BBC Wiping Material as late as 1993?

[John Wall]

There are often statements on BBC programmes to the effect that longer versions of some things are available online.

[Tim Linnell]

I agree awith the points about what happens to material when it's chucked. It would have been maybe more reasonable to offer material elsewhere instead of destroying it, but then again you have a raft of issues potentially around copyright, ownership, and personal material and you need a review process which can be costly. Just putting it into secure containers in a commercial store would be better than landfill though. Keeping original formats until they rot isn't stupid, you then have more of a chance of having something than if it's buried or shredded, and these analogue formats are often stubbornly robust in practice.

But the BBC policy on rushes for news material isn't unreasonable - it's the same in effect as run by say the Times - and it skips the need for setting out review policies which would be in themselves open to criticism.

As far as the trashing of broadcast material goes, of course that's regrettable. All the same, the fact that, say, a 1960s pop show was trashed is as much part of the history of the medium and the way it was regarded as ephemeral as the actual episode itself: attitudes to worth and value are changing and that's an interesting social historical dimension. This has always been the case anyway, artists children are notorious for destroying work felt to be of no value on the death of their parent. Most heritage has been clutter at some point.

But it's of nearly zero importance to me personally in many cases whether or not episodes were kept or discarded, because even where they were kept I have the devil's own job and a lot of expense actually getting to see them unless someone decides to put a few truncated clips with idiot captions on a BBC4 documentary. If the archive were more widely accessible, you might find peoples' attitude to funding it through the licence fee changed. Otherwise we're being asked to pay for a private library.

I don't think space is the issue anyway, it's about the costs of preservation and propagation. Yes, you can put things onto hard disks or optical media. Unfortunately these have short lifefimes which are not necessarily predictible, so you have to have a backup strategy and multiple copies. Then the example of the Domesday project shows how ephemeral playback equipment is, so every archived item needs to have formats refreshed and translated every so often, when you are adding to it exponentially every day. It is a huge commitment, and you can't scale up personal experience to understand it. Like it or not, the BBC archive is not a big part of the way those who fund it use the BBC, and the organisation has to reflect the priorities of the funding source.

This isn't to say I disagree with the idea that the BBC doesn't keep enough - the response to the argument that anyone objects to current policy wants to keep everything is of course to make the point that suggesting that the current BBC policy isn't unreasonable doesn't mean you agree with it! What I object to is Crick's purist line which doesn't reflect the realities of funding and the practicalities of maintaining a usable archive. It's about balance fundamentally.

[Deleted]

Sept 20, 2011 8:21:20 GMT Tim Linnell said:

As far as the trashing of broadcast material goes, of course that's regrettable. All the same, the fact that, say, a 1960s pop show was trashed is as much part of the history of the medium and the way it was regarded as ephemeral as the actual episode itself:

I don't subscribe to the ephemeral argument with regard to pop material in the '60s. It may have been true culturally for some quarters of the BBC and other UK broadcasters but wasn't the case in Europe, where a lot more was kept. It's an old cliche as far as i'm concerned as the rule was different depending on where you were.

I agree that some rushes contain no interesting extra material (e.g. line-ups, fluffs etc.) but - again - to say that more should be kept now or in the past is not a call to preserve every last second of them! There will clearly be though (even at the time it was shot) material of worth but which is not relevant to the programme it was intended for. So there is a middle ground to be found.

[Rob Moss]

I agree, there is a middle ground. The problem is, as soon as you bring "selection" into the process, you're relying on someone's judgement to decide what is worth keeping and what isn't, and there will always be someone who disagrees with at least some of the decisions that were made.

[Deleted]

That's true but so long as you consult a wide range of people that are looking at it from different angles, you get a balance (not just "media people" from within the industry either).

[Andrew Doherty]

Let us be grateful for those in the television industry, a number of entertainers, private collectors and, most significantly, overseas media organizations for saving and retaining television material that otherwise would certainly not exist.

It is exactly one year ago since the public announcement of the discovery of the Library of Congress collection of British Television dramas.

Two weeks a ago I had a chance meeting with someone who works at the BBC Elstree studios and guess what! She knew nothing about this great recovery of programmes. This tells me that the BBC, internally, is not too keen to mention this news. But then, neither are the ITV holding companies. In fact, apart from the enthusiasts, I doubt it would have been known generally. There seems to have been a very low key approach to this and other recoveries and only the BFI have given the opportunity for the public to view these programmes.

Yours,

[davidstead]

I think I would tend to agree with Andy.

I wouldn't so much say the BBC is not keen to mention the various finds, but it is so separated as a corporation now. It was going that way when I retired in 2005. Presentation no longer exists as such, it is an independant company own by an Australian banking concern, called RED BEE MEDIA and only have the right to transmit BBC progs now till 2014, after that anyone company could get the job of transmitting the BBC TV progs. Kids dept are now in Salford, sport dept will be in Scotland. TVC is being sold. The various departments never talked much to each other in the old days. If and when Scotland become independant, what we used to have in TVC, won't even be in the same country....lol!
The NFA may not be ideal in terms of accessing material, but at least it's still all one company, not split into bits and sold off.

[Paul Vanezis]

Sept 22, 2011 19:37:32 GMT Andrew Doherty said:

Two weeks a ago I had a chance meeting with someone who works at the BBC Elstree studios and guess what! She knew nothing about this great recovery of programmes. This tells me that the BBC, internally, is not too keen to mention this news.

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. The recovery of the Library of Congress material was featured on almost every entertainment page of the BBC website and featured on BBC news programmes.

But to be fair to them, it isn't big news in the great scheme of things and it isn't a lost Doctor Who that's returned which, as we all know is good currency for the news people and anyone involved in documentaries and features. The loss of TV shows has been very well covered by the BBC over the years; the Elstree lady is just uninformed...

Paul

[davidstead]

Good point Paul,
After all you didn't elaborate Andy, as to where she works in Elstree? Not everyone in the BBC is aware of everything that happens in other areas, even when it's featured on news progs etc.
Mind you even the news don't always get things completely accurate. BBC London news did after all state that Steve Roberts was the name of the chappie who had returned Dalek Masterplan Ep:2...lol.

[Andrew Doherty]

The reason I did not elaborate on where the individual worked was because she did not give any details and I did not ask for such. As for the low key approach, yes it was mentioned in the Guardian newspaper and some other papers and there was a short (very short) mention on the 'One Show'.

I believe it is something the BBC would have preferred not to have shouted about. After all, there are viewers that still think they will find a full archive in the organization, believe it or not.

On the other hand, there are some people out there that hold very strong opinions on the topic and insist the BBC should have been abolished for wiping and junking of television material. Severe, I know, but there it is.

By the way, the selling of the BBC Television Centre does not meet with approval in some quarters.

Yours,

[Martin Dunne]

Don't forget that it was widely reported three years ago that nine episodes of Marco Polo were recovered from Thailand on 160 mm format ... I'm sorry, I can't finish.

[Peter Roberts]

The best information I've found on this is by T J Worthington, on this page:
www.offthetelly.co.uk/?page_id=781

Some time in the early 1990s, a huge amount of videotaped children’s programmes were bulk-erased by the BBC archives. Amongst these were episodes of Animal Magic, Take Hart, Vision On, Play School, Play Away, Jackanory Playhouse, The Adventure Game, the first three series of Rentaghost, the only known copies of the English language versions of several Tales From Europe, and a large amount of Watch With Mother. The master tapes of around half of the episodes of each of Ring-a-Ding, Ragtime, Playboard, How Do You Do!, Over the Moon and the extended versions of Bod were erased and most likely lost forever.

This was not simply an arbitrary act and, as far as those involved were concerned, was done for valid reasons; at the time, such programming was seen as having little in the way of sales potential, and it had also become clear that the budget allocated to fund the transfer of the BBC’s archives to a digital format would not extend to cover “low priority” items. It was also an isolated incident under a specific set of circumstances, and rumours of other mass wipings in recent years have no basis in fact.

However, no backup copies of any of the programmes marked out for wiping were made on any other format, and the Children’s Department were not consulted about the decision. In fact, the situation reportedly only came to light when the producer of the Tony Hart series Hart Beat requested some early editions of Take Hart to use in a new archive feature, only to discover that they had been wiped shortly beforehand. Fortunately copies of the lost episodes of Rentaghost existed elsewhere in broadcast format, and editions of Animal Magic and The Adventure Game were later recovered on domestic formats from home recordings and tapes retained by the production office. But the likelihood of many other shows destroyed during this purge turning up elsewhere remains remote.

It should be emphasised that, unlike previous occupants of the role, the BBC’s then-Archive Selector took care to ensure episodes of each show were retained as examples. While this is something to be grateful for, and the loss of some archaic children’s programming is hardly on a par with some of the more significant losses from the archives over the years, it is arguably scant consolation to those who have fond memories of a certain song from Ragtime, or a particular Alberto Frog story, and would have quite liked to see them again. One producer who was working in the Children’s Department at the time recently commented, “It was a shame – these were 2″ masters that had survived the 1970s”. That the decision displayed a remarkable lack of foresight is perhaps the most charitable remark that can be added here.

He also sent me this:

The reference to 'tapes retained by the production team' was in reference to Animal Magic, as the Natural History Unit at BBC Bristol kept their own meticulous collection of off-airs of the show from about 1977 onwards - some of these have in fact been used as the basis of clips in a couple of recent documentaries.

[Gary Critcher]

'Marco Polo were recovered from Thailand on 160 mm format ...'
Gosh, that roll of film must have been absolutely HUGE!!