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Post by John Wall on Aug 18, 2023 19:07:33 GMT
Only two Pertwees were ever missing, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 and Death to the Daleks 1, the BBC had the entirety of seasons 7-10 as 16mm film recordings. Fortunately film wiping didn't extend past season 6, and they didn't destroy all of 6. Keep in mind that usa converted to full color mid to late 60s. Bbc early 70s. Most of the world was behind that. As color is started in a country, most residents do not have color tv and there was a wealth of color material to choose from. If they wanted color dr who, they could choose tom.. very few stations would wow at two color dr who at once. That’s not the point. Why weren’t Enterprises aware that the world was dumping b&w for colour and actively thinking about how they could make money selling lots of colour material - and not just DW - to those stations?
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Post by George D on Aug 18, 2023 20:09:39 GMT
Why weren't they just thinking all these would be valuable one day and hold onto all?
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Post by michaelnorris on Aug 18, 2023 20:31:32 GMT
Why weren't they just thinking all these would be valuable one day and hold onto all? Totally different mindset about television. It was basically thought of as a stageplay broadcasted out to audiences to be seen once and never again. As their revenue opportunities basically were only to sell to other countries after broadcast, once that ran out they didn't see any use for it and disposed of it. It took a long time for the small screen to be seen anywhere close to the same prestige as movies. Syndication wasn't a thing in the UK and outside of a few fanatics fans it didn't seem as though these old episodes would ever matter. VHS didn't even launch in the UK in 1978 when the preservation effort really began and even then a player cost almost £4000. If you listen to people at the time who tried to screen episodes at conventions, etc it seems the bbc couldn't give a toss about the program, or really most of their back catalouge.
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Post by stevegerald on Aug 18, 2023 20:33:45 GMT
Only two Pertwees were ever missing, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 and Death to the Daleks 1, the BBC had the entirety of seasons 7-10 as 16mm film recordings. Fortunately film wiping didn't extend past season 6, and they didn't destroy all of 6. "film wiping" isn't possible, but they did destroy their Season 11 film recording negatives.
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Post by Ralph Rose on Aug 18, 2023 23:46:37 GMT
Keep in mind that usa converted to full color mid to late 60s. Not exactly. 1966 is when prime time went to full color. Prime Time = 8:00PM to 11:00PM Monday Through Saturday, and 7:00PM to 11:00PM on Sunday. And that was for the major National networks, NBC, CBS, ABC. Local channels, most privately owned, (which would be the ones to syndicate most TV shows) didn't convert or go full color until later. Sometimes much later. The last station to convert to color in the USA was WQEX in Pittsburgh in 1986. NTSC color television sets were backward compatible to B/W broadcasts, (unlike in the UK) so the transition was more sporadic here.
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Post by George D on Aug 18, 2023 23:49:41 GMT
Why weren't they just thinking all these would be valuable one day and hold onto all? Totally different mindset about television. That's what i was trying to say.. It's a rhetorical question. Why would we think if they would value shows in color for resale when they didn't have a mindset to save shows for future value in general
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Post by John Wall on Aug 19, 2023 0:00:12 GMT
Why weren't they just thinking all these would be valuable one day and hold onto all? That wasn’t Enterprises’ function, they just sold things. However, as I’ve been saying they don’t look to have been particularly proactive in addressing the obvious market for lots of colour material as broadcasters converted from b&w. There must have been lots of things besides the Pertwees and a little foresight in keeping the clearances current could have paid - literally! - dividends and also ensured that more survived until their value was recognised. The task of preservation was for things like archives, but they seemed rather haphazard at best.
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Post by John Wall on Aug 19, 2023 0:07:12 GMT
Keep in mind that usa converted to full color mid to late 60s. Not exactly. 1966 is when prime time went to full color. Prime Time = 8:00PM to 11:00PM Monday Through Saturday, and 7:00PM to 11:00PM on Sunday. And that was for the major National networks, NBC, CBS, ABC. Local channels, most privately owned, (which would be the ones to syndicate most TV shows) didn't convert or go full color until later. Sometimes much later. The last station to convert to color in the USA was WQEX in Pittsburgh in 1986. NTSC color television sets were backward compatible to B/W broadcasts, (unlike in the UK) so the transition was more sporadic here. In the UK there were dual standard sets for a long time. b&w was 405 lines VHF, colour was 625 lines UHF. The former had a tuner that clicked round presets, the latter a fine tuning knob - things, of course, advanced! Everything was backwards compatible, you just had to switch from UHF to VHF. When sufficient UHF transmitters were available TVs were UHF only and, eventually, the VHF transmissions stopped.
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Post by Ralph Rose on Aug 19, 2023 2:11:44 GMT
In the UK there were dual standard sets for a long time. b&w was 405 lines VHF, colour was 625 lines UHF. The former had a tuner that clicked round presets, the latter a fine tuning knob - things, of course, advanced! Everything was backwards compatible, you just had to switch from UHF to VHF. When sufficient UHF transmitters were available TVs were UHF only and, eventually, the VHF transmissions stopped. Yes, but our B/W television sets were also forwards compatible as well. All the way to the analog shutoff in June of 2009. (Low power stations excepted). I remember our local PBS shutting off the color carrier when they showed Hartnell and Troughton stories to save power, thus broadcasting in B/W. --------------------------- But my point was, in the 70's, in the USA, there was still a market for B/W television, let alone color. Just not a demand for B/W from our major networks. Our independent owned stations was full of B/W tv in the late 70's early 80's. Why I became a fan of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc... -------------------------- Hindsight being 20-20, BBC Enterprises didn't market things like a business should have done.
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Post by Nicholas Fitzpatrick on Aug 19, 2023 5:46:34 GMT
Keep in mind that usa converted to full color mid to late 60s. Not exactly. 1966 is when prime time went to full color. Prime Time = 8:00PM to 11:00PM Monday Through Saturday, and 7:00PM to 11:00PM on Sunday. And that was for the major National networks, NBC, CBS, ABC. Local channels, most privately owned, (which would be the ones to syndicate most TV shows) didn't convert or go full color until later. Sometimes much later. ... The last station to convert to color in the USA was WQEX in Pittsburgh in 1986. [/quote]That's surely the exception though. WQEX was a very odd duck, being the second PBS station in that market; both operated together. When was the last CBS/ABC/NBC station to go colour? Off-hand I'm not aware of any by the late-1970s. Conversions started by 1951.
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Post by John Wall on Aug 19, 2023 9:56:52 GMT
In the UK there were dual standard sets for a long time. b&w was 405 lines VHF, colour was 625 lines UHF. The former had a tuner that clicked round presets, the latter a fine tuning knob - things, of course, advanced! Everything was backwards compatible, you just had to switch from UHF to VHF. When sufficient UHF transmitters were available TVs were UHF only and, eventually, the VHF transmissions stopped. Yes, but our B/W television sets were also forwards compatible as well. All the way to the analog shutoff in June of 2009. (Low power stations excepted). I remember our local PBS shutting off the color carrier when they showed Hartnell and Troughton stories to save power, thus broadcasting in B/W. --------------------------- But my point was, in the 70's, in the USA, there was still a market for B/W television, let alone color. Just not a demand for B/W from our major networks. Our independent owned stations was full of B/W tv in the late 70's early 80's. Why I became a fan of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc... -------------------------- Hindsight being 20-20, BBC Enterprises didn't market things like a business should have done. The 405 line VHF system, the first “HD” system in the world, was developed in the early 30s and represented the limit of what was possible at the time. In fact, what we now call electronics, as a science, developed in the late 20s/early 30s to make electronic TV possible. Incidentally this expertise also facilitated the development of Radar in the late 30s. The 525 NTSC system dates from the early 40s, effectively a decade later. When the UK started really looking at colour in the late 50s that was about 15 years after NTSC and something better was both possible and desired. That’s why a 625 line UHF system was chosen.
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Post by John Wall on Aug 19, 2023 13:51:46 GMT
Why weren't they just thinking all these would be valuable one day and hold onto all? Totally different mindset about television. It was basically thought of as a stageplay broadcasted out to audiences to be seen once and never again. As their revenue opportunities basically were only to sell to other countries after broadcast, once that ran out they didn't see any use for it and disposed of it. It took a long time for the small screen to be seen anywhere close to the same prestige as movies. Syndication wasn't a thing in the UK and outside of a few fanatics fans it didn't seem as though these old episodes would ever matter. VHS didn't even launch in the UK in 1978 when the preservation effort really began and even then a player cost almost £4000. If you listen to people at the time who tried to screen episodes at conventions, etc it seems the bbc couldn't give a toss about the program, or really most of their back catalouge. It’s interesting to remember that TV was, and in some cases still is, “a stageplay broadcasted out to audiences to be seen once”! Theatre has been around for millennia, and developed over time but is still a distinctive art form. From the late 19th century cinema developed and when editing became possible we got the familiar wide shots, two shots, close ups, etc, etc that were all filmed on the same camera and cut together in, surprisingly!, the cutting room before the completed work was projected onto a screen. When TV started in the 1930s there was no video recording, telerecording was in its infancy - and very primitive. So, how do you do things like drama? Obviously you can get the rights to movies and broadcast them. If you want to make your own though you’ve either got to film it on single camera 16 or 35mm and cut it together before broadcast or do it in the studio like a theatrical performance. The former is time consuming, and expensive. The latter could be a single video camera in a permanent wide shot like sitting in a theatre, but that’s little use on a small screen. Consequently, multi camera broadcasting developed with a vision mixer cutting between a minimum of two, but usually more, cameras to give a cinema-like appearance. In the days of live TV drama it was, effectively, a stage play with prefilmed inserts for exteriors, etc. The output from the studio was sent straight to the transmitter. The difference from theatre was that the large, cameras, cables, etc had to be accommodated on the set and the actors had to not just be on the set saying their lines but be in the right place for close ups, reaction shots, etc. When video recording became available there was a bit more flexibility, with things like recording breaks, but the output from the studio was sent to a video recorder with little, if any, post production available for a very long time. Multi camera TV drama with prerecorded film inserts was, I suggest, a distinctive art form that other than in things like soap operas where the treadmill requires it, and sitcoms with an audience, has largely disappeared in the move to making TV drama with a single camera like the cinema.
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Post by tom rogers on Aug 19, 2023 18:41:52 GMT
Keep in mind that usa converted to full color mid to late 60s. Not exactly. 1966 is when prime time went to full color. Prime Time = 8:00PM to 11:00PM Monday Through Saturday, and 7:00PM to 11:00PM on Sunday. And that was for the major National networks, NBC, CBS, ABC. Local channels, most privately owned, (which would be the ones to syndicate most TV shows) didn't convert or go full color until later. Sometimes much later. The last station to convert to color in the USA was WQEX in Pittsburgh in 1986. NTSC color television sets were backward compatible to B/W broadcasts, (unlike in the UK) so the transition was more sporadic here. Long ago I lived within shouting distance of the Oakland area of Pittsburgh where the station/transmitter was located.
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Post by John Wall on Aug 19, 2023 18:43:47 GMT
👆 A yeti on a loo in Pittsburgh!
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Post by jmoss on Aug 20, 2023 4:25:51 GMT
One thing that’s puzzled me for some years is the missed opportunities wrt the Pertwee seasons. When a station goes from b&w to colour they need material, and lots of it, to encourage people to upgrade their TVs. There’s a limit to what you can produce in-house, feature films are a quick win but you’re looking round for material. By the mid 70s both the US and UK had been making film series in colour for a decade so that’s a rich seam. Auntie had been making colour programmes since at least 1968 when BBC2 introduced it, so that’s things like “Civilisation”. DW, of course, had been in colour since 1970 and there were 128 colour Pertwee episodes. Why didn’t Enterprises sort out the clearances and offer these to stations going to colour, that would have been 128 half hour slots, five or seven nights per week, with a family action/adventure show. Answers on a postcard…. First time poster, long time lurker here! If I may be allowed to try and help, I think what John Wall has been trying to say is that the beeb should’ve had more foresight when it came to the colour Pertwee stories. They were filmed in colour but primarily offered abroad as b/w film prints, and really it seems like the fact that they were originally taped in colour was an afterthought. The reason stuff like Thunderbirds enjoyed such longevity is because ITC had the foresight to film them in colour, even though they were only able to be shown in b/w in the UK at the time. It was partly to sell to America, yes, but as other countries moved to colour broadcasting throughout the 70s it was a lucrative colour programme to help fill up schedules. I think the point is that the BBC were sitting on a potential goldmine, having hours of colour family entertainment at a time when the demand for this was heating up, and much of the world’s television back-catalogue was in b/w. We know that after Australia moved to colour transmission they weren’t interested in b/w tele recordings anymore. The BBC must have know that they would eventually move to colour broadcasting, and that they would want colour programmes, but allowed the colour master-tapes of Pertwee serials be wiped as early as ‘73.
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