Why we don't have every 91Èȱ¬ programme ever broadcast
As the controller of the 91Èȱ¬'s information and archives, , struck a chord.
The 91Èȱ¬'s archive is a phenomenal resource of over 4 million items. It can allow us to experience and understand all sorts of cultural, social and economic aspects of life in the UK from the 1950s onwards. You can see some examples of material from the 91Èȱ¬'s archive online in the Archive collections. But sadly, as Andrew highlighted, we don't have recordings of many programmes that we have broadcast over the decades - and I wanted to share the reasons behind this, and ask for a bit of help.
That lots of recordings were taped over reflects how we have thought differently about television over time. In its earliest days, television was not seen as something you might want to keep. It went out once, live, and that was that. It was simply not envisaged in those days that people might want to view those episodes again decades later, and even if they had, early recording techniques were very limited.
Even as recording technology became more available in the Fifties, other constraints mitigated against long-term collecting of programmes. Concerned about the implications of recording and repeating television on their employment prospects, actors' unions and others with an interest in programme-making sought to limit the rights of broadcasters to re-screen programmes. Meagre prospects for re-screening, along with the high costs of recording tape, meant much that much television of that era still wasn't kept.
In the following decades, the 91Èȱ¬, like every other broadcaster, still couldn't record everything. Tape recording was very expensive, so keeping recordings of shows was often a luxury, rather than a routine, and tape frequently had to be re-used and recorded over.
There was a real shift in thinking in the mid-1970s, when the 91Èȱ¬ began to comprehend the longer-term value of what it created. At that time, 91Èȱ¬ archivists and librarians began to exert more control over the management of its archive in an attempt to safeguard programmes for the future.
As Andrew says, the arrival of digital technology means there's no need to tape over anything, and nowadays, everything transmitted on national television and radio is recorded and kept. The main issue facing audio-visual archives now (and not just those of the 91Èȱ¬) is the long-term preservation of archive material, whether through digitising older recordings, or through maintaining appropriate storage conditions for increasingly fragile older material. Neither of these is cheap or easy. But we have to act now to make sure our archives survive so that future generations can enjoy them and learn from them too.
Amazingly, we do uncover items from time to time that we thought had been lost - with people finding old tapes and sending them in. I do wonder how many "lost" 91Èȱ¬ recordings are sat in storage in people's houses.
So if you do happen to have an episode of Doctor Who from the 1960s , or in your attic, we would dearly love to hear from you...
Sarah Hayes is the Controller, Information and Archives.
Ed's note: If you'd like to find out more about the 91Èȱ¬'s archives there's an interview with Adam Lee on the 91Èȱ¬ Archive website where he answers various questions including "Why aren't there many recordings from the early days of television?" and "Once the technology was available, why weren't all programmes recorded?". (PM)
Comment number 1.
At 3rd Sep 2009, dennisjunior1 wrote:Sarah:
Thanks for the informative advice regarding the reasons, why the 91Èȱ¬ doesn't broadcast all of the programmes....
=Dennis Junior=
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd Sep 2009, HD wrote:Even for programmes broadcast by the 91Èȱ¬ in high def this year and previous years, eg. Eurovision we still can't buy them on Blu-ray because of the EBU. I don't see much point in the archive if you don't allow us to buy the past programmes broadcast in HD, in HD on Blu-ray. We pay our license fee to the 91Èȱ¬, the 91Èȱ¬ is part of the EBU, and is one of the top 4 contributors to the ESC but the EBU (which the 91Èȱ¬ is a part of) still won't release them on Blu-ray for us to buy even though our license fee was used to produce them.
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Comment number 3.
At 3rd Sep 2009, jocknroll wrote:I'd like to know why we have to pay so much for copies of programme we've appeared on. The licence fee is £142.50 but I'm expected to pay £103.50 for a copy of each show I've been on.
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Comment number 4.
At 3rd Sep 2009, Alex wrote:@3 jocknroll
I suspect that reflects the cost of logistics to process your request. I doesn't take too many hours peoples labour to add up to £100.
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Comment number 5.
At 3rd Sep 2009, TV Licence fee payer against 91Èȱ¬ censorship wrote:4. At 10:39am on 03 Sep 2009, AlexBennee wrote:
"@3 jocknroll
I suspect that reflects the cost of logistics to process your request. I doesn't take too many hours peoples labour to add up to £100."
Indeed and not only someone's time but the 'hire' (use of) the logistics to make the copy, whilst these logistics costs will have come down in recent years due to digital production/acquisition, editing and storage (in comparison to the days of magnetic tape based production/play-out) it still ties up the equipment that could be earning money in other ways.
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Comment number 6.
At 3rd Sep 2009, ten gear bat bike wrote:Can I add if anyone has the original Quartermass plays, I will build a shrine to them if they're given to the beeb!
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Comment number 7.
At 4th Sep 2009, smallnumbers wrote:@jocknroll
As AlexBennee and Boilerplated have said, it would be due to the logistics, research and duplication etc.
You pay a licence fee, as do we all. But you can't expect your additional, personal copy, to be paid for by the rest of us. After all, you had the option to record the programme for free when first broadcast, or repeated.
Buying a DVD in the shops is obviously cheaper but then it's a commercial release, with thousands of copies.
Frankly, £100 or so quid at commercial duplication rates for the man hours and equipment hire that would be needed sounds pretty cheap to me.
That said, the more access we can get to the archive (and the themed events like the WWII outbreak are a great help in this) the better.
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Comment number 8.
At 4th Sep 2009, jocknroll wrote:I've no objection to paying for copies, just the price.
Through various circumstances, I didn't have the opportunity to tape some of the shows I was on. The ones I do have are on ropey old videos and before DVD technology became mainstream.
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Comment number 9.
At 7th Sep 2009, Jim Sangster wrote:Just in reply to tengearbatbike's comment about the original Quatermass plays, sadly this isn't the same situation as with other missing shows that were broadcast in the 1960s. The first series of Quatermass was broadcast live, and as Sarah mentions in her fourth paragraph, there were concerns about the 91Èȱ¬ simply recording programmes and then repeating them; the actors' union Equity in particular were (understandably) worried that this would deny actors of their performance fee.
As a consequence of this, only the first two episodes of 'The Quatermass Experiment' were telerecorded, for the purposes of compiling a 'previously on Quatermass'-style recap for later episodes. The last four episodes weren't recorded at all, and so tapes of them have never actually existed.
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Comment number 10.
At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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