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Post by John S Miller on Mar 12, 2007 0:39:56 GMT
There was a thread on this some time ago. 'Nationwide' the BBC magazine was live and only certain editions exist as complete broadcasts.
I now know of the following editions or items existing:
1969 (original format) PILOT (B + W - T/R) 1970 MINI SKIRTS (B+W - T/R) 1972 UNIONS DEBATE EDITION (colour VT) 1973 HORROR ON TV (includes 'Dr Who - terror of the Autons') 1974 JUDGES - This is the one where someone faints live on TV. (B=W VT possibly shibaden). 1974 DARREN SIMPSON projected schoolboy pop star releases cover of 'somethings got a hold of my heart'. 1976 miscellaneous; 'circular' title sequence (colour film). 1970 film insert (skateboarding Duck). 1972 film ('Cowboys and Indians' playing family). 1973 miscellaneous inserts (colour film - some voiceovers; such as 'Moorgate' footage silent). 1975 Giant tomatoes grown with headphones on playing music. (repeated 'Voxpops' c. 89.) 1976 trinkets deposited for superstitious reasons below waterfall (including 'Witch' effigy).
Does anyone have more details?
I recall the following and wonder if they survive:
1971 MARK LESTER ON POCKET MONEY. 1971 GHOSTS SERIES Sue Lawley plays a recording of 'an old woman who walked out of a wardrobe and across a room hovering over a babys cot and through the wall'. 'Some viewers may find this disturbing'. 1973 - clip from 'Curse of Frankenstein' and 'Scars of Dracula'. 1976 - Bob Langley investigates unpleasant but harmless giant larvae infesting a villages water supply. (Drinks a glass containing them at the end) 'Cheers'.
The Nationwide insert films were presumably held in the news library. Does anyone know if there was a policy of keeping all the inserts?
Is there any update on the batch Steve Bryant mentioned in his book? Quoting 'a number of editions of the show recorded off air on a B + W shibaden format covering the period 1971 - 73.' These were in need of prompt restoration and funding or they might be lost due to the condition.
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Post by Peter Elliott on Mar 12, 2007 1:22:50 GMT
An item that popped up in TV Hell in 1992 was a black and white vt of some old bloke in glasses, jumping or skipping over eggs. I can't remember what he was supposed to be doing but it seemed he kept failing at it. Looked like mid 70s and I'm sure other readers here will have more detail on this.
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Post by Phil Chappell on Mar 12, 2007 17:53:48 GMT
Nationwide did a 20 minute special on Kate Bush's one and only tour with backstage footage and rehersals. I would hope that the original still exists as it was shot on film, though I can see no mention of it ... a poor quality off-air version exists which does the rounds with the KB fans.
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Post by Andrew Martin on Mar 13, 2007 13:53:47 GMT
There is a massive amount of film material existing for Nationwide - not all, but the vast majority of film inserts. Complete programmes are far rarer. There were about 10 pilot programmes made in 1969, all of which exist on 16mm film recording (aka Britain at Six). There is a batch of about 24 complete b/w film recordings from September & October 1970, for some reason, a single edition from March 1971 also on film recording, a VT edition (only the first half of the programme, the south east region opt-out) from January 1973, another from April 1981... And towards the end of the run of the series in 1983, it started to be recorded on broadcast format regularly. As well as these, there are occasional copies dubbed from Philips recordings from the late 70s, and most of the editions from c.1980 onwards exist as off-air VHS recordings - there are also items from b/w shibaden recordings such as the fainting 'peeress' - I don'tknow what happened to the master recordings of these however, but dubs survive of these items. Items mentioned by Steve Bryant are presumably with the NFA.
A number of special editions of Nationwide were basically compilations of series of film items, such as 'Gentleman Jim', and these all exist at least on film. There is also the spin-off series Nationwide on the Road, shown in 1976, and pre-recorded for transmission in the south east region - most of these exist. Basically there is far too much material that does exist to easily list it! And yes, Kate Bush on Tour tx 31/8/79 certainly does exist in the archive! As does the item from 6/4/71 on Mark Lester - the cataloguing doesn't mention pocket money (or much other detail) but I doubt he would be interviewed that often, so it's probably that one. All the Nationwide film items (as with 24 Hours, Tonight etc) were not held by the News library - there used to be a differentiation between News and Current Affairs - but in vaults at Lime Grove, which were emptied and the tx'd material sent to Windmill Road in the early 90s, when Lime Grove closed.
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Post by StevePhillips on Mar 13, 2007 21:12:51 GMT
In his book "The Television Heritage" from 1989, Steve Bryant writes as follows. These tapes are almost certainly the source of fainting-judge/bloke-jumping-on-eggs stuff. They seem first to have be mined for clips in 1992 for "TV Hell"...
Already virtually doomed is material held on early domestic tape formats manufactured by Sony, Shibaden and Philips. The pictures from these tapes are very poor- indeed, the Sony and Shibaden reel-to-reel tapes are monochrome only - but some unique collections exist on these formats. Most significant is a virtually complete collection of the BBC magazine programme Nationwide from 1971 to 1980, mostly on Sony and Shibaden, but on Philips for the programmes after 1977. This collection is held by the NFA and represents the only copies of the complete programmes in existence.
The BBC has all the film reports and a small selection of pre-recorded video inserts, but the programmes themselves were live and were not recorded off-air. Neither the machinery nor the funds are currently available to save the contents of these tapes, so a valuable daily record of British life in the 70s, including a large number of live interviews with leading politicians and celebrities of the time, looks like being lost.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2007 12:43:50 GMT
You beat me to it, Steve! I was going to refer to this remark too. Crazy that this stuff wasn't considered important enough to save - film inserts are fine but they weren't the real meat. The studio interviews were often more interesting and give more of the flavour of their time. Let's hope it isn't too late...
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Post by Greg H on Mar 15, 2007 2:19:31 GMT
Whoah! And this is being left to rot? Maybe not the most prime slices of tv ever, but these will be invaluable to future generations. If totaly accurate, that sucks Future generations will thank peoples foresight even more than we do.
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Post by StevePhillips on Mar 17, 2007 10:36:56 GMT
Well, it would be a hell of a lot of tapes. 5 editions a week for, say, 9 years. That's over 2000 tapes! I don't see there's any way those can be rescued to modern formats on a rigorous/complete basis. There's no way either the BBC or NFTVA/BFI are going to come up with the cash for that - it would be many, many tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds, surely? And there is no commercial impetus for this to be done. I don't think you can even copy those old reel-to-reel formats in a "one pass" operation. I know on the old Steptoes, they had to do it in chunks before the tracking went or heads clogged etc. How many custom-made belts etc would ancient old Shibaden/Sony machines get thru in transferring 2000 hours of old TV?
Obviously if certain old TV turned up on these old reel-to-reel formats, it probably would be transferred to modern format. I can see old Python stuff being transferred; certainly old missing "Dr Who"; maybe old "Top Of The Pops"; probably any missing "Till Deaths"; the missing "Dad's Army" shows etc etc, but that's a whole different sphere from 2000 editions of "Nationwide".
What we can hope for is that the tapes will at least be kept. They may or may not be deteriorating, but at least some person in the future has the chance still of lifting segments on an "as needed" basis. I believe there are attempts to develop optical readers for old magnetic tapes, so there is a chance there too.
Steve
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Post by Phil Leach on Mar 19, 2007 12:43:24 GMT
According to the BFI's obsolete technology page they've copied 500 Nationwide tapes from N-1500 format as part of the HLF funded transfer project that paid for the BFI's two inch copying programme. /www.bfi.org.uk/nftva/access/obsolete.html
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2007 11:13:50 GMT
Well, 500 sounds much better than not at all. I think that if the material contained on these tapes is considered valuable (and I think Steve Bryant thinks so in his quoted remarks above) then ways and means can be found to save them. Anyway, it isn't an "all or nothing" scenario"; a good first step would be to try and prioritise important stuff and transfer that first, which it seems like maybe they have done. Anybody know how many tapes in all there were?
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Post by StevePhillips on Mar 21, 2007 16:13:15 GMT
The 500 figure sounds like the post-1977 run on Philips mentioned in the quote by Bryant above. Looks like they've transferred those, but left the reel-to-reel stuff alone. Well, 500 sounds much better than not at all. I think that if the material contained on these tapes is considered valuable (and I think Steve Bryant thinks so in his quoted remarks above) then ways and means can be found to save them. Anyway, it isn't an "all or nothing" scenario"; a good first step would be to try and prioritise important stuff and transfer that first, which it seems like maybe they have done. Anybody know how many tapes in all there were?
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Post by John S Miller on Mar 21, 2007 22:53:10 GMT
Thanks in particular to Steve and Andrew Martin for your fantastic and informative input on this thread!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2007 11:54:06 GMT
The 500 figure sounds like the post-1977 run on Philips mentioned in the quote by Bryant above. Looks like they've transferred those, but left the reel-to-reel stuff alone. quote] Oh, I see. My priority would be older stuff first. Work forwards! Anyone know more on this?
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Post by matt on Mar 23, 2007 19:18:26 GMT
I've noticed a few late 1970s/ early 1980s studio interviews cropping up as extras on Dr Who DVD releases (one as early as 1976 - I wonder where that came from?)
For my part, I have a near complete edition from February 1981 (good VHS standard) and most of an edition from December 1980 (a bit washed out, but watchable). Also a few from 1983. I'm not sure of their official archive status.
Anyone else got any?
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Post by Andrew Martin on Mar 24, 2007 9:57:48 GMT
The 1980 one might exist at the BBC - do you know its date? The February 81 probably exists at the BBC, and the 1983 one almost certainly does - at the very end Nationwide started to be recorded on broadcast standard tapes.
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