Guide needs update

[C Perry]

Clearly I am a going mad or someone is.

I have just gone to :http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax

I have typed Pobol Y Cym into the search engine and got nothing.

I have asked Andrew Martin if he could spare the time to post here and tell you why he could only give me info on 1 episode that he knows to survive from the first season and yet you seem to have found a whole list, though to be fair I was of course referring to the early pre-1978 editions. I would expect to find later shows from the 80s, 90s etc. He is a very busy man though.

Clearly, you do not like our guides Mr Cole. Fair comment. You may spend your money on whatever you wish, but I am in agreement with Stuart and Laurence that it is pointless continuing this thread. Nothing I say will change your views. Having read all your posts I fail to see why you come to this message board which is all about discussing lost archive TV. I also fail to see how £145 + 40 Music Guide + 18 Comedy Guide + 40 Children's Guide equalling £253 can then become the much higher figure you quoted some posts ago when you said the books were £300+.

You are right when you state that we have not done a non-fiction book yet, clearly we are not busy enough already cataloguing all the other stuff, and keeping day jobs, and family lives!! :-) One day we will do the non-fiction book aswell. Then you can not buy that one aswell. :-)


Goodbye

Chris

[Matthew K Sharp]

The major benefit of a Kal guide over the INFAX or other online databases has nothing to do with archive holdings or missing TV at all. I find my copy of the '95 comedy Kal invaluable because it gives me a easily accessable transmission date/episode title (where applicable) guide to pretty much any show on British TV. Yes, it has its omissions and errors, but I understand that most of them were corrected for the '97 or '98 reprint (which went out of print before I could snaffle a copy, dammit). Since it's one of the most used books on my shelves, I'm happy to shell out for a copy now and then. Looking at the Kal guides only as lists of archive holdings is, I think, doing them a grave disservice.

Anyway, I'm sure Joe will be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am in thinking that, so when he does arrive, I have a question for him:

Joe, are you more interested in non-fiction/documentary TV programs than in drama & entertainment shows?

[Matthew K Sharp]

C said:

Clearly I am a going mad or someone is.

I have just gone to :http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax

I have typed Pobol Y Cym into the search engine and got nothing.

Their parsing engine must be having an off day; "Pobol Y Cwm" turns up nothing, but try just searching on "Pobol" (or, indeed, "Cwm") and it throws up a huge list of data. Weird.

+ 18 Comedy Guide +

Is it still available, then?

[C Perry]

Yes all the books are back in print at the website mate.

c

[Matthew K Sharp]

Excellent. I shall have to pop over there and let you take advantage of me, poor deluded sucker that I am. ;-)

[Stuart Douglas]

ethantyler said:

Bud (1976)
Associated Television (ATV)

Episode Title: Broadcast: Archive:
Episode 1 26/07/1976 Lost
Episode 2 02/08/1976 Lost
Episode 3 09/08/1976 Lost
Episode 4 16/08/1976 Lost
Episode 5 23/08/1976 Lost
Episode 6 30/08/1976 Lost

Is this a repeat of the 1963 Bud Flanagan series?

Stuart

[andrew martin]

[quote author=Joe Cole board=general thread=1144096431 post=1146074648I demonstrate that it many cases it does. Chris Perry says INFAX does not show regional material and for example neither he nor BBC Wales can get info on 'Pobol Y Cwm'. I found this info on INFAX and posted above. [/quote]

Ah yes but... The list of entries on Infax for "Pobol" includes editions where there are no known holdings, in the case of episodes after July 1976. I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of how this new public access version of Infax works, since I work with the basic version used by the archive, and there may well be tricks and techniques needed to get information from it - it is only newly on-line so I wouldn't be surprised if there are bugs to be ironed out.

[Joe Cole]

Chris Perry mentioned:

"£400 for a set of Guides? Blimey, Simon must have put the price up on them. I think its £145 including postage for the new ITV Drama Guides for which you get all (or at least I think it's all) the English ITV Drama, and loads of the Welsh, S4C, satellite and Scottish, HTV, Grampian regional drama."

That's just fine, but the new BBC Drama guide is apparently going to run to the same size (5 volumes) and predictably the same price more or less. So add that on top of your £145 and we are at £290, then add in the comedy and children's and music and we reach £398.

Unfortunately the latter three guides are now nearly ten years old (unless they have been updated?), I'm assuming updates in future will cost even more.

Again, there are plenty of regional programmes missing. Basically the guides present your best guess as to a complete list of British Television. Now, bearing in mind the obsessive quest for completism displayed frequently on this site, the guides do fall short of perfection required by most TV anoraks.

Laurence Piper was complaining about INFAX because he couldn't see junked programmes. If he went into a library, would he expect to see all deleted books still listed? It doesn't happen that way. A library is a collection of tangible objects (TV programmes), not a collection of objects which don't exist. If that info did appear, it would surely cause confusion.

Once you get the hang of using INFAX you can dig about, often much deeper (e.g. regarding info such as PASBs) than anything in the K'scope guides.

Going back to Chris Perry's comments. I never claimed not to like the K'scope guides, in fact I do have an original set, but I now feel they are out of date and the new versions do not justify the extra cost. They were a great product in the mid 1990s, but time has moved on. I am also concerned by the omission of many programmes across all the guides and their accuracy. The problem accessing 'Pobol' was a good example. Are there more instances like this where a single search has been made and accepted as final?

The bottom line is that neither the K'scope Guides nor INFAX are 100% accurate, but the future is in online access and INFAX is a very cost effective free resource, which appears to have given pleasure to many.

K'scope could make the guides info for free if they wished, if it is just a hobby as it appears. If they do fund the events, then they appear to be poorly served. The annual events seem to be poorly attended (I'm told by one attender there were a few dozen people if that). The amounts raised for charity aren't enormous either, compared to money I've seen raised at similar events.

The reason for this isn't any fault of K'scope, but the certain fact that most of the people who would travel to such events don't need to. Much of the archive TV material they want to see has been released in some form and is neither K'scope nor in fact the BFI are sole providers for general viewing. A decade ago, they were, but things have changed. I'm sure most would agree for the better. K'scope branching into book projects isd a worthy example of a different approach. There are many people who cannot attend such events for many reasons.

[AGuest]

Is he back? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Joe Cole]

That's fine Mr. You can get back to your relentless hunt for Missing Episodes. I'm sorry for you if you can't express yourself as an Adult.

[Paul02]

FAO: Stuart Douglas

There's some information in the BBC TV Catalogue Online thread that will help with the guide update.

[Paul02]

And there doesn't appear to be a listing for Rupert the Bear.

[Stuart Douglas]

Paul02 said:

FAO: Stuart Douglas

There's some information in the BBC TV Catalogue Online thread that will help with the guide update.

thanks Paul, I'll go have a look.

Stuart

[Paul02]

stuartdouglas said:

Paul02 said:

FAO: Stuart Douglas

There's some information in the BBC TV Catalogue Online thread that will help with the guide update.

thanks Paul, I'll go have a look.

Stuart

I hope some of the information is useful for making a few changes to the missing episodes list.

Do you know why I can't see a list of the Rupert the Bear episodes ?

[ron]

Paul02 said:

Do you know why I can't see a list of the Rupert the Bear episodes ?

or target:luna