Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 27, 2019 14:26:09 GMT
This is part of the issue with the likes of Britbox for me. If the content is all BBC and ITV archive material, haven't we all as TV License holders already paid for these productions through our old licenses? If the TV companies can broadcast repeats for free on the mainstream channels, why do we need to subscribe to access the same?
Or am I being too simplistic about it?
Sam.
No Sam you are not!
I agree - the BBC material has already been paid for - though the Licence Fee, AS WELL as the licencing agreements for broadcasting the programme in different parts of the world. "Dr Who" (from the outset) was sold all over the globe - many lost episodes were recovered by someone having to sift through the paperwork to see which countries had copies.
ITV pay it's production costs through advertising, and early on - by selling a programme to the Network. Basically - ATV (or similar) would present their programme, and then the other regions would decide if it was worth "taking". Not sure if this was the case by the late 1960s.
However - ITV did make a great deal about it's programmes being sold abroad. ATV - through ITC made large scale/budget drama series - and sold all of them to the US - recouping all of ATV's costs, and earning them a Queens Award for Industry in 1968 - for exports. Thames made a great deal out of selling "The Sweeney" to around 50 countries etc.
So yes - many of the programmes have been paid for 5 times over. Britbox and the like is another way of making money from old rope. I agree, these should be shown on conventional TV - they'd make enough out of advertising/sponsorship.
On the Censorship thing - I prefer to see a programme "warts and all" - even cutting the credits/company logos off is a big deal for me. It should be broadcast as the writer and director intended.
I assume Fawlty Towers and Allo, Allo were sold abroad - did they edit/censor them for the French/German market?
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Lord Emsworth
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 27, 2019 15:10:04 GMT
I know in Spain they changed Manuel's nationality
Back to the more general point, on Talking Pictures, before the Hazell reruns, they have a catch all disclaimer along the lines of....
This programme contains content that some viewers might find offensive but which contains attitudes and content which were commonplace at the time
It's a bit more eloquent than that but you get the idea
Surely that's all that would be needed? Then, if people watch something and take offence, then they were warned
I'm amazed when I read books written c1900-1950 just how much casual racism and language there is, but that's the way the vast majority thought and expressed those thoughts. To get offended sseems ridiculous. That said, I can understand why Love Thy Neighbout and Mind Your Language have not been deemed suitable for re-transmission.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 27, 2019 15:16:38 GMT
I know in Spain they changed Manuel's nationality
Back to the more general point, on Talking Pictures, before the Hazell reruns, they have a catch all disclaimer along the lines of....
This programme contains content that some viewers might find offensive but which contains attitudes and content which were commonplace at the time
It's a bit more eloquent than that but you get the idea
Surely that's all that would be needed? Then, if people watch something and take offence, then they were warned
I'm amazed when I read books written c1900-1950 just how much casual racism and language there is, but that's the way the vast majority thought and expressed those thoughts. To get offended sseems ridiculous. That said, I can understand why Love Thy Neighbout and Mind Your Language have not been deemed suitable for re-transmission.
Exactly - that is all it would need. A simple disclaimer.
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Nov 27, 2019 16:54:45 GMT
I know in Spain they changed Manuel's nationality
Back to the more general point, on Talking Pictures, before the Hazell reruns, they have a catch all disclaimer along the lines of....
This programme contains content that some viewers might find offensive but which contains attitudes and content which were commonplace at the time
It's a bit more eloquent than that but you get the idea
Surely that's all that would be needed? Then, if people watch something and take offence, then they were warned
I'm amazed when I read books written c1900-1950 just how much casual racism and language there is, but that's the way the vast majority thought and expressed those thoughts. To get offended sseems ridiculous. That said, I can understand why Love Thy Neighbout and Mind Your Language have not been deemed suitable for re-transmission.
True about books written in the first half of the 20th century and such language and attitudes probably persisted into the 80s. On the other hand, I have read some stuff about black American GIs who were stationed over here during World War 2, who found Britain to be massively less racist than the USA was at that time.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Nov 27, 2019 17:48:24 GMT
On the subject of iffy content, I watched an episode of the Z Cars spin off 'Softly Softly- Task Force' last night, 'Love Thy Neighbour' was showing at the local cinema.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Nov 27, 2019 20:51:31 GMT
I'd kind of like Britbox to fall flat on it's face as, as some of us have said here half the content is already paid for from the Licence Fee and most of what they're offering has been repeated ro death on conventional/terrestrial channels and many others in the digital/Sky age too. The BBC content should IMHO be available on iPlayer in the UK blocked elsewhere and outside the UK sold to amazon Prime, Netflix etc in order to make money. BBC iPlayer and Sounds generally should be better than what they are at the moment I mean ditching programmes after 28 days... you might not be able to watch them in that time with the choice and options around at the moment and why isn't a lot of the archive stuff available either? Could this spell the end for ITV3, ITV Encore? Possibly would explain why the same 4-5 generally crap programmes seem to make the bulk of their output at the moment and also explains why a lot of drama and cult programs have disappeared from ITV4 recently too. Yes also agree if I buy a film, TV programme etc I want it as it was intended to be made not cut for censorship or commercial reasons either! Reckon this will be a precursor to Netflix acquiring this fairly soon however good or bad this may be.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 27, 2019 21:20:43 GMT
I'd kind of like Britbox to fall flat on it's face as, as some of us have said here half the content is already paid for from the Licence Fee and most of what they're offering has been repeated ro death on conventional/terrestrial channels and many others in the digital/Sky age too. The BBC content should IMHO be available on iPlayer in the UK blocked elsewhere and outside the UK sold to amazon Prime, Netflix etc in order to make money. BBC iPlayer and Sounds generally should be better than what they are at the moment I mean ditching programmes after 28 days... you might not be able to watch them in that time with the choice and options around at the moment and why isn't a lot of the archive stuff available either? Could this spell the end for ITV3, ITV Encore? Possibly would explain why the same 4-5 generally crap programmes seem to make the bulk of their output at the moment and also explains why a lot of drama and cult programs have disappeared from ITV4 recently too. Yes also agree if I buy a film, TV programme etc I want it as it was intended to be made not cut for censorship or commercial reasons either! Reckon this will be a precursor to Netflix acquiring this fairly soon however good or bad this may be. I had noticed some programmes had vanished from ITV3 and 4 and assumed it a bit of a coincidence with Britbox opening. Perhaps it's a tactic to encourage those who want access to such material to pay for it.
As you say, the BBC material should be available on Iplayer. BBC Motion gallery did put quite a bit online in the past - even that now seems to have vanished.
On another BBC censorship issue - Phil Oakey of the Human League had a go at the BBC over it's Top of The Pops repeats. Many of the early Human League appearances were on show presented by Jimmy Saville - and so the BBC dropped all episodes featuring Saville. Phil Oakey asked the BBC why they couldn't just show the performances and cut Savilles links out. The BBCs response was laughable, as they claimed "It wasn't worth the effort" amongst other things. They (Human League) offered to pay for it - so they could get copies of their early performances.
Mind you I bet there's a large section in the BBC archives containing "Jim'll Fix it" episodes. Never to be seen again. (Luckily)
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Nov 27, 2019 23:30:27 GMT
The BBC made an attempt to offer streaming/downloads of archive shows a year or two ago, they had quite a good selection of more obscure titles including about 50 Play for Todays. They sold for about £3-4 each & I bought a couple, predictably you couldn't download them to watch on your tv & the size of the files was small. The service went belly up within the year.
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Sparky
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Post by Sparky on Nov 28, 2019 7:05:46 GMT
The BBC made an attempt to offer streaming/downloads of archive shows a year or two ago, they had quite a good selection of more obscure titles including about 50 Play for Todays. They sold for about £3-4 each & I bought a couple, predictably you couldn't download them to watch on your tv & the size of the files was small. The service went belly up within the year. Yes - I saw a some pre 1976 Top of the Pops episodes on here (non Saville) and a couple of Play For Todays - I had hoped that more stuff would appear. The quality wasn't amazing as it was all compressed video, and once you had spent the £3, you didn't have a physical file to keep safe.
I wondered where that went to.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Nov 28, 2019 8:30:20 GMT
Fortunately I think most of those Human League performances are on this DVD, minus the DJ's.
www.amazon.co.uk/Very-Best-DVD-Human-League/dp/B0000B0A23
It's interesting that Phil Oakey offered to pay for the edits to be made to the episodes in order to be shown. Definitely I'll not labour these that points we've discussed at length here, but Del and a few other forum members have even contacted the BBC to ask why the DJ's couldn't be edited for the episodes to be shown but no joy but a less honest answer than what they gave Phil I'm afraid. Fair play to Phil for trying and I think given the availability and assistance he's given the BBC for music documentaries over the last decade or so the fair thing would be to show these clips (minus the DJ's) on a non-TOTP show - like those 'Britannia'/'Anthems' ones BBC Four tend to do.
The Mike Smith one is an odd one over repeats/repeat fee's and not signing the waiver the other presenters did think there's also a bit of needle between the BBC and Smith's family especially the way his career fell off in the 90's... the Dennis Pennis thing maybe?
Considering the current '88 repeats perhaps All About Eve wished they were on the banned list... To be fair they were decent and philosophical about it when they appeared on the 'Story of 1988' documentary recently.
Just out of interest Sparky does it cost a lot - man hours I assume, for TV companies to do edits to original footage etc. I reckon with the software available now it shouldn't but...
Yes always felt the BBC's original streaming service was a bit poor, a bit half hearted. At best it should've been as good as YouTube with the ability to download the content - you've paid for it after all and it at the very least a fairly decent quality like 480p or above. Yes they'd probably argue that by allowing HQ/HD downloads people would put it on YouTube etc. and like the current Sky/Virgin boxes etc. you can't record/copy the PVR recordings to other devices, but there's always a way to download and copy these files so why not allow it legally and make some money out the process? Considering some of it was niche related don't see the issue with them allowing downloads. I suppose Britbox will be the same if you tried recording the programmes to a standalone HD, DVD or PVR... copyright protection would kick in?
Yep.
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