rather odd ideas

[Greg H]

It is despicable behaviour.
I havent heard about the python thing though. Glad weve still got that.

[Barry Hodge]

gh said:

It is despicable behaviour.
I havent heard about the python thing though. Glad weve still got that.

I read that it was Terry Jones' action, and that he had dubs made on the quiet which he hid in his cellar. The Beeb then relented and kept the masters anyway. Or something.

[John Fleming]

Personally I think it's comparable to the nazis destroying books and works of art, and actions like that re NOBA should see someone face criminal charges. The attitude was obviously that the BBC and only the BBC can decide what has cultural value.

[Alan Jeffries]

While I think that's very sad that many, many shows do not exist now and yes, it may have been very short sighted to have a destruction policy in the past, it's a bit far to expect someone to be tried for 'TV crimes'.
Policies change and at the time, tape was expensive and so was re used. I'm sure that the BBC was under budget restrictions as it suffers now.
So, do they record new shows, or do they repeat old stuff as they kept it and can no longer afford new tapes?
When colour came in, B&W was deemed the past and so much was discarded. You must remember that these people were following the policy of the day.
Who can determine what future technology holds. I'm sure no one said, 'Hang on a minute, we'll have DVD in 40 years, we can make a mint from collectors!'
Budget has dictated the past and I'm sure that the archive budget was a tiny fraction of the BBC resources. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will put me right.
On a lesser note, when I got my first video back in 1980, even I had to make choices about what to keep as blank videos were so expensive. The normal price was roughly £10 for a 3 hour tape. To tape Doctor Who I suddenly found I had no blanks and was forced to pay £11.50 for a blank in Dixons!

Alan

[Andrew Doherty]

There is no doubt that the wiping of video tape recordings and junking telerecordings was a blunder and a disgrace.

If there had been an archive policy set up in 1953, say, we would have television archives (BBC and ITV) that would have rivalled the American television archives.

Thankfully, the search for missing television programmes, which has been going on for nearly thirty years, has recovered a great many interesting and important programmes.

Of course, the cost of a high quality recording of a television programme today can be achieved for loose change!

The cost of a 30 minute 35mm telerecording in 1958 was £235. Ampex video tape cost, for over one hour's recording, was £400 in 1958. Between 1954 and 1959, between one and ten telerecordings a week were made by the BBC.

I first saw a domestic video tape recorder demonstrated at a specialist audio-visual dealer in Watford in the autumn of 1975. This was a Philips N1500 recording machine and this could record a programme lasting for one hour.

My first personal experience of a domestic video tape recorder was when I hired a Philips N1700 recorder from the same audio-visual dealer in September 1978. The tapes could record up to two and a half hours of programmes.

The price of the N1700 tape was only marginally more than that of the N1500 tape; the price was £24!

I place the 'mindset' that junked our television heritage as the same as the 'mindset', which demolished the Euston Arch and, very nearly, St Pancras Station. A combination of 'everythng must be the latest or be thrown away': No one will want to know about something that (in their opinion) will not be of interest in years to come: Where is the profit in keeping an archive? This last statement being part of the 'price of everything and value of nothing' school of thought.

Don't forget the BBC Television Centre may be demolished, which shows the 'mindset' is still with us (in one way, if not in another).

Yours,

[Alan Jeffries]

And there lies the problem - to keep or not to keep? In regards to the TVC, it's an iconic building for sure, but it's an old building and probably the majority of it is not conducive with modern TV production. So what could it be used for?
Somewhere the old has to give way to the new - not always for the best - otherwise the whole thing would stagnate.
I'm for measured progress - if that makes sense - don't just raze things to the ground in its name. Put something in that will be just as iconic in the future.
Is something iconic because it's been there for most of our lives? It made the shows we love? Was Newgate jail an iconic building? Did the people feel just the same when it was demolished and the new 'modern' law courts built? They're just as iconic to some.
Sometimes you have to let go and look foward.
I'm pleased that the hunt continues. And I certainly thank the many people whose tireless efforts gleam results for us all to see.
Of course we'll never recover many, many shows, but let us rejoice in what we DO have. It could have all been so much worse. Let's stop villifying those who followed past policies - isn't hindsight a wonderful thing? - that are now considerd to be mistaken and move on.
We cannot change past deeds and no amount of teeth nashing and wringing of hands will change that, we can only do our best to recover what we can.

Alan

[John Fleming]

william said:

peter cook tried to stop not only but also from being wiped he offered to buy the tapes, or give the bbc the money to buy new tapes to replace them he even asked for home video copies but the beeb wouldn't agree to any of this

That is the crux of the matter; in this case the BBC cannot use cost, obsolescence or any other excuse to justify their actions. The attitude must have been that only the BBC can decide what survives and what is wiped/junked.

Hence my comparison to the nazis destroying art, which was deliberately made to heighten emotion. While it pales into insignificance compared to other atrocities they committed, nobody can claim that it was not an act of criminal destruction. Any work of art that did not fit in with the nazi masterplan was to be destroyed, and any TV programme which did not fit in with the BBC masterplan likewise, and in both cases the people actually doing the destruction were following the policy at the time of those they answered to.

As hinted at above, if America could keep their archives then why not Britain? Ian Levine saved "The Daleks" from junking, could anyone imagine Paramount junking Captain Kirk's first encounter with the Klingons, which is a comparable episode in terms of cultural importance? The difference is that America treasures its heritage whereas we do not.

[hartley967]

johnf said:

william said:

peter cook tried to stop not only but also from being wiped he offered to buy the tapes, or give the bbc the money to buy new tapes to replace them he even asked for home video copies but the beeb wouldn't agree to any of this

That is the crux of the matter; in this case the BBC cannot use cost, obsolescence or any other excuse to justify their actions. The attitude must have been that only the BBC can decide what survives and what is wiped/junked.

Hence my comparison to the nazis destroying art, which was deliberately made to heighten emotion. While it pales into insignificance compared to other atrocities they committed, nobody can claim that it was not an act of criminal destruction. Any work of art that did not fit in with the nazi masterplan was to be destroyed, and any TV programme which did not fit in with the BBC masterplan likewise, and in both cases the people actually doing the destruction were following the policy at the time of those they answered to.

As hinted at above, if America could keep their archives then why not Britain? Ian Levine saved "The Daleks" from junking, could anyone imagine Paramount junking Captain Kirk's first encounter with the Klingons, which is a comparable episode in terms of cultural importance? The difference is that America treasures its heritage whereas we do not.

Yes I dont think the " big cost therefore had to re -use" excuse holds water now. Simply because some early programmes were physically edited with a blade and sticky tape , if these had been reused there is great chance of picture disturbance on the new programme, plus the fact the edit in time might stretch,clog or fail completely?.
No director was going to risk his fancy new production for the price of a tape surely?

I think the main problem with the BBC was they had not allocated any space for an archive , so stuff just got kicked from room to room and eventually into the skip?.




.
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[Richard Bignell]

hartley967 said:

Yes I dont think the "big cost therefore had to re -use" excuse holds water now. Simply because some early programmes were physically edited with a blade and sticky tape , if these had been reused there is great chance of picture disturbance on the new programme, plus the fact the edit in time might stretch,clog or fail completely?

It's not an excuse. It's what happened.

If physical edits were made to a VT, then the programme was charged £50 by Engineering for every cut they made. The money would then help cover the cost of buying a replacement tape when the original was judged to be unfit for reuse.

Once the programme had been broadcast and the VT eventually wiped, the tape would often then be cut down, removing all the edits and making the reel that was to be reused shorter. So a 90-minute tape might end up being put back into the Engineering stock as a 60-minute or 45-minute tape.

[Richard Bignell]

johnf said:

The attitude must have been that only the BBC can decide what survives and what is wiped/junked.

Of course it was. I'm not sure why you should be so surprised about that.

Remember, the material that the BBC retained (until the policy changes of the late 1970s) was kept as a working archive, so it was material that was being kept for direct reuse in other programmes or for internal research. Some programmes of historical and sociological were retained, but the BBC wasn't obliged to keep such material.

Performers and writers were under contract to the BBC, so they had no say in what happened to their programmes once they had been made and the BBC had no obligation to pass on their copyrighted works to a third party.

Richard

[Greg H]

No obligation for sure, but they could have been a bit more flexible perhaps? In the case of Peter Cook I do find it hard to understand or offer justification for their somewhat heartless approach to needlessly destroying an artist's work when cash or replacement tapes were offered.
Equally their attitude to the creators of steptoe when they made similar requests; we are lucky they made their own recordings or we would have chunks of steptoe missing now.

Obviously no one has a time machine, so its the situation we inherit and cant change.

[lpmoderator]

richardbignell said:

johnf said:

The attitude must have been that only the BBC can decide what survives and what is wiped/junked.

Of course it was. I'm not sure why you should be so surprised about that.
Richard

Well, I for one was surprised by this when I learned for the first time that there were holes in the archives! This is old ground, I know, but there are two schools of thought to this one and always will be. Either you think that a TV company has god-given right to do what they like or you believe that they are merely custodians of this material and that it's owned (not legally but morally) by the nation and they have a "duty of care" towards the archive. I believe the latter and, as Andrew Doherty says, wiping material was a blunder and a disgrace.

[hartley967]

and of course there were the very strict unions up to the 1990s which IIRC stated that no VT drama could be repeated after 2 years on the BBC ..or something like that.

A case of the beeb paying the crew the proper (itv?)money in the first place might have solved that one?.

[Richard Bignell]

lpmoderator said:

On what possible basis can you assert that television programmes are "morally" owned by the general public?

Richard

[Richard Bignell]

hartley967 said:

A case of the beeb paying the crew the proper (itv?)money in the first place might have solved that one?.

It was nothing to do with how much money anyone was paid. The restrictions imposed by Equity applied to ITV just as much as the BBC.

Richard