rather odd ideas

[lpmoderator]

You don't HAVE to be mad to post here...

[Daniel O'Brien]

At the risk of playing devil's advocate, the BBC didn't have the funding to use new mastertapes for all its programmes. (Wasn't 'Tomb of the Cybermen' recorded on recycled tapes?) Even if this had been an option, contractual restrictions severely limited the repeat potential of most programmes after a short period of time. Similarly, the BBC never had the resources to preserve all their film recordings, whether made for overseas sales or internal use. Imagine the protests if the licence fee had been raised to cover these costs, especially when few of the programmes could be shown again. The attitudes of the time were both short-term and short-sighted - to say the least - but accusations of cultural vandalism still strike me as unfair.

[John Fleming]

Richard, why are you so determined to justify the BBC's actions? OK so they broke no laws of the time but that means nothing, the law is not infallible. By the same token slave traders and those who put the mentally handicapped into freakshows did no wrong because they dod not break the law of their day.

I'm just trying to say that in this day and age all sorts of things are preserved for various reasons. Try setting your house on fire for example and getting away with your liberty, you'd either be jailed or committed. If such things as buildings, trees or whatever can be protected then so can television, and it should always have been.

[lpmoderator]

johnf said:

I'm just trying to say that in this day and age all sorts of things are preserved for various reasons. Try setting your house on fire for example and getting away with your liberty, you'd either be jailed or committed. If such things as buildings, trees or whatever can be protected then so can television, and it should always have been.

Which has always been my view too. An even playing field with the other media (which don't have the same kind of gaps, even though TV is arguably the most important mirror of our times). We have to raise the debate above mere economics and all this talk of specifics of tape re-use etc. creates a smoke screen over the main topic which is the principle of archiving something important and unique. I would like to think that everyone here would agree with that basic idea. If so, the rest follows on from that...

[Alan Jeffries]

I don't believe that Richard is justifying the BBC's actions rather than point out the facts.
John, if I may quote you.....
I'm just trying to say that in this day and age all sorts of things are preserved for various reasons.

In this day and age.

We can look back in our enlightened times and see mistakes in culture and society. Thankfully things change. In the 50s' & 60's boarding houses had signs in them 'No coloured, no Irish'. In this day and age that is unacceptable. And rightly so too. And what is being said here is that things move on and policies change. The policy as laid out in a lot of the mails in this thread.
In this day and age, we have that benifit of hindsight.

In the film They Died with Their Boots On, the horses were tied with wire in a contraption called the Running W. They were then run full gallop at the camera. When the wire tightened, the horse fell down. It looks good on screen, with the horses looking as if they'd been shot.
In fact many of those horses broke their front legs and were put down. In this day and age that is seen as abhorrent and desperately cruel, but that was policy then.

Alan

[johnstewart]

lpmoderator said:

richardbignell said:

This still give absolutely *no* explanation as to why they, in any sense, are morally "owned" by the public. Thin doesn't even cover it!

The fact they are paid for by the licence fee has nothing to do with it as that gives the public no ownership of the end product.

Richard

You haven't given any reason as to why they AREN'T. No idea where your point of view is coming from, i'm afraid. As it's public money that made the programmes, I happen to think it does give the public a (very big) stake in the matter.

You either believe TV is, at the very least, a unique form of social history or you don't - if you do, then it follows that you believe that it should be preserved above and beyond the everyday business of running a broadcasting company.

Hmm - this is a heated thread!

I'm not sure about the 'moral' aspect; but I would totally agree; and with Andy Doherty that generally wipings have; for many years; and within TV companies come to be viewed as a waste.

We can see that; not just BBC material; the fine quality of many of the dramas or items presented at MBW; that more careful consideration should have been applied.

This can't change the fact it has happened; but it can educate us to apply ourselves; granted as the BBC has done with initiatives such as the 'treasure hunt'; to value television as an ongoing meter and pocket of social history for future generations.

[lpmoderator]

alanj said:

In this day and age.

We can look back in our enlightened times and see mistakes in culture and society.
Alan

Thing is, it's always dangerous to smugly say "aren't we so much more enlightened nowadays!" as if we've reached a final point of knowledge. We haven't. And I don't believe for one minute that the lessons of the past have been learned as regards TV archiving. Not for one minute. More is saved, yes, but for the right reasons? There's money to be made and it isn't to do with the value of the material (very sadly).

If someone had said to me in 1969 (or whatever) "watch this on TV now as you'll never see it again" i'd have been genuinely horrified. A lot of other people i've spoken to over the years would too - for many it was a real stunner to learn about the gaps in the archives for the first time and hindsight doesn't come into it. We can read the books we want, watch the old movies we want, listen to the vintage music we want to - so why not the archive TV? No one has yet given me a solid reason why it had to be any different. There was a clear historical / cultural perspective that i'd suggest WAS clear at the time which was wantonly overlooked.

[Alan Jeffries]

I really wasn't trying to be smug, rather than we can look back from today. I'm sure that in 50 years someone will say the same about some/most of our actions! It will never end and I'm absolutely am sure that we will never reach a final point of anything except maybe for our own destruction.
It is sad that 'In God We Trust:Everyone Else Pays' is the watchword today. It is all about profit margins.

But moving finally back to the spirit of this this thread. I did wind someone right up once. I told them that a film copy of a Who missing episode had been found. Unfortunately though, all the black on the film had fallen off the film but you could still discern the image on the film stock. He got excited about this and I pushed my luck by saying that an expert team was painstakingly 'painting' all the black back onto the film stock. Obviously a long and complex process. I could not believe he fell for it. For months he asked me how it was all going. We lost touch and some 10 years later I bumped into him in a Indian Restaurant. He asked me if I was on the wind up. I had to break the bad news............

Alan

[Rich Cornock]

ok ok now back to the point of this thread..........has anybody got any good ideas on how to recover some lost episodes and i dont mean antennae in space or time machines!

[Richard Bignell]

johnf said:

Richard, why are you so determined to justify the BBC's actions?

It's not about justifying them. It's about understanding the decisions that were made over 30 years ago and the reasons why they were made.

Historical context is everything.

Richard

[William Martin]

lpmoderator said:

You don't HAVE to be mad to post here...

but all insane suggestions welcome

[William Martin]

Already neurologists have developed computer programs that can correctly judge the orientation of viewed stripes by analysing signal patterns in the visual cortex, so brain readers are certainly very likely, whether or not they will be good enough to read detailed images from memory is another thing.

Also How about this, sometimes police radios can be heard during tv broadcasts cutting in on the TV audio, has there ever been a case of tv signals from one channel mixing with another, perhaps faintly but enough to be recovered from a recording?

[RWels]

Offering money for lost episodes. Or issuing search warrants.

[Rich Cornock]

cash is a big incentive, if i won the lottery id put adverts in the press offering the public rewards for anything recovered. bet that would soon get a few beta maxs dusted off in lofts

[johnstewart]

richardbignell said:

johnf said:

Richard, why are you so determined to justify the BBC's actions?

It's not about justifying them. It's about understanding the decisions that were made over 30 years ago and the reasons why they were made.

Historical context is everything.

Richard

What I'd like to add about context is something I was thinking today.

In the 50s and 60s; there was evidently a much stronger link between the state and the British Broadcasting Corporation than now.

As you correctly stated earlier Richard; at that time the BBCs charter did not contain any provision to obligate it to keep an Archive as such. Archive Selector Sue Malden was quoted as saying in the early 1980s that 'the BBC film Library was primarily a Library for the BBCs own use'. The Library originally being set up so that they could reuse film clips or news footage in further news broadcasts.

Its clear from existing footage from debate shows like 'TALKBACK' that when the deliberate wiping of a show held to be important in the public eyes; ('WHITE RABBIT'); took place due to copyright reasons; the BBC of the time was held to be professional at every level and that there was disappointment at this action.

Similar scenarios had happened before in Independent television with the adaption of 'TURN OF THE SCREW' in 1960.

A letter to the TV TIMES in 1969 illustrated a lack of general public awareness of Television wipings when a member of the public requested for the c. 65 series POWER GAME (Rediffusion); to be repeated. It was stated that the series could not be reshown as the tapes had been wiped.

In the case of the BBC the licence payer system was something sanctioned and controlled by the Government.

I would argue that it is generally in the interests of a generation to be preserving its history for future generations; but at that time society was slow to catch on that television was becoming the new form of the information forms found in Literature for example. So I think there was a general acroos the board climate doubling a lack of public awareness with a general feeling not just from television companies; but the Government who were in control that there was anything worth preserving.

The same Government who set up the BBCs licence system could have at any time intervened to ensure it included insurance to Archive material but it didn't bother. So I blame the Government.

We know that any failure to Archive was across the board; hence for example; Granada did not regard much of the genre 'Pop music' as Archive'; and Thames were poor; for some reason (for a commercial company) in the years prior to 1972 for almost all genres except adult drama.

And sorry to diversify from the original topic again!