The wiping of TIMESLIP's master VT's

[davidstead]

Just a general enquiry really.

I was told back in the very early 1990's, that all 26 episodes of TIMESLIP had still existed until around 1983 (2 years after ATV lost it's franchise), in the vaults of Central.
The were then offered to the ITC film storage (was it denham?)archive, who (due to their then computer system defaulting to Colour for many films/f/r's), in reply to Central said no you can wipe those VT's as we have colour copies here(!!) Doh!
So Central happily went ahead and wiped the only existing VT's! - At least one escaped thankfully.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

Mind you I suppose it's not unusual this sort of thing happened, as the BBC's Are you being served pilot survived on VT in BBC Enterprises vaults until around 1983, when that was happily wiped!

[Peter Stirling]

Does not sound very plausible to me. By the 1980s the quad tape format (that was used for Timeslip) was going out of fashion with broadcasters and videotape prices were declining all the time and was now cheaper than film to buy, from its heady £1000 per reel days in the early sixties. So a director would budget in a nice fresh tape for his masterpiece why would he want someone else's old tape?

So why would any company bother with employing someone to wipe them?

It may well have been that some of Timeslip tapes would not play properly because of their age and the decision was made to get rid of them all .
Sadly what was deemed as unplayable in the 1980s could have
well been made playable in the 21st century.

just a guess

[cperry]

It's possible David.

We have been given an inventory of Central holdings between 1982-1988 and Timeslip is nowhere on that list, so I think its unsubstantiated by the facts we hold anyway.

c

[Deleted]

It does sound plausible to me. Especially as - from past experience with archives - the left hand often didn't know what the right was doing and lack of communication seemed common.

Less likely that the tapes were wiped for re-use though as 2" was being superceded by 1" by 1983. If they did get rid of the masters at that time, it was just to junk the tapes rather than re-use, supposing that the archive already held colour copies.

Madness that things like this still happened in the '80s but (as we know) it was something that went on more recently than that. I remain unconvinced that it doesn't still happen, even if to a lesser degree.

[davidstead]

Hi Peter, Chris and Laurence,
Many thanks for your comments. I suppose it's possible it may have been 81/82 it happened, but I agree it certainly sounded feasible when I was told it. Also the story came from one of the Central announcers who was told by someone from their library - the trouble with ATV material is trying to tie down what did happen to a lot of their VT material as they seem to have kept a lot of 50/60's f/r stuff, but not all their VT from even the late 70's.
I suppose had Lew Grade been as keen to keep programmes as he was to make new ones to sell, we may have had many more programmes surviving.
We all know the BBC wiped many programmes over the years up to the mid-late 70's, but at least the paperwork was kept for much of it, so at least we know what actually happened to the material that no longer survives on VT/f/r.
With the BBC being the right hand and Enterprises the left hand, from my BBC experience, lack of communication between the two hands was a big problem over the years!

[markboulton]

In most organizations these days, the "left hand" and "right hand" are often people who sit right next to each other on adjacent or adjoining desks.

[Deleted]

Nov 20, 2010 21:34:21 GMT markboulton said:

In most organizations these days, the "left hand" and "right hand" are often people who sit right next to each other on adjacent or adjoining desks.