I've seen lost TV shows go for auction on Ebay and consortiums of fans are happy to pay for the film prints, but when it comes to lost Dr.Who, their response is (and they have said this) is to email the seller and ask if they would be prepared to loan it to the BBC for copying. WHAT? And reduce the cost of it? And why not do this with other lost TV shows? Or is Dr. flippin' Who the be-all and end-all of archival chases?
Video tape was used a lot in the 1960s and I suspect the 1950s. But it had the advantage that it could be wiped and reused.
;-)
I know technology has improved a huge amount since then, but some of the 1970s/80s PAL to NTSC conversions were awful. Reds looked pink, blues looked turquoise and so on. So my little icon was a subtle "dig" at that
From 1993 onwards there has been a British Film Institute Initiative to recover lost British TV. Its called "Missing Believed Wiped." I attended the first two of these and we were told that anything - brief clips, audio recordings, cine film taken from a TV set, domestic VCR/VTR material etc. was of interest. But I know of a few cases where audio material was offered up and there was no interest. One BBC Engineer was given a lost Harry Worth TV episode and he kept it in his locker for the better part of a year before giving it to the archives.
And then there is the matter of the wiped children's shows. You might think these don't count; only vid kid after all? But people have fond memories of some of those TV shows and were horrified to discover that the BBC Archivist had decided on his own back in 1993 to wipe many episodes so that the 2 inch tape could be sold to countries that used this obsolete format (Australia, being one I believe). Some of those shows only exist because commercial copies had been made for overseas sales, but the original tapes are now gone. When the BBC wanted to put together a tribute night to one of the people involved in one of those kids shows, they were horrified to find that a lot of stuff had been erased. And the BBC Archivist kept his job. At the same time as he was doing this, he was on the podium at "Missing Believed Wiped" telling the audience that the BBC were interested in lost material. Oh, the irony. Oh, the hypocrisy.
Byte your tongue.