Callan and other old ABC shows continued by Thames

[cperry]

But Laurence - in 1976 - she was looking at the broader picture and was being far-sighted, hence her decision.

Has your dad still got his car he owned in 1976 and it's sitting in your garage? It would be called a vintage car now and be very collectible, lol.

In 1976 for ABC VT:

There was no market for this material.

There were no sales of this material.

The technology of 405 was obsolete and being phased out all the time.

The sales company didn't want it.

Her budget that could employ people then and there to make quality shows but instead was being used to fund a warehouse of 'old junk'.

Video machines did exist but no one wanted to release any of this stuff on video.

The BFI didn't want it. They were OFFERED IT and turned it down for the same reasons - old 405 VT was obsolete.

In 1976 did you keep a book in case the publishers didn't reissue it thirty years later?

These videotapes were worthless, do you still keep stuff from 1976 that takes up a whole warehouse full of space, to be foresighted?

I don't have the clothes I wore in 1976 or indeed the records I bought. Why would I think 'oh better keep this record incase it's not released on CD in 1997?' I wouldn't have even known that CD or DVD might come along one day.

You are right when you say the system is at fault here. The long term storage and re-use of material was never properly addressed by broadcasters; they had no union agreements in place to do anything.

The people who should hang their heads were the original archive team at the NFTVA who were offered the whole A-R library and ABC VT library and refused it on the grounds of cost and 'too much popular telly'. They did have the remit to preserve our nation's heritage and they turned it down on the grounds that Harold Pinter should be preserved, but James Mitchell shouldn't. That kind of selective thinking destroyed a whole generation of popular shows.

c

[Deleted]

Aug 31, 2008 15:49:45 GMT @cperry said:

You are right when you say the system is at fault here. The long term storage and re-use of material was never properly addressed by broadcasters; they had no union agreements in place to do anything.

The people who should hang their heads were the original archive team at the NFTVA who were offered the whole A-R library and ABC VT library and refused it on the grounds of cost and 'too much popular telly'. They did have the remit to preserve our nation's heritage and they turned it down on the grounds that Harold Pinter should be preserved, but James Mitchell shouldn't. That kind of selective thinking destroyed a whole generation of popular shows.

c

I couldn't agree more with these statements, Chris.

Plenty of tapes sat in archives for decades without getting junked though (e.g. Anglia, LWT, Yorkshire, Granada), even if no use was seen for them at that point. Again, the TV system was seriously at fault (along with, as you say, BFI policy). I can't help thinking it was cultural bias too as if these had been prints rather than tapes, they may have been considered as having some value, as with the surviving ABC t/r & film stuff.

Some very interesting info you've been relaying to us here, Chris, to create a fascinating thread. Many thanks and keep in there.

[Daniel O'Brien]

Verity Lambert was deeply p*ssed off that some her own work was junked, notably 'Doctor Who: Marco Polo', so she was as much victim as perpetrator. The attitudes and assumptions of the time were stacked heavily against TV preservation, alas.

[Koen Br]

I've said this before, but I just don't understand why those in charge didn't at least try to save this material in some way. By 1976, quite a few people at home, certain ITV companies and a number of foreign tv stations made efforts to preserve tv material, and apparently Thames themselves offered the ABC archive to the BFI. It's not as if nobody ever thought of tv programmes as being worth the trouble to keep them. At the very least they could have kept N1500 copies.

The fact they weren't even prepared to do that - not because it made sense economically, but because they were handling material that was simply too good to junk - is something I'll never completely understand. It's like a museum saying "Well, we have a thousand paintings but we can only put three hundred of them on display, so we'll junk the rest." People are free to think like that, but if this is their opinion they shouldn't be allowed to work in a museum.

Rant over. :-)

[Deleted]

Aug 31, 2008 20:19:34 GMT Koen Br said:

The fact they weren't even prepared to do that - not because it made sense economically, but because they were handling material that was simply too good to junk - is something I'll never completely understand. It's like a museum saying "Well, we have a thousand paintings but we can only put three hundred of them on display, so we'll junk the rest." People are free to think like that, but if this is their opinion they shouldn't be allowed to work in a museum.

I'm in total agreement with you on this one, Koen! That seems to be how the BFI, in particular, have operated all along though. Not very good curators or custodians of our national heritage at all, i'd say. But the batty selection policy of their past is what we've inherited and have to live with now...

[Adrian Gregg]

Sometimes you Do need the space.. I was working at a community Radio station about 10 years ago and was told to Junk some 50 odd "lang worth" Transcription discs. and the mentality at the place was very much the same. It was a format they couldn't Play. They needed space for CD's which was the format in use. so the discs HAD to go. no two ways about it. Another organization I worked for had rows and rows of Open Reel dating back to the early 50's. as you could imagine there were loads of programming that were "only" on those tapes. about 10 years ago someone found a Bulk eraser and though it would be a good "game" to wipe the lot!! they had sat there undisturbed for nigh on 50 years. it was done "in the Interests of teaching younger people how to wipe tape" Eh.

[Phil Leach]

So do Thames own the format of Armchair Theatre as well? Even though ABC made the majority of episodes and the format is really only the title.

[Jeff Lewis]

Sept 2, 2008 12:55:28 GMT Phil Leach said:

So do Thames own the format of Armchair Theatre as well? Even though ABC made the majority of episodes and the format is really only the title.

Was it significant that Armchair Theatre became Armchair Thriller which technically a different series and has started getting regular DVD releases unlike the former.

[Deleted]

No, it was a different series that came several years later and was unconnected. Armchair Theatre was one-off plays whereas Armchair Thriller was a series of multi-part suspense thrillers. The format was different (hence why the latter is being released, although the so far unreleased Southern-produced episodes are subject to a different rights situation).

[Andrew Doherty]

I too, find the decision to destroy such an archive of programmes, and by such a well known programme maker, to be bordering the unbelievable.

True, the NFTVA (at the time) should have thought this through, but followed the usual approach of the time, viz. the contents of the tapes rather than the archive value of the contents.

The decision is even more risible, when, in the mid-nineteen seventies, there had been protests from writers that had discovered their work to have been wiped and junked, which in turn led to the Annan Report of 1976 laying out the foundations for a television archive policy.

What happened was unacceptable, full stop.
But to have found out that it was Verity Lambert that made the decision is beyond the worth of understanding, and, yes, I know the original reasons for wiping and junking of programmes, and still I say it was unacceptable.

As one ex-BBC employee said to me "it is a good job William Fox Talbot's photographic works didn't have custodians possessed of such a mind set."

Too true!

The 'the price of everything and the value of nothing' school of philosophy is graphically demonstrated in this kind of atrocity.

Still, not to end on a sour note, I believe even some of the ABC Television programmes destroyed may well exist. Only time and effort will tell. Over the years many programmes that were wiped and junked have had copies. Consequently, the search for missing programmes has had many successful recoveries.

Yours,

[timd]

There is undoubtedly more ABC material out there. Some telerecordings of series such as Armchair Theatre were struck for American television between 69 and 71, after ABC's franchise period ended. As great as it is that these still exist, the downside is that it always seem to be the same episodes that turn up. Usually from the same selection that exist at the BFI or Canal+. It's highly likely that some of the plays were erased by ABC prior to 1968.

Oddities such as an incomplete telerecording of ABC at Large turn up from time to time, but I think these have been retained by former staff and ended up on the film collectors circuit.

I live in hope that once Fremantle and Canal+ can work out a licensing agreement, there will be a small raft of 'recoveries.' Probably not as sizeable as most of us here would dream of, but any recovery is usually a good thing.

[Deleted]

Let's hope so, Tim. I'd personally like to see "Intrigue", "Thank Your Lucky Stars", "Tempo" and "Mystery & Imagination" again (all of which I watched at the time) and others like "Haunted", which I missed first time around.

Interesting info about ABC making up prints after their franchise period had ended; where would these have been made? At Thames (Teddington)? This implies that a skeleton admin staff would still be in existence - and based somewhere - for further ABC sales purposes.