ABC Archives may have missing episodes

[Wright Blan]

Guest-Richard said:

And even if they found all 108 missing episodes of 'Doctor Who', what an astounding waste of time, money, effort, money, manpower and money that would be.

Jeez! I thought I'd heard it all, I really had...

Nurse! The drapes...

Richard

You must be joking, right? (pardon the pun)

Considering that the Australian taxpayers are TEXTalreadyTEXT paying for housing those archives, it would seem they have the right to know what they have been "wasting" their money on all these many years.
I'm sure there's a lot of stuff in there that could be deemed culturally important to Australians in there. How about ABC coverage of the 1956 Melbourne Games? Does any of that footage still exist? If so, in what shape? I'm sure many would find it interesting how ABC covered the games back then.
(Superbowl Sunday sidenote: Nobody in America knows what happened to the recordings of the first Super Bowl, despite TEXTtwoTEXT networks covering it.)
Besides, there's always the possibility of recouping the money through sales of DVDs and licensing of the footage for outside use, at least for ABC stuff.

[LanceM]

So sinse the ABC archives is being kept in working order by the hard earned money of the Australian tax payer dont they have a genuine right to know what they have been preserving all these years? Maybe someone in Australia should get in touch with Jan-Vincent Rudezki who is the guy who was given permissinn to search the archives, then he may be able to set the wheel in motion to start an active search and recovery project that is long overdue at the ABC archives. We have the right to know what is in there. Lets get this project underway guys, what do you say?

Thanks,Lance.

[Wright Blan]

LanceM said:

So sinse the ABC archives is being kept in working order by the hard earned money of the Australian tax payer dont they have a genuine right to know what they have been preserving all these years? Maybe someone in Australia should get in touch with Jan-Vincent Rudezki who is the guy who was given permissinn to search the archives, then he may be able to set the wheel in motion to start an active search and recovery project that is long overdue at the ABC archives. We have the right to know what is in there. Lets get this project underway guys, what do you say?

Thanks,Lance.

Let's let the Australian contigent handle this first, Lance. Before the Australin government gets turned off by an onslaught from overseas.

[LanceM]

But Wright it looks like the Austrailians are'nt really doing anything at the moment, I have no problem with letting them handle the situation, but just as long as they start doing something productive. That is not an unreasonable suggestion.

[Richard Molesworth]

LanceM said:

Maybe someone in Australia should get in touch with Jan-Vincent Rudezki who is the guy who was given permissinn to search the archives

Thanks,Lance.

This will come as a great shock to Jan! Imagine - he has permission to search the ABC archive, and no-one ever told him. Should he ever get tired of his magazine publishing work in the UK, then I'm sure he'll be on the first plane to Sydney!

Maybe he could get a few pointers from Damian Shanahan!

The things you learn on this site!!!

Richard

[Richard Bignell]

Guest-Wright said:

And how much money do you think it would cost? I doubt it would cost millions to search the archives. Mabye two or three million at the most. Personally, I think it could be done for less than one million, myself.

I don't doubt your enthusiasm, Wright, but I think if you approached an MP with this and told him that it might cost less than a million to achieve, he'd be on the phone to the men in white coats faster than you could say "cuckoo's nest"!

Seriously, just think about this for a moment and take the BBC's own archive as an example. You have over 1½ million items on some seven miles or so of shelving. Now assuming that you have viewing facilities available on a constant basis and who have someone who is trained in the use of a Steinbeck and a multitude of video formats, exactly how long do you think it would take for someone to extract each item, check the contents and move on to the next one? To view the current material alone would take 68 years, not including the time it would take to prepare the items for viewing. And the archive is constantly growing are a rate of thousands of items a year.

And all this effort and expense would be for something that in all probability doesn't exist in the first place

In all respects, such an idea is no more than a pipe dream!

Richard

[Wright Blan]

Richard said:

I don't doubt your enthusiasm, Wright, but I think if you approached an MP with this and told him that it might cost less than a million to achieve, he'd be on the phone to the men in white coats faster than you could say "cuckoo's nest"!

Oh yeah, I forgot this would have to involve unions, right? My bad.
Seriously, just think about this for a moment and take the BBC's own archive as an example. You have over 1½ million items on some seven miles or so of shelving. Now assuming that you have viewing facilities available on a constant basis and who have someone who is trained in the use of a Steinbeck and a multitude of video formats, exactly how long do you think it would take for someone to extract each item, check the contents and move on to the next one? To view the current material alone would take 68 years, not including the time it would take to prepare the items for viewing. And the archive is constantly growing are a rate of thousands of items a year.

And all this effort and expense would be for something that in all probability doesn't exist in the first place

In all respects, such an idea is no more than a pipe dream!

Richard

[Wright Blan]

Richard said:

I don't doubt your enthusiasm, Wright, but I think if you approached an MP with this and told him that it might cost less than a million to achieve, he'd be on the phone to the men in white coats faster than you could say "cuckoo's nest"!

Seriously, just think about this for a moment and take the BBC's own archive as an example. You have over 1½ million items on some seven miles or so of shelving. Now assuming that you have viewing facilities available on a constant basis and who have someone who is trained in the use of a Steinbeck and a multitude of video formats, exactly how long do you think it would take for someone to extract each item, check the contents and move on to the next one? To view the current material alone would take 68 years, not including the time it would take to prepare the items for viewing. And the archive is constantly growing are a rate of thousands of items a year.

And all this effort and expense would be for something that in all probability doesn't exist in the first place

In all respects, such an idea is no more than a pipe dream!

Richard

Okay, i forgot this would probably involve people belonging to one union or another. Make the lower end under two million, just to make it on the safe side.

And this would probably involve more than one person doing this, by the way. Probably less than twenty. And for some reason (though I may be wrong) I don't think ABC's archives are as big as the BBC's.

And by the way, I'm sure whatever is found would be helpful or benificial to somebody in some way. Mabye not to Americans or English or Fans of a certain tv series; but stuff useful for reasearchers in other areas.

[Stephen Neve]

Just have to hope that someone stumbles across one accidently in the Aussie Vaults. An idea here! perhaps someone could have a search on a voluntary basis if it would cost so much to go through the archive from top to bottom. The only two flaws I can find in this is, someone willing to do this, legal and copyright problems of a complte stranger trawling through masses of film.

[Richard Bignell]

Guest-Wright said:

Okay, i forgot this would probably involve people belonging to one union or another. Make the lower end under two million, just to make it on the safe side.

Hi Wright!

It's nothing to do with unions and everything to do with the total impracticability of what you're suggesting!

Richard

[Ian Abrahams]

LanceM said:

So sinse the ABC archives is being kept in working order by the hard earned money of the Australian tax payer dont they have a genuine right to know what they have been preserving all these years? We have the right to know what is in there.

Thanks,Lance.

Um, how long have you been an Aussie tax-payer then Lance?

[LanceM]

Man Ian you are way too synical, here let me reitterate a few things for you, ok? I AM NOT A AUSTRALIAN TAX PAYER. I NEVER SAID THAT I WAS ONE!!!!! All that I said on the behalf of the fans who do live in Australia, and do pay thier taxes. Man, some people on this site are way too serious, show a little humor here guys! Now please dont take offense at what I said, If it did offend you that was not my aim. I merely wanted to state why I said what I said in my previous posting. Hope to talk to you soon.

Lance.

[Wright Blan]

Richard said:

Hi Wright!

It's nothing to do with unions and everything to do with the total impracticability of what you're suggesting!

Richard

Here's an interesting fact: The Smithsonian didn't get around to doing a full inventory of it's vast holdings untill sometime around 1981. That was after being around for about 140 or so years, and after misplacing George Washington's false teeth a time or two.

I think an inventory of the ABC archives would be a little less "impractical" than that.

[Ian Abrahams]

LanceM said:

Man Ian you are way too synical, here let me reitterate a few things for you, ok? I AM NOT A AUSTRALIAN TAX PAYER. I NEVER SAID THAT I WAS ONE!!!!! All that I said on the behalf of the fans who do live in Australia, and do pay thier taxes. Man, some people on this site are way too serious, show a little humor here guys! Now please dont take offense at what I said, If it did offend you that was not my aim. I merely wanted to state why I said what I said in my previous posting. Hope to talk to you soon.

Lance.

Actually what you said was "We have the right to know what is in there", I just wondered what tax paying right you felt you had...

[Stephen Neve]

There has to be some sort of soulution guys, I hate to think of episodes just rotting away in there beacuse of a load of red tape. Damien Shannahan is the best guy to approach any officials about doing this, he seems to have built up a good rapore with the ABC.