Huge UK TV find at U.S Library of Congress!

[Paul Vanezis]

Sept 14, 2010 8:21:27 GMT @cperry said:

UCLA etc are private archives and rights will have been granted to them when deposits were made. They will expect paperwork and cash to part with their shows.

I suspect there's an understandable cost involved in archiving the material in the first place, so buying back copies is not unreasonable. But granting rights only stands up in law when you own the rights you are granting. It is entirely provable that WNET and other companies in the US did not own the rights and therefore can't transfer someone elses rights; that's certainly the case with BBC material.

Sept 14, 2010 8:21:27 GMT @cperry said:

Who says A-R own The Hippodrome Show? I have seen no paperwork at the IBA or BFI so the Americans could argue they own it, property being nine tenths of the law. It's a legal minefield sadly Laurence, one that BBC Heritage and ITV don't really pursue.

Property isn't nine tenths of the law; that's just a saying trotted out in cases involving theft. This is entirely different. If the programmes/recordings are obviously made in the UK (and frankly a listings magazine would confirm an original TX /publication date) then the only argument in ownership certainly would not involve the LOC, UCLA or other archives; they are just third parties. The issue about a programme sale to the US would involve licencing agreements made at the time and WNET et al would certainly not be claiming they owned any rights in a licenced work.

Of course, as time passes those at the LOC and other archives may see things differently, but as they are FIAT members, I find it hard to believe they would be asserting rights in a work they only own through donation by a licencee.

I think the BBC would be more interested in acquiring their material but I of course know precisely the issue with A-R.

Paul

[cperry]

Hi Paul

I agree with all your points but I was thinking about specific cases that I'm aware of where rights confuse issues.

UCLA has many missing editions of Court Martial for instance with rights held by ITC/Polygram they say, and we think ITC/Polygram put them into the vault just before the company was sold to Carlton and so ITV now own the rights but UCLA only recognise ITC/Polygram because it has an American co-production credit and they refer back to the US paperwork. Looking in the TV Times would say its a UK production but they argue differently. We don't know who is right lol.

There is plenty of conflicting paperwork on who owns The Danzigers archive in addition to the rights held by the Danzigers holding company. The Danzigers frequently sold rights for their shows to multiple parties.

Certainly in the case of shows like Martin Kane Private Investigator with no paperwork surviving, it may say ABC on the end credits but it's held by ITV because they inherited it in the vault at Denham. I know of at least 10 ATV shows held by non-ATV archives that sell them for clips without objection from ITV. I agree property isn't law but people often do sell clips/TV shows in that way.

Of course I agree that with the BBC it's a lot more clearcut and you know far more about their rights than I do.

Which all begs the question - if it's so clearcut the BBC own the rights, I wonder what the holdup is to get their material back from UCLA?

C

[Paul Vanezis]

Sept 14, 2010 13:58:42 GMT @cperry said:

...if it's so clearcut the BBC own the rights, I wonder what the holdup is to get their material back from UCLA?

Well, I don't know what's in the UCLA archive. But if it's pre-1972 then there's the whole public domain issue to deal with.

What are the titles and who at the BBC was dealing with it?

Paul

[cperry]

I don't know who at the Beeb was dealing with it. Andrew Martin identified a missing Hugh and I episode but I don't know who he passed it on to Paul. Probably posters here know more than we both do lol.

c

[Deleted]

Sept 14, 2010 8:21:27 GMT @cperry said:

Who says A-R own The Hippodrome Show? I have seen no paperwork at the IBA or BFI so the Americans could argue they own it, property being nine tenths of the law.
c

Lots of interesting comments being made. Paul beat me to it on the above point specifically though. I would think that it was clear cut who owns / made The Hippodrome Show as you only have to look at the on-screen credits (which will be UK production crew etc.), where it was shot and a Rediffusion ident at either end.

A depressing scenario is painted though as regards the retrieval of programmes which are OUR heritage here in the UK.

By the way, some pictures are now up on Kal's website:
www.kaleidoscope.org.uk/

[John Wall]

This morning (Wednesday 15th September) there was a piece on Radio 4's "Today" between 7-30 and 8-00am and I think I heard someone say that there was more on at 1-30pm which would be the "Media Show". I'm away from home but this should all be available on the iplayer.

[Rich Cornock]

its been mentioned on BBC Radio 2 Steve Wright show and been a news item on ceefax. The stories slowly getting out there. i guess it wont get a mention on tv until they have some clips available from the missing shows.

[John Wall]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11295247

[cperry]

You can see some great clips on The One Show and Newsnight tonight, the BFI have just rung and told me.

c

[Deleted]

The Newsnight plug didn't happen although The One Show featured a brief clip of Sean Connery. Quality was OK; looked like what it was - film print transferred to 525 line VT. A bit jerky (a bit like high quality Youtube!). Hopefully though some tweaking can be done to the programmes where a print doesn't still exist in addition to the VT copy.

[Peter Stirling]

Sept 14, 2010 8:21:27 GMT @cperry said:

Who says A-R own The Hippodrome Show? I have seen no paperwork at the IBA or BFI so the Americans could argue they own it, property being nine tenths of the law. It's a legal minefield sadly Laurence, one that BBC Heritage and ITV don't really pursue.

c

There is printed material around from the time which says
AR had just sold The Hippodrome Show to the American network CBS .

property nine tenths of law?

so are you saying Chris if I had the only copy in the world
of Casablanca and started flogging off copies, Warner Brothers would be quite happy for me to do that...er I dont think so ;D

[Rob Hutchinson]

been away for a few days and came back yesterday to this huge surprise, so a belated well done to everyone involved in this recovery.

it does bring up lots of questions though and here's just a few:

has the LOC completed its cataloguing or is there a chance that it has more work waiting to be discovered - perhaps from another network?

i'm guessing that this is not all the uk stuff that WNET had. did they keep records of the movement of material. maybe some material went to other places and never came back? And what of the other tv stations - what did they do with their copies?

along with the New Zealand film archive's discovery of lost american silents this is the second time this year that it has become evident that archives in 'developed' countries are not fully catalogued and are in possession of lost material. the obvious question is how many more are there?

on the topic of 'will we ever get to see any of this stuff anyway?' i'm quite optimistic for the future. i've heard that warner bros are in the process of digitizing their entire back catalogue so it can be sold on demand. if this is successful others will follow, perhaps even the bbc eventually

[cperry]

Yep Peter, if Warner Brothers didn't have any paperwork to prove ownership that could happen. It's been happening in the US for years, bootleg DVDs available on Amazon etc. A high profile title such as Casablanca and The Avengers are well known intellectual copyright and as such would be hard to bootleg but lesser known films are pirated all the time and sold as being legit.

Fortunately Warner, like all film companies, fights for its rights. Whereas A-R is owned by a property company that knows very little about its archive and has virtually no paperwork so it tends to not get into discussions about returning The Hippodrome Show to the UK.

I didn't see the Newsnight piece but Adrian told me the story was on there, perhaps he was imagining it lol. It was the BFI who rang up and told me it would be on so perhaps it was cancelled at the last min?

c

[Ally Wilson]

In both the NZ archive, and I expect the LoC (correct me if I am wrong) the items in question were on the catalogue (often written up in vague and ambiguous terms admittedly.) The problem was that no-one in the archive was aware of the rarity or importance of the items. A perennial problem, and why it always pays to ask anywhere you think there may be a vague chance of undiscovered film. Libraries and universities are often good sources for forgotten archive treasures, and the people who work there frequently don't know the full extent of collections which were probably amassed before they started working there.

[Deleted]

Sept 16, 2010 9:47:36 GMT Rob Hutchinson said:

along with the New Zealand film archive's discovery of lost american silents this is the second time this year that it has become evident that archives in 'developed' countries are not fully catalogued and are in possession of lost material. the obvious question is how many more are there?

It makes you wonder. This new find flies in the face of those who are continually stating with "certainty" that nothing more is out there. I'd guess that the LOC scenario is, if not common, then certainly not a one-off by any means.

Programme details of the LOC find are now incorporated into the 2010 Discoveries thread for ease of access, by the way.

On the subject of the farcial Rediffusion rights situation, it makes you wonder exactly why a construction company like Archbuild - who have no real interest in retrieving TV material, releasing any on DVD or in fact doing anything pro-active with it at all - don't just sell the rights on to someone that actually has more of a hand in the TV world, to give them a chance to make something of the archive! This means no disrespect to Archbuild and what they do but broadcasting is just not their world at all.