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Old 24th Mar 2024, 12:01 pm   #1
dave walsh
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Default Archived BBC Radio Programs

I only noticed yesterday that there is a quite informative "Hidden Treasures" feature in the current Radio Times [p108]. This seems to be a further push to retrieve missing items that either were misplaced in the Archive [eg a Dennis Potter play] or not kept in the first place. There are also tapes sent to the excellent enthusiast group "The Radio Circle" by members of the public-amounting to 1000 long lost radio plays. There is a season of these starting today on Radio 4 at 3pm with The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter. That's followed by "What is the story behind the Hidden Treasures drama season?" but that only gets 15minutes. The Potter play from 1971 "Traitor" is aired tomorrow at 2-15am and then broadcasts will move to 4xtra ie Tuesday/ Wednesday/Thursday and Friday...all at 10am.

On Sunday May 5th Radio 3 presents the first ever stereo production of Macbeth [also from 1971]. To be honest I'm amazed that Pinter and Potter items could have gone astray in the first place. It might say something about previous cultural attitudes I suppose! The article concludes with a look at AI and whether it could reconstruct a lost spoken word program using the script and a sample from the voices. This was done with the John Lennon demo "Now and Then" recently. Of course anything may be possible but is it desirable in terms of authenticity? Will the AI version ultimately become more acceptable?

Dave W

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It doesn't matter outside the Gates of Eden" Dylan 1964
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Old 24th Mar 2024, 1:59 pm   #2
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Hello,

I was only yesterday thinking about the keeping of recordings of old radio shows and this had me pondering about doing a post.

I’m not wanting to hijack this thread and I hope this falls alongside the topic of the thread... Anyway Mods, feel free to shift this to a different heading/topic/title etc., etc., if you feel it's more suitable elsewhere…

Firstly, it was certainly sad to news to hear about the passing of Steve Harley last Sunday, however, fitting with the thread I remember Steve Harley doing the Sound of 70s show on Radio 2 back in noughties before JW took over. It was a good listen as he always played a good selection of tracks.

This sad news had me rifling through my Mini Disc archive, and I have found what I think is all 28 of his sound of the 70s shows from 2007-ish in my Mini Disc archive – see attached photo… I used to record the show (one for the teenagers) off air using a DAB radio with a digital (SPDIF) connection feeding a Sony Mini Disc player, which resulted in good quality recording. The half hour show started at 12 midnight, so I started the MD recording at 11:30 and went to bed and then listened to the recorded show the next day (another one for the teenagers).

I’m looking forward to listening to all these shows again and remembering Steve Harley.

Apart from the thoughts regards the passing of Steve Harley, it also reminded me why I didn’t overwrite the discs and I just popped them in the cupboard as I felt they were worth keeping for the future.

I figure, I’m not alone with keeping what are recent recordings like this? Mind you it was 17 years ago, and one forgets the march of time! That's equivalent of finding in 1977 a recording of a 1960 radio show.

Regards
Terry.
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Old 24th Mar 2024, 2:21 pm   #3
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

I am not really obsessive about hearing (or watching) again content from ages ago, though appreciate that some people are.

The only real thing I have that might be of historic interest is a C120 of the Radio 1 dance / club show that was an hour either side of the Millennium.

I was working then, checking that the Internet kept going over the trigger period for the Millennium Bug, so though I was getting seriously well paid for a few hours work it meant I couldn't "party like it's 1999" as Prince said we should.
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Old 24th Mar 2024, 2:40 pm   #4
dave walsh
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It doesn't look like a criminal offence Terry I'm sure that the two agencies would welcome your Mini Disc material one way or another. I have a few hundred of those-a great technology then and now! The Beeb did a bit of a handbrake turn at one point and suddenly we eccentrics and our recordings were being asked for missing items that should have been retained. Even long after that, tapes used to monitor the radio program output, from BBC Oxford Road Manchester, in the nineties, were discarded or erased. Later on of course there was a plea for home recordings of their Radio 1+2 output. There's a Sound Archive at the British Library and many others located nationwide. Maybe AI could be useful for collating all this data with the BBC as a sort of 21st Century Smithsonian?

Dave W

You may imagine that the Millenium program was locked away Tanuki but I wouldn't bet on it. It was amazing to discover that the 1969 moon landing, all night, vigil with Patrick Moore et al wasn't kept!

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Old 24th Mar 2024, 5:07 pm   #5
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

BBC Archive is active placing 'the way things were' and 'a day in the life of' type material on youtube, some of it quite randomly picked. At least one is technically post-watershed, regional accents having enabled profanity to slip through the net. Some interesting stuff for sure.

Dave
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Old 24th Mar 2024, 5:20 pm   #6
dave walsh
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Does that You Tube manoeuver add to the confusion I wonder, given the No of seperate Beeb archives they are supposed to be integrating already. Or is it a "behind the curve" attempt to operate elsewhere?

There's more on this in the "Hidden Treasures" piece [after Dumb Waiter R4]. It was quite informative if relatively short and crossing with comments on this thread. For example, near the end, there was an extract from an early Radiophonic Workshop Sci Fi play starring Honor Blackman as the Artificial Intelligence running things on board. This is very much like HAL in "2001 A Space Odyssey" who assures BBC News that the Series 9 Computer [himself] cannot go wrong-until he does! Are we there already?

Dave W

"Stop Dave Please Stop" 2001 ASO

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Old 25th Mar 2024, 12:11 am   #7
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

I don't think it's a cultural issue as much as a business one. I understand radio was considered rather like theatre or dance in previous years, when there wasn't such a drive for infinite archives (and when there wasn't the capacity to do so).

A programme (please, let's avoid the Americanism of the thread title if only for the imagined difference in the mouthfeel as we maintain individuality) was broadcast and then done with. One can imagine the space and expense of tapes and discs weighing on BBC executives. No wonder early episodes of programmes now considered 'lost' were overwritten.

There is an interesting analogy in the case of buildings (my day job). Now that demolition is so feasible with modern machinery, the protection groups have become more forceful. In previous centuries, buildings were repurposed and adjusted to new mileus, which enriched our experience. Today, it's likely they'll be razed and something new erected. Unfortunately, the same technology that allowed its razing also means it's likely to be of rather lesser quality.

I've been doing some remedial work to an 18th century building; removing a very poor 1990s conversion that was damaging the fabric, and listening to The Goon Show on Four Extra while doing so! Echoes of my grandfather's Bluebottle impression sound down the years.
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Old 25th Mar 2024, 1:45 am   #8
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I take all your points UB and apologies for the American title but I've never spelt it any otherway. It wasn't just cost but choice based decisions on the opinion of managers who were not really up to what was going on. I think that we are actually on the same side but I've followed all the worst examples of those in charge and setting the agenda for a number of years now. When a part of a studio in the old Beeb building was re-configured the stud wall was found to be packed with crisp and chip papers along with tape reels of Goon Show episodes.

Acetate episodes of Journey into Space were discovered in a cupboard at the [then] World Service building. It's really not good enough and we should pay for it to all be preserved-especially when our social history is now audible and visible-not on parchment! I usually refer to the current DG at the BBC as "Peter Brady". That's because it's always a man and was the name of the Invisible Man in a very popular H G Wells TV series broadcast in the 1960's. He was swathed in bandages and not saying very much! How often have we heard from recent ones?

Dave W

At Bury, in the 1980's, they finally caught on to having a trendy record lending Library but the person in charge stocked it with mainly classica LP's, their own preference, causing an uproar. Does that "sound" familiar?

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Old 25th Mar 2024, 2:16 am   #9
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Oh, I'm on no 'side' Dave, and not in argument with you - programmes exist and are found or are lost and that's 'que sera, sera'. I guess if pushed I'm not convinced by the 'archive everything simply because we can' mindset. As humans, our oral history skills are lost by modernity. I quite like that some things exist between people, then they fade before new experiences arise. We can never know the Victorian music hall, but we can imagine. Many discussions are quashed by recourse to the new Delphic Oracle of Online, where all knowledge resides.

Except it doesn't, as we all know. Specifically, the intricacies of any repair, and hard-won 'experience': the actions of the hand, eye and brain are not reducible to bytes and bits.

Conversely, a discussion at a dinner party the other night led to a viewing of the Coronation Scot on YouTube, filmed by (I think) the GPO film unit, using the commissioned music that was later used for the Paul Temple serials, which my mother has just got into, about fifty years late. We all bemoaned how that shared experience of broadcasting has shrivelled into today's 'narrowcast' where preconceived ideas are reinforced. I'd love to see mid-century-equivalent newsreels at the cinema instead of endless laughable car adverts. There's no Coronation Scot equivalent for new trains. Did Anna Meredith compose a piece for a film of the Pendolino?

I'm still very annoyed by the shutting down of the BBC shop, as I've had to get a Paul Temple collection on secondhand cassettes and digitise them myself for family members. That was a bizarre cost-saving measure. No matter the 'rise of streaming' I do only buy music and films in some sort of physical medium, ideally from somewhere reputable.

I know Beeb-bashing is not a topic for the forum, and I am a whole-hearted proponent of national broadcasting myself, so glad they're able to do what they do under attack. In fact, just this afternoon my brother and I (I guess we'd both be in the BBC's succulent desired 'younger' age group) were discussing how much we like 'Journey Into Space' which we came across on Four Extra. I'm certainly guilty of aping Lemuel Barnett and saying 'Televiewer...on!' when operating any piece of equipment... James Follett's 'Earthsearch' with Angel One and Angel Two remains one of the most seepingly creepy programmes I've ever heard.
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Old 25th Mar 2024, 9:57 am   #10
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Quote:
Originally Posted by dave walsh View Post
When a part of a studio in the old Beeb building was re-configured the stud wall was found to be packed with crisp and chip papers along with tape reels of Goon Show episodes...acetate episodes of Journey into Space were discovered in a cupboard at the [then] World Service building. It's really not good enough
Not entirely correct, and since I was involved in both, I should know. The wall cavity in T3, Kensington House, was stuffed with tapes from the washing pile to damp resonance which affected the stereo image. General rubbish would have been a fire hazard and was not present. Close enough to twenty years later, I extracted them, having been tipped off by an engineer who was there at the time. Among the retrieved material was the premiere of Britten's War Requiem, long declared lost by the Corporation (the performance was a mess, but no matter). The last three series of Journey Into Space languished in the TS library in Kensington House for a generation, two on 16" coarse groove pressings and the last on 10" microgroove. The World Service credit was a PR fig leaf - at that time the existence of Transcription Service was regarded by the domestic services as a dirty secret.
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Old 25th Mar 2024, 11:48 am   #11
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Quote:
Originally Posted by dave walsh View Post
I only noticed yesterday that there is a quite informative "Hidden Treasures" feature in the current Radio Times
You can afford Radio Times?!!!

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Old 25th Mar 2024, 3:55 pm   #12
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

I take your point Aub and that's one of the reasons why I post about things others might miss. I can't [or won't] afford a lot of things these days like most of us but I don't regard the RT as a throw away item. It's on a par with the RSGB Bulletin as far as I'm concerned and I "treasure" those as well. There are umpteen sources for program info of course ie via a TV, "free" on a mobile or free newspapers. As an obsessive amateur Archivist though, I appreciate the detail in RT, especially re the radio listings. I've always bought it at the cover price but more recently on Subscription so it's much less. It's the same with my main Newspaper and people ask the same question there but I'm paying about 40% less than it says on the front. More and more people [especially the young] can't see any point in a printed news source at all. Bless! All the more reason for carrying on until they become collectors items. I rarely get fish and chips now, even in the North! They are effectively a luxury item these days. The food and the old newspapers, that they were once wrapped in, used to cost relatively nothing. I suppose we all make our choices. I've never smoked but some people still buy cigarettes, even at at the incredible price

That's great to have such "insider" info Ted. Thanks very much. I had heard the story from different sources. The version I heard claimed the Goon Show episodes "rescued" may have included "The Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea". Mr Milligan was on the cliff here with a machine gun during WW2.

I suppose a lot of big organisations get out of control. Even the British Museum didn't know what it had when it was realised that things had gone missing! I heard "Journey into Space" as a small child but only a little of it. I managed to find the paperback [aged about 11] but had to wait years until it came out on cassette. I've always been impressed by it's primary theme of the steady abduction of humans from the Earth. Just clever Sci Fi then but now a major subject endlessly studied in certain quarters A bit of a coincidence-like the early Quatermass when they are digging a Tube Line perhaps.?

One of the other "tales" I picked up was about the closure of the Lime Grove Studios when the contents seem to have been skipped without thought, including cans of film. The footage detectives in TPTV would have had a field day! Were you around when that was happening I wonder? I heard that there were "scouts" lurking around the TV Centre at White City when it was due to close.

Dave W

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Old 25th Mar 2024, 6:30 pm   #13
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Remember that BBC does not necessarily own the copyright/rebroadcast-rights for all their content; in the case of something first broadcast in the 40s/50s/60s/70s the original contracts may long since have been lost. And even if you can find them, getting the permission of *all* the people involved in the original production [or in all likelihood, their heirs/administrators-of-estates] may prove to involve more time/cost than you would ever gain by selling the stuff on DVDs.

Wasn't it the late Alexis Korner's relatives who discovered that the BBC didn't have the rebro rights to some of his shows and so blocked their re-use?

Personally, the only 'legacy' BBC audio content I would be interested in ever hearing again would be recordings of 1970s Radio1 Road Shows, and then only the recordings of the ones I actually went to.

As to archival, the practical issues are enormous; tape-rot (sticky-tape-syndrome/oxide-shedding/binder failure/print-through), obsoleting of formats [remember that BBC project to produce a Doomsday Book for the 1980s, that used a strange and now-obsolete laser-disc technology?], and the problem that for plenty of these formats there are not enough surviving tape-head-hours to be able to transcribe/digitize the archives that *do* exist.

In the commercial media world, I'm just glad that the likes of Euston Films/ITC produced The Sweeney, The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Saint and similar for commercial sale so there were plenty of copies made. There's been an ongoing thread in another place about just who owns the copyright to C.A.T.S. Eyes [1980s TV series featuring Jill Gascoigne] given that the original commissioners - Carlton TV- now no longer exists and their successors don't really know anything about the copyright position for their 40-year-old stuff.
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Old 26th Mar 2024, 12:38 am   #14
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

Copyright works for which the identity of the owner is not known, are called "Orphan works". You can find information about them on the Patent Office (Trading as the "Intellectual Property Office") web site.

Briefly, after making unsuccesful diligent efforts to find the copyright owner, you can apply for a licence to use it from the patent office. If the real owner turns up within 8 years, the fees (less an admin charge) go to the owner, otherwise the government keeps them. My understanding is that enforcement is a civil matter that would have to be taken by the actual owner, who would need to produce a chain of written assignments of copyright from the original owner to establish his title. So the orphan works licence can be considered to be a sort of insurance policy that raises revenue for the government.
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Old 26th Mar 2024, 9:14 pm   #15
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

According to

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...copyright-term

the copyright in broadcast material lasts for 50 years from the year in which the broadcast was made. However, the copyright in other sound recordings lasts 50 years from the year in which the sound recording was made but, if during that period the sound recording is published or made available to the public (e.g. by being played in public or broadcast), copyright lasts for 70 years from that year.

Pre-1963 sound recordings are treated differently with the copyright period being 50 years for all recordings.
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Old Yesterday, 2:07 pm   #16
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Default Re: Archived BBC Radio Programs

I have found this a very interesting post, thanks to all the contributors.
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