So when did the BBC actually stop it's junkings?

[Duncan Anderson]

I noticed that there are missing episodes of Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green from the mid 70s - I was a bit surprised as I didn't think there really anything missing from major shows after the early 70s...

[Guest]

The policy to keep major drama, comedy etc. in totality came in in the late 1970s. Nearly all of this type of programme survives from Jan 1978. Before that plenty is lost.

Other empheral programming gets deleted/never recorded as broadcast standard to the current day, although the BFI tape all the output of BBC1, BBC2 and selected others since 1991

[Peter Roberts]

Episodes of The Adventure Game are missing from 1980 and 1981. It was a superb show. What was the definition of 'major'? Who decided?

[Guest]

There were some BBC guidelines that ranked "A" to "H" or something, taking into account historical importance and commercial value amongst other things.

I doubt game shows were thought of as important enough to keep the whole run of ... they were rarely repeated until the secondary market like selling to Challenge TV became a reality in the mid 90s ... and an example or two was probably deemed sufficient as against the cost of storage etc. up until that point.

I would have thought the Adventure Game wipings may have been a mistake, given the fact that so many were kept and only a small amount lost.

[Laurence Piper]

[quote author=Guest-Guest the BFI tape all the output of BBC1, BBC2 and selected others since 1991[/quote]

I don't think they record it all to broadcast standard though. The last time I heard, it was onto SVHS / VHS for research / viewing purposes. The NFTVA did begin a scheme to record a large chunk of output in the mid '80s to broadcast standard (which has been going on since), including all major news broadcasts etc, but not the entire output of any channel.

[andrew martin]

Guest-Peter said:

Episodes of The Adventure Game are missing from 1980 and 1981. It was a superb show. What was the definition of 'major'? Who decided?

The TV archivist of the time - that's their job. 'Superb show' is a subjective opinion (someone else might well consider "The Adventure Game" dull and pedestrian!), and at that time it was more likely that complete programmes in minor genres would be wiped. Policy is constantly under review, and since then (it was over ten years ago) it has become far less likely that programmes would be disposed of.

[andrew martin]

Guest-Guest said:

There were some BBC guidelines that ranked "A" to "H" or something, taking into account historical importance and commercial value amongst other things.

I doubt game shows were thought of as important enough to keep the whole run of ... they were rarely repeated until the secondary market like selling to Challenge TV became a reality in the mid 90s ... and an example or two was probably deemed sufficient as against the cost of storage etc. up until that point.

I would have thought the Adventure Game wipings may have been a mistake, given the fact that so many were kept and only a small amount lost.

The "Adventure Game" wipings were deliberate - though I think it was only the first series that had episodes wiped, as material is reviewed chronologically. It wouldn't have been considered necessary, at the time, to keep every show, but examples were retained.

The "A - H" codings (actually "A - K") are archival categories based on genre/reasons for retention, rather than degrees of importance - if a programme has any archival category it will almost certainly be kept forever. If it doesn't, it may well be kept anyway. But all drama, comedy, documentaries etc etc are archived - stuff that isn't tends to be daytime tv, but even there examples are kept.

[Peter Roberts]

Guest-andrew said:

The TV archivist of the time [decided what to wipe] - that's their job.

How did the archivist arrive at the decision of what survives and what gets wiped? Apart from commercial considerations, did their own subjective opinion play a part?

Guest-andrew said:

The "Adventure Game" wipings were deliberate - though I think it was only the first series that had episodes wiped, as material is reviewed chronologically.

According to this site there are 2 programmes missing from the 1st series and 2 from the 2nd.

Guest-Guest said:

The policy to keep major drama, comedy etc. in totality came in in the late 1970s. Nearly all of this type of programme survives from Jan 1978. Before that plenty is lost.

On the recent repeats of Yes Minister (1980-1982) some episodes looked broadcast quality, but others looked like cleaned up VHS. A recent repeat of Miss Marple (84?) also looked well below 16mm quality. So it seems to me that major stuff was being wiped or mislaid at the BBC well into the 80s.

[andrew martin]

The archivist makes decision based on the agreed archival policy, not just their own personal opinion/discretion. Wiping decisions also have to be agreed by the programme producing departments and Worldwide (who may have plans to exploit the series).

Adventure Game - two episodes from series 1 were wiped, one has since been recovered from a private collector's VHS. There are indeed two episodes missing from series 2 - I was just relying on my memory, which isn't perfect!

Yes Minister and Miss Marple - the transmissions were from digital copies of original transmitted 1" or 2" tapes - none of these programmes has been, or would be wiped, there are even multiple copies so it's impossible for a single master tape to go missing as could have happened in the past. Poorer picture quality might be due to the age of the material, the transfer, or reception problems.

[Paul Reid]

Re: early-mid 70s "Z-Cars" ..

Why have the odd "Z-Cars" story here and there survived from this era seemingly at random , one or two survive, then several do not, then one does etc. etc. There seems no pattern to it (logical or otherwise).

I could understand if one recording block of stories were wiped or one series or one year, or indeed only one or two "typical" episodes were kept as an "good example" .. but none of these seem to be the case ..

Say for 1971-1974 ... why the pattern of "survival" for this series? I'm very curious! Any thoughts?

[Ben]

Guest-Paul said:

Re: early-mid 70s "Z-Cars" ..

Why have the odd "Z-Cars" story here and there survived from this era seemingly at random , one or two survive, then several do not, then one does etc. etc. There seems no pattern to it (logical or otherwise).

I thought that was the point - that there was no logical to the junking and, like Doctor Who, what survived was quite random and by chance.

[Laurence Piper]

Random and totally frustrating! If any pattern can be detected from the programme retention of this time then there seems to be a general and gradual trend towards keeping more stuff of all kinds (although there are still random and shocking gaps but increasingly less often by the mid '70s). Something you can spend hours trying to see a logical pattern to - but there is none. The "selection process" was up the creek at this time. That's why we have the patchwork quilt that is the TV archives!

[andrew martin]

It does seem random - there may be several reasons for retention and likewise for wiping, even simply that certain programmes' tapes were at the front of the queue to be re-used. Perhaps an analysis of the spool numbers of the tapes concerned (where known) would reveal a pattern! Even with VT though, not every programme is the original master tape, a lot of things are BBC Enterprises copies - again one would need to analyse that sort of data to see if any sense could be made of it. With Z Cars, the loss of the last two missing episodes "Two Hundred Tartan Teddy Bears" and "Dinner Break" is quite mystifying as they are little holes in among a reasonably complete run otherwise. There does generally seem to be an increasing number of holes the further back you go...

[Ben]

This is just my opinion, of course, but I am actually quite thankful that the junking was random, confused and illogical. If it was organised, we most certainly would have a lot less material than we do today and probably less chance of recovering other missing footage. Footage that should have been destroyed has turned up mislabelled or having been stolen. Admittedly, some footage was lost that was intended to be preserved or rumoured as such (Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet 4 and The Power of the Daleks spring to mind), but I believe that is in the minority in comparison to the footage that exists or footage that will resurface due to the disorganisation.

[andrew martin]

Well, there are several scenarios aren't there - best case would have been keeping everything (though the BBC archive would be ten times as big a building as it is today). Second best would have been if there had been archival selection as it exists today, with only less important programmes junked. Third best might be where something like the amount of material that was actually kept had survived, but it was selected rather than subject to the vagaries of fate. Worse case scenarios than that would be that junking was far more stringently applied, that the archivist post had never been established, that nothing ever came back from abroad etc...