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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 18, 2015 7:54:26 GMT
RTV Hong Kong ProgrammeGreat find by Peter Stirling. The first example I've seen of a RTV Hong Kong broadcast! Cliff Richard - ATV Spectacular Show: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o00P0EeRAZURTV Hong Kong/ Hong Kong SAR is definitely one potential source for lost episodes as it seems logical that they would have used their UK programming to fill their air-time. And this is great evidence that they used other ITV company programming as well. I know Global Television Services also worked for ABC TV in the 60's and it is quite probable that they were behind sourcing this programme from ATV and no doubt other ITV networks as well. Maybe all former colonies/ Commonwealth countries should also be on our list? I beat you to this one Neil!  27/04/2012 - actually spotted by Keith Read, not myself - I publicised it and confirmed the date. missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/7174/cliff-richard-show-1967-findOoops! - I was not trying to steal anyone's thunder, just flagging it for Neil. 2012 was long time ago for me on this board to remember if I had got from here or not so apologies if I did. |
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Post by Ray Langstone (was saintsray) on Aug 18, 2015 8:44:59 GMT
Ooops! - I was not trying to steal anyone's thunder, just flagging it for Neil. 2012 was long time ago for me on this board to remember if I had got from here or not so apologies if I did. Peter - NO WORRIES!  Rather people flag things up a dozen times than anything not get spotted! And do keep looking, please! |
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Post by richardfitzgerald on Aug 30, 2015 12:40:16 GMT
Johnson's story is fascinating but I'm puzzled why some series like Tales Of Mystery missed out on his stated policy having any episodes selected at all - did they get overlooked in what was after all a mammoth task for one man to take on, or is it possible that he did select examples from series that are now listed as completely missing, it's just that they haven't been cataloged properly in the BFI archive?
It's also interesting he highlighted Peter Sellers as an example of a star getting an early break in Television Playhouse - presumably his episodes weren't recorded otherwise he would have selected them for preservation? Oddly these plays are not mentioned at all in Roger Lewis' otherwise pretty comprehensive biography the Life and Death of Peter Sellers (though he does talk in some detail about the "Fred" shows done for Rediffusion at the same time). A throwaway sentence (no pun intended) refers to "all the old tapes, film stock and concomitant paperwork (being) sent to a rubbish dump in Wembley" after Thames replaced the franchise - which is clearly not the whole story.
Given the fuss over the recent film short starring Sellers recovered from the same period, the two plays would be another major find - if they were ever preserved.
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Post by christian bews on Aug 30, 2015 17:58:36 GMT
What do they mean by surrounding areas? Like the South east of England?
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Post by Neil Hendry on Aug 31, 2015 6:48:08 GMT
Johnson's story is fascinating but I'm puzzled why....... Richard - Yes, it's a fascinating account and the best historical record of what happened to the RTV archive post 1968. There is a lot of misinformation out there on websites and as you pointed, also in books too. Tales Of Mystery:- Series 1 Live Transmission - Series 2 and 3 recorded on 405 line monochrome 2" videotape Update: Production Numbers for the episodes are known - if you want to find out more information please PM me. Some background info for those who are not familiar with the series: Tales of Mystery - 29 Episodes produced between 1961-1963 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Mystery
Peter Sellers:- Peter Sellers TV Playhouse was a double bill Snowball/Birdwatcher - UK IMDB for Peter Sellers 27 December 1956 - no filmographic record for this at BFI. Not known whether the plays were recorded/ telerecorded or not. Three possible scenarios: 1. It wasn't retained on video or telerecorded onto 16mm by RTV for archive purposes. We do know though that RTV/ITN had telerecording facilities at this time which ABC also used to have their programmes telerecorded. 2. BFI didn't select it when the RTV archive was offered (the 'selected and misfiled by the BFI' theory is another scenario but I think it's a much 'longer shot') 3. After BFI negotiations ended c.1972 it was either destroyed or ended up in a private collection/ storage. John Johnson intimated that a lot ended up in private collections; I definitely think he would have first tried to find a 'home 'for the remaining material that BFI didn't take. The BFI Special Collections has 120+ boxes of RTV archive paperwork (which John Johnson helped to salvage from RTV's Television House in 1968), so there is a possibility that it may hold clues as to whether the series was telerecorded or not. Chris Perry of Kaleidoscope told me that the boxes contain programme information which is filed alphabetically, but gaining access to the archive through the BFI can be difficult. |
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Post by Neil Hendry on Aug 31, 2015 7:08:14 GMT
What do they mean by surrounding areas? Like the South east of England? Christian - London and the home counties (or parts of the home counties). This article explains a bit more about RTV's transmission and coverage: www.associated.rediffusion.info/ |
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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 31, 2015 8:07:30 GMT
Another possibility for the huge gaps in the archive maybe explained by the fact that the BFI did not have a VTR (about £50,000 in the sixties,the price of several semi detached houses) and were only accepting on material on film? ..the BFI had to wait years to get a hand- me- down VTR. Where NTSC copies were made the Americans seem quite happy to have kept Rediffusion programmes for nearly 50 years. Hippodrome 1966 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPqvqPIGFtsObviously the VTR was not around when the two Peter Sellars plays went out, but the fact that two plays with him in went out on the same night may indicate??? that they had to be telerecorded beforehand. |
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Post by Neil Hendry on Aug 31, 2015 9:05:13 GMT
Another possibility for the huge gaps in the archive... Peter - Yes, good points about the Peter Sellers double-bill. It does seem to suggest that the plays may have been recorded beforehand before broadcast. Just carried out a bit more research prompted by your post. RTV Facilities in London - Studios 1 - 5 at Wembley The studios at Wembley were first occupied by A-R in 1955 - formerly used for film production the facility had 4 small studios. The site was subsequently redeveloped by A-R with 5 studios, with Studio 5 first opening in 1960. Interesting to note that in 1956, 'they closed studio 3. The space was later turned into a telerecording area'. This ties in precisely with the development of Video Tape Recorder (VTR): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_recorderSo it seems as though VTR for commercial/ TV networks was beginning to come in c.1956 onwards: The Ampex VRX-1000 became the world's first commercially successful videotape recorder in 1956. It used the 2" Quadruplex format, using two-inch (5.1 cm) tape. Because of its US$50,000 price, the Ampex VRX-1000 could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations.The Peter Sellers plays were produced the same year (1956) so it seems likely that they were recorded on film - assuming that they were in fact recorded and that RTV had not yet acquired their first VTR, or were in the process of acquiring/ setting up this capability at Wembley. This suggests that RTV made a transition to using VTR some time after 1956 and combined that with setting up a telerecording facility at Wembley Studio 3 to enable them to carry out transfer of tape to 16mm film. The investment in these telerecording facilities indicates that they had a plan to copy VTR recorded programmes so they could reuse the VTR tapes for other programmes i.e. That they didn't see their output (or at least not all of it) as disposable. This also ties in with what we know about Global Television Services who were actively promoting RTV programmes sales overseas in the 60's (and early 70's). |
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Post by williammcgregor on Sept 3, 2015 12:38:12 GMT
Snowball and The Birdwatcher
TX'd between 8pm and 9pm on the 27th December 1956 
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Post by Neil Hendry on Sept 3, 2015 13:32:45 GMT
William - That's great! Thanks for adding this press cutting.
Two plays in one hour, with three cast in both - Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries and Frank Hawkins.
Would they have been performed and transmitted live or prerecorded? Any thoughts welcome...
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Post by richardfitzgerald on Sept 3, 2015 22:00:36 GMT
William - That's great! Thanks for adding this press cutting. Two plays in one hour, with three cast in both - Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries and Frank Hawkins. Would they have been performed and transmitted live or prerecorded? Any thoughts welcome... My gut feeling given the date (just after Boxing Day)and the different settings of the two plays, is that they were recorded. Would it have been feasible to mount two successive productions live with the same cast in this way? Snowball sounds interesting, like an early run through of Sellers character from The Smallest Show On Earth. But who was Greg Phelps? |
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Post by Peter Stirling on Sept 3, 2015 22:11:30 GMT
In the early days of the Avengers with Ian and Honor Blackman(and some soaps) they would go out live on one episode..then because they had more or less the same sets would immediately record the following week's adventure to maximise studio cost times. If we can assume that both Sellar's plays were visually very different then one or both of them must have been prerecorded?
Armchair Theatre becomes a bit of a red herring in thought of only transmitting live in its 50s days because of the fact that an actor died on the set of one play just before a commercial break..yet the play 'Three around a gas ring' must have been recorded as it was viewed by some religious leaders before hand who got it banned from subsequent transmission.
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Post by Neil Hendry on Sept 4, 2015 6:11:30 GMT
In the early days of the Avengers with Ian and Honor Blackman(and some soaps) they would go out live on one episode.. I received this account recently from on of the ABC/ Iris production staff who worked on the first series of The Avengers. I know this thread is about RTV and I don't want to go off topic too much - but it may be useful in trying to understand some of the practices at that time with regard to live transmission and recording: "Because we recorded those early episodes either on Telecine or very early 2" video tape recorders, if ANY mistake occurred during any one act (about 15-20 minutes) we had to go back to the start of that act all over again, particularly as the cost of cutting (with an anti-magnetic razor blade) that tape (which cost around £80 each then) then made that tape unusable in the future! Ah! Those were the days, when actors and technical staff did all that they could to ensure that the very first 'transmission take' was perfect!If any actor appeared in two adjacent scenes - in which they needed different clothing, we would start the 2nd. scene on a close-up of a cigarette smoking on an ash tray (or some other time-consuming shot) whilst the relevant actor changed clothes, as quietly as possible, behind the sets, and 'magically' entered the new room/venue as the camera 'zoomed out'!"I've read that using videotape was expensive in the early days, but the real cost of using videotape seems not to have been in purchasing the tape itself, but in the editing process as described above (£80 a cut was a lot of money back then!). As a result, many programmes were shot 'as live' - meaning that the show was recorded in the correct time sequence to prevent the need for editing later on - and obviously avoiding the need for cutting the tape. Bit more information on The Avengers first series here - where 7 episodes are listed as going out live - but are believed to have been recorded from transmission. declassified.theavengers.tv/keel_004_nightmare.htm'Contrary to popular myth, despite going out live, this episode [Nightmare] was recorded, presumably from transmission. This is evidenced by a production memo detailing a proposed 1962 repeat run of Series 1 episodes. Though the planned reruns did not ultimately take place, the document lists VTR (video tape recording) numbers for all of the live episodes, indicating that these recordings were in existence as at 30th March 1962.So this does suggest that there was a practice, at ABC at least, of recording live transmissions. More information is needed to find out whether this was also the case at RTV in the mid-late 50's. |
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Post by Neil Hendry on Sept 4, 2015 6:24:26 GMT
My gut feeling given the date (just after Boxing Day)and the different settings of the two plays, is that they were recorded. Would it have been feasible to mount two successive productions live with the same cast in this way? Snowball sounds interesting, like an early run through of Sellers character from The Smallest Show On Earth. But who was Greg Phelps? The practices of RTV in the mid-late 50's needs a bit more research - or input from someone in the know. There was a practice in TV broadcasting around that time of transmitting shows live - but as noted in my post above, these were sometimes 'recorded live' from transmission. So this Sellers double-bill may have been filmed before-hand (for the Christmas schedule as you pointed out) or it may have been transmitted live. If it is the latter the only way it may have survived is if it was 'recorded live' during transmission. As mentioned earlier in this thread though, 1956 was the year 'they closed studio 3. The space was later turned into a telerecording area'. So it is not clear whether RTV had telerecording facilities at the time this play was broadcast. Not much information available on the writer Greg Phelps - only reference on iMDB is this double-bill: www.imdb.com/name/nm4873979/ |
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Post by brianfretwell on Sept 5, 2015 10:57:09 GMT
Just a reminder that some companies (BBC especially though not exclusively) often referred to all recording of TV (film or VT) as telerecording0 so that Wembly studio conversion could have been for film recording, VTR or both.
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27/04/2012 - actually spotted by Keith Read, not myself - I publicised it and confirmed the date.
