and-banned-programmes-update/The Betty Witherspoon shows you mentioned are not on the latest list. Can you possibly upload the two repeats of 2003 to a free account at Archive.org please, so that there is a complete version available to compare the latest repeats against ? The current 'database' of files available for comparison doesn't seem to go back any further than the repeats of 2010. Betty Witherspoon ShowA parody of the old Simon Dee TV show. 9 editions were rediscovered in the Archive treasure hunt in 2001. Originally recorded in the BBC's Paris Studio in Lower Regent Street. This radio show is a legitimate subject of enquiry on this forum. Episode 2, aired on 27th April 1974, is a missing episode. There were originally ten editions transmitted in 1974, but only nine of them were recovered in the Archive Treasure Hunt. BBC 7 only broadcast nine episodes, and this remains the case: the repeats in 2019 also comprised only nine editions.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 9, 2023 6:11:31 GMT
Ah, so that's what BluRay is good for. Otherwise it would be pointless for old shows made in "standard definition" video. All digital video is compression. There is no such thing as 'lossless' video, because a raw, i.e. uncompressed, video stream derived from a 625-line PAL master tape will yield so much data that it would not fit even one episode on a DVD, nor even on a BlueRay disc. You'll likely be familiar with mp4 video. But you should pause and reflect on the fact that mp4 is a codec for compression of the raw video data, to produce a similar appearance but using much less data. And in fact all the (many) fancy codecs used in DVD and Bluray production are designed to throw away data in order to produce an output file which can fit on a DVD disc or a Bluray disc. The technology does not yet exist that can process a 625-line tape and produce an uncompressed file which can then be played by consumer equipment. The level of consumer resistance is quite high, and the demand is for putting a 2 hour movie, equivalent to 4 half hour tv episodes, onto a single disc. Right now, that can only be done by compression of the data, using a codec, which means losing data. Some day, it may be technically possible to produce micro-chips which are fast enough and powerful enough to handle uncompressed video, on a single disc, and at an affordable price (for both the disc and the player). Rather a lot of money is waiting to be made by someone who can solve all those problems! But we're not there yet.
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 9, 2023 5:37:34 GMT
This thread is ironic in that either DWM or DWB remarked in the 80's that some poor-quality soundtracks of Marco Polo were circulating amongst fans. The soundtracks sounded as though the activities of Marco and the others were accompanied by the sound of chips frying in the background. 😊 A nice idea. Actually, to inject a note of reality, I recovered some audio recordings of 'Marco Polo' from a professional vendor, who was selling tapes at a London science fiction mart in the 1990s, on cassette, which were in very good condition. Not quite as good as the Graham Strong tapes, but still very nice quality. There was no hint of 'fish frying' background noise. Even such early recoveries, despite being analogue, on audio tape, were not bad by any standards. I think back on the horrors of collecting audio recordings in mp3 format a few years later, in or around 2001, and clearly remember the hissing background of frying fish then! Thankfully, flac and m4a iTunes audio have rescued us from the horrors of mp3, which is more likely what you're recalling!
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Post by Ed Brown on Feb 9, 2023 4:54:03 GMT
There are still missing/lost BBC recordings out there, and you don't need to go as far as Algeria to find them.
Radio 4 aired a missing episode of Hancock's Half Hour last October, and a complete recording of a Goon Show episode that previously existed only as a Transcription edit. In a few weeks time, Radio 4 Extra will be airing the final missing episode of The Navy Lark, which has just been found.
These tapes were discovered in England, obviously the most likely place to find missing episodes because this is where they were made and where they were transmitted, not in some remote location overseas.
If further orphaned episodes of 'Who' are out there, then, like the Underwater Menace episode, and the Galaxy 4 episode, they are more likely to be found in England. For instance, in 1990 David Stead recovered an orphan episode of Wheel in Space from an English film collector.
One orphan episode of The Crusade turned up in NZ, but recent experience has been that overseas finds are likely to be complete serials, as in the case of Tomb of the Cybermen, found in Hong Kong, and Enemy of the World / Web of Fear, found in Jos.
Overseas TV stations have no use for orphaned episodes. If they have film, it is going to be a complete serial or nothing. The NZ find was a single episode in the hands of a private collector, not a find at a tv station. The TV stations in the cities of Hong Kong and Jos held full serials.
Therefore, it is logical to conclude that finds of orphaned episodes will most likely occur in the UK, and finds of complete serials will be overseas. Orphan episodes will be held by film collectors, or by former employees of television companies, not by tv stations. Complete serials will likely be held by tv stations.
We are not talking about 'wiped' or junked films, even. We know of one orphan episode that is 'at large' in England right now, namely the final missing reel of Web of Fear, which went walkabout from the tv station in Jos. 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.
There are also recurring rumours of a reel from Power of the Daleks, said to be at large in Australia, also in the possession of a film collector.
We need to know what to look for, but also where it is most likely to be profitable to look.
It's highly unlikely that no one knows the whereabouts of those three particular reels. Collectors have friends, and will show rare items to them, within a (very) small and tight-knit circle. Some people will know that these items exist, and will know who has them. The news might take years, if at all, before it leaks out, though.
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Post by Ed Brown on Jan 22, 2023 2:00:46 GMT
As Mark Ayres pointed out on the old RT forum, Lennon/McCartney songs will not be out of copyright until 70 years after Paul's death. George Orwell is out of copyright in Europe and here in Australia but will remain in copyright in the USA until the end of 2044 *if* there are no more Mickey Mouse Extension Acts. And since the USA is where Hollywood is, um yeah. It is not certain that McCartney has any legal copyright in the USA. As a resident of the UK, if he published a song in the UK, without simultaneously also jumping through all the correct hoops in the USA, his song might only have copyright protection in the UK, i.e. in the country of first publication. American copyright law is very complex, partically for non-resident foreigners, especially in the decades prior to the USA finally agreeing to adopt the Berne Copyright Convention rules, which only occured in the late 1970s. There used to be many onerous legal requirements, in the 1960s, including registration of the work with the American copyright office; and you had to publish the work simultaneously in the USA, when you first published it in the UK; and you had to renew that registration periodically thereafter. There were many pitfalls, it was never a formality. Each individual song or vinyl record would have to be considered individually, they cannot be dealt with collectively. The American copyright might exist, but, unlike English copyright, it is not just a matter of publishing the song. Even an English composer, resident in England, can end up with no enforceable UK copyright, if - for example - he publishes a song abroad, without simultaneously publishing it in the UK. There is much more to be considered than the date when the song was composed, and whether the composer died more than 70 years ago. Especially under the torturous American copyright laws.
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Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 12:53:46 GMT
Before someone jumps into this thread, and poo-poo's the idea that the BBC would ever give away filmprints to a show's star, might I mention Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School. When that 1950s tv show came to an end, in 1961, the BBC presented a 16mm film print of one episode to the star of the series, Gerald Campion. He specifically asked for a print of a particular episode, in which he had played more than one part, and in consequence that print survived in his family's possession when much else was junked. So there is some supporting evidence that a film reel was sometimes presented by the Corporation to an actor, as a gesture of thanks, on his departure from a show which he had made popular and successful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bunter_of_Greyfriars_School_(TV_series)Hartnell was not a television star, odd as that might sound. He was a film and stage actor, who began in films, and who rarely appeared on television until the very end of his career. His first really big film triumph was in 1944, and he had a solid film career from then on, culminating in 'This Sporting Life' in 1963. Film fans may remember him in 'Carry On Sergeant', 'The Way Ahead', and 'The Yangtsee Incident'. To name but a few. Many film actors did have the necessary equipment to project a film print at home, for the benefit not just of themselves but also for their families, and for their colleagues in the business.
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Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 11:26:36 GMT
What is 'The Feast of Steven' about???
'Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Steven...'
The episode title is a reference to the famous Christmas carol, and simply is intended to convey the idea that this episode is set at Christmas. And this is aided by the fact that, in 1965, the episode aired on Christmas Day.
There are quite a few books on the history of Dr Who, that you might enjoy reading.
The new producer on 'Who' wanted to do a spoof of 'Z Cars', so he commissioned this humorous Christmas episode, believing that as it would air on Christmas Day, most viewers would literally 'lose the plot' if the show tried to continue the rather complicated Dalek Masterplan story. So this comedy episode was devised to give viewers a week off, without the distractions of Christmas wrecking their ability to follow the continuing Dalek-invasion storyline, which would instead pick up next week.
But the producer of Z Cars complained to the BBC1 Controller about Dr Who taking the rise out of his show, and the plan to import cast members from Z Cars as guests was quashed from above. Thus we were left with an episode set in Liverpool, where Z Cars was notionally set, and a half-episode of silly goings on in a police station.
The 'old man' character is hard to comprehend, without the pictures. But I think he may have been confusing the Tardis, with its potting-shed like appearance, with his greenhouse! In black-and-white, the Tardis did look a little like an out-house. In those days, the word 'police' on the Tardis prop was not very prominent, and it might in fact even be mistaken for an outdoor lavvy!
Caped Villain trying to force a Screaming Woman into a Buzz saw -
The 2nd half of the episode is a Hollywood pastiche of the Silent era. It's well said that if you don't see the point of a joke, it can't be made funny by its being explained to you! But I'll try...
The buzz-saw scene in the Sawmill, with the moustache-twirling villain, references a famous Silent serial starring the actress Pearl White from 1914, a serial entitled 'The Perils of Pauline'. The director, Mr Pea Green (as it sounds) is being used to reference that type of green colour, as a joke about the name Pearl White (pearly white was a well known colour of paint). Viewers in 1965 would have been well familiar with Pearl, the actress, and with the routine of tying her to a buzz-saw in the movies, as spoofed here.
The character called Chaplin is, indeed, meant to be the REAL McCoy. Just as the failed comic who reinvents himself as a singer, and is revealled to be Bing Crosby, is meant to be the real Crosby. The joke there is that the name 'Bing' is inherently silly, and thus only suited to a pie-in-the-face comedian, not to a serious performer. The reference to Bing in a clown outfit in one of his movies has already been explained.
Steinberger P. Green is a parody of movie-colony names such as Eric von Stroheim -- everybody in Hollywood was adopting silly, high falutin' names, in the age of the Silents, with the compulsory - often abbreviated - middlename. Especially film directors, such as the well known Eric von Stroheim. Ingmar Knopf, another Director, is a name that spoofs the Hollywood fondness for giving directors silly Central European sounding names: this one is a comical cross with Ingmar Bergman, the famous Swedish director: a Hungarian-Swedish cross! No, not Ingrid Bergman, she was an actress -- Ingmar Bergman was a well-known (male) Director.
The scene in the Sheik's Tent references the famous Silent picture 'The Sheik', made in 1921, starring Rudolph Valentino. Valentino, of course, was THE most famous of all the Silent stars. In 1965 EVERYONE knew of Valentino, the great Cassanova of the Silent era. The director thinks Sara Kingdom is there to play a hareem girl, in this Arabian love scene with Valentino, and keeps ordering her to change into her flimsy hareem costume -- hence Jean Marsh's plaintive complaint about 'a strange man who wanted me to take my clothes off'!
Finally, Hartnell is mistaken for an outside expert or academic, Professor Webster, engaged to provide technical advice on Arab customs, for the film, because Hartnell was wearing the kind of Edwardian clothes which only a stuffy academic would be wearing, in freewheeling Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties.
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Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 9:57:42 GMT
Tolkien sold the film rights in 1970, but of course that did not include the radio rights.
However, because the BBC famously reached an agreement about the radio rights with Tolkien's heirs, following his death in 1973, in the late 1970s the BBC broadcast an authentic and well-remembered radio adaptation of the novels, which was later released on cassette and on CD.
Having made a highly regarded radio adaptation already, it's difficult to see what motive the BBC could now have for a further radio adaptation, even if a potential script for such a project exists. In the 1950s the situation was different, but once the 1970s radio adaptation had been made there was no reason to revisit the less-ambitious 1950s script, for a broadcast which the BBC actually deemed not worth preserving, hence did not archive.
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Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 9:32:21 GMT
In contrast, Music copyright is very uncomplicated.
Paul McCartney is still alive, so his composer copyright still exists.
The Beatles' music cannot be out of copyright while he lives, because he wrote the music and lyrics to the songs -- or co-wrote it -- and the UK's copyright duration was never for a shorter period than the life of the composer plus 50 years.
Addendum --
What I said originally in this post is probably not true. What I should have said is that this is the copyright law if Paul McCartney currently sues in the UK. The copyright law if he sues in other countries will be different.
Many countries, including the UK, are parties to the international Berne Copyright Convention, by which they agreed to adopt into their domestic law at least the minimum period of copyright specified in the Convention. The EEC later imposed its own minimum period, for human rights purposes only, an extension which currently still applies in the UK (but now that the UK is not in the EEC, that extension won't necessarily apply there in the future).
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Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 9:12:49 GMT
I'd like to make a heartfelt request that folk discontinue using the term 'public domain', please.
That term is an American one, which applies only to Amercan copyright law. There is no such phrase in UK copyright law. UK law uses a generic expression, 'out of copyright'.
In the UK, there was a Copyright Act passed in 1911, in 1956, and in 1988. The current law is set out in the 1988 Act, and it applies to all copying after 1988, i.e. any copy made today, even if the work being copied was created before 1988. So the earlier Acts have no legal effect today.
The 1988 Act has a separate section for Broadcast copyright. This covers both television and radio broadcasts.
But first, a brief explanation of UK copyright law in general. A 'work' has copyright protection. A 'work' includes - for example - a book, a tv script, a radio script, and a piece of music. The 'author' of the 'work' is the person who owns the copyright: that is, the right to control copying of the work.
A book or a script has an 'author', obviously. A piece of music has two 'authors', the man who composes the music, and the man who writes the lyrics. But -- in a sense -- a broadcast has an additional author, the organisation who broadcasts it.
So, a radio show has lots of 'authors'. The people who write the script [for example, ISIRTA: Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, John Cleese, etc] are all the 'author', at least of the sketch each man wrote. But each piece of music, whether theme music or incidental music, also has an 'author', i.e. its composer.
Every episode of a sketch show will have multiple authors, as each sketch will potentially have one or more individual writers. And each piece of incidental music will have a composer, as will the theme tune for the episode.
An 'author' has a legal right to control the copyright, which currently lasts for the life of that author plus 70 years. This is so whether the 'work' is the script for the episode, or a single sketch from the episode, or a piece of music used in the episode. But the 'author' will always have a contract with the BBC, issued by the Variety Booking Manager, if it's a BBC radio show; and that contract might transfer the 'author' copyright to the BBC -- in which case only the BBC can enforce that copyright, for 70 years after the death of the 'author'.
Only the BBC Written Archive Centre knows for sure who owns the 'author' copyright: the scriptwriter/composer or the BBC. But in many cases, the contract allowed the scriptwriter/composer to retain this 'author' copyright.
Additionally, the BBC has an independent copyright of its own, in the complete broadcast of the episode, a copyright which lasts for 50 years from the date of the 1st transmission. This is called 'broadcast copyright'. It has now expired for all tv and radio episodes which were transmitted on or before December 31st, 1971.
It was 'author' copyright, only, which was given an extended term of life plus 70 years by the EEC directive (in a human rights context: the BBC is deemed to be 'not alive', so it has no human rights).
Today, John Cleese could sue you if you sell his 1960s radio shows commercially, without his permission; but the BBC - mostly - could not, because their 50 year fixed period 'broadcast copyright' has expired. Nevertheless, John is still alive, so his 'author' copyright survives along with him.
So, it is a bit complicated, but not too complicated.
Addendum --
For every individual BBC broadcast made after July 1957, their copyright in it (called the broadcast copyright) runs from the date of its 1st transmission, and endures for 50 years (in fact, until the end of the 50th calendar year). So a programme which first airs during 1972, for example, remains protected by copyright until the end of 2022 (i.e. until December 31st, 2022). Thus everything which was first aired before 31st December 1972 has no broadcast copyright now, as the 50 year period has expired.
Any repeat of such a broadcast has no legal effect: the copyright period is not extended by a re-broadcast.
The BBC had no copyright of its own in a broadcast previously. It only acquired such a right in July 1957, the point at which section 15 of the 1956 Copyright Act came into force. So where a broadcast had its first transmission before that point, the 50 year period only starts on the date of the 1st transmission occuring after that point.
If, for example, a pre-1957 broadcast is never repeated, it never acquires broadcast copyright, because that protection only applies to the first transmission after July 1957. Before the invention of the tape recorder, in 1948, copying a broadcast was impossible; so such a right had not previously been needed.
Issuing a programme on cassette or CD, or on VHS or DVD, has no legal effect: the broadcast copyright protection only attaches to an actual broadcast, not to some other action.
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ITMA
Aug 17, 2022 8:12:59 GMT
Post by Ed Brown on Aug 17, 2022 8:12:59 GMT
At least 44 episodes exist (possibly a couple more) plus a few extracts. Is there anywhere a list of the surviving 44 editions?
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