Status of TVS archive

I dont know, It was some US channel that started playing them and then someone got wind of it and it went to court, Im sure there was one other programme that is in that case. TV station never got into trouble since there paid the money it was disney or what every that got into trouble.

They were being played out on Channel 5 (alongside United News & Media-produced shows which did pay royalties) in addition to international stations.

Inspector Wexford actor George Baker went to Equity who managed to negotiate a £350,000 settlement with Saban who owned the rights at the time.

I'm not sure Disney would go to as much effort for a couple of episodes of All Clued Up.

Bullseye was very much an exception.

I can see where you're coming from for studio-based entertainment shows (dramas and comedies don't really fall into this category), but Bullseye was a special case when it comes to game shows.

The vast majority of game shows of the era were sourced from the USA. These shows (Family Fortunes, Blankety Blank, The Price Is Right, Gambit, Celebrity Squares etc etc) were sourced from American companies who were specialists in their field (and so were very good at getting formats right first time), and typically hundreds (if not thousands) of episodes had already been made in America before the format ever got here -- to the point where 90% of all shows made in such conditions were done in a single, continuous take.

If such shows were not fully-optimised by the time they made it here, they never would be. The UK producers (who were relative incompetents when it came to packaging such programmes) simply had to copy the US show word-for-word.

Bullseye, being created by a comedian in the UK with no prior experience and given to a TV company with only mild experience of packaging stuff like this, was always going to be stuttering at first. Frankly, ATV's show would have been thrown out in the States, long before even the final pilot was sent to the networks, purely on the basis that they hadn't a clue what they were doing. Countdown was the same (the pilot was an amateurish embarrassment, despite themselves being given a ready-made and proven French format) -- YTV hadn't the first idea how to package an entertainment programme properly -- the difference being they could go back to the French tapes to pick up tips on where they went wrong.

Same with Treasure Hunt, another French import albeit heavily retooled for the UK market. The first two series, pre-Wincey, were awful. It's only from series 3 it gets really good.

Let's get this matter straight. The TVS archive is a recurring subject on the internet but what I'm interested in knowing is the following:

1. Has anybody got cast iron concrete proof (like I have personally seen it in the last 6 months) that material from the TVS archive is stored at the ITV archive in Leeds?

2. If so, then has this material been catalogued to determine exactly what is and isn't stored at Leeds?

3. If large amounts of the TVS archive are owned by Disney then how exactly did it come to be stored at the ITV archive in Leeds? I intelligently assumed that the only TVS material to still be on ITV premises was the news and current affairs programmes handed to Meridian, and some TVS produced episodes of a small number of programmes which were continued by other ITV companies after 1992.

4. There have been stories over the years that the part of the TVS archive which is owned by Disney is stored in a room at the Maidstone Studios. Has anybody got cast iron concrete proof that material from the TVS archive is still stored at the Maidstone Studios? I am aware that the Maidstone Studios were refurbished a few years ago and there was a story that the TVS archive was moved to another building somewhere in Kent whilst the refurbishment was taking place.

5. If so, then has this material been catalogued to determine exactly what is and isn't stored at the Maidstone Studios?

6. Has anybody got cast iron concrete proof of where the master copies of the C.A.T.S. Eyes tapes are? There was a rumour circulating several years ago that they have travelled across the Atlantic despite the programme never being broadcast in the US. There is another rumour that they are held by Disney in a building near Heathrow Airport along with other higher value material from the TVS archive.

7. TVS produced a number of programmes for Channel 4. Does Disney hold the rights to these? Where is the archive of these programmes stored? Does Channel 4 hold a copy of these programmes in their archive or a complete list of them?

8. What video tape formats did TVS use? I make an intelligent guess that the majority of material is stored on 1 inch reel-to-reel tape and Betacam SP with some older material on film, but was TVS known to use any exotic formats used like MII used by Thames and Anglia?

Welcome to the Forum! Your enter the mucky waters of TVS archive, good luck with that, I like your good self have heard alot of stuff, which at time conflict.

Wasn't all the local made programmers like made for TVS region past to Meridian?

Q4: I can say with NOTHING is stored at Maidstone anymore. I spoke to them and company in Southampton once about something else. Tapes were moved, because of the refurbishment and never come back, because there was no room. There were there, back in the 90s back since then who knows, This is where I heard about the Ashfield warehouse again who knows if that is correct. Its private run company now.

If there were that higher value why are not making money for Disney?

Hi Riaz,
Welcome to TV Forum

1) It most probably is, clips of various things do surface on programmes from time to time so wherever it is its easily accessible, albeit mostly unusable.

3) Because it used to be stored at Maidstone, then through the venture of what is now Challenge TV and its history, Disney have bought the companies in question and inherited the archive.

6) Best guess is with the rest of the archive, but that being said the majority are off-air copies on YouTube so its not like they're totally unviewable.

7) Channel 4 doesn't produce anything of its own so it doesn't have an "archive" as such. Programmes made for Channel 4 are commissioned for it or bought in. Usually the production company that made the programmes retain the tapes and Channel 4 has the distribution rights and copyright.

Yes, happened last year on the Game Show Story where we had several quite clearly broadcast quality clips from TVS Catchphrase.



I believe TVS was bought by IFE not long after they went off air, and IFE was bought by Fox around 1997 (I think the TVS paperwork went missing during that sale) and became Fox Family, then to Disney in 2001 when it became ABC Family, which is how they ended up with the rights.

No, because around that time Flextech brought over the family channel around the same time, whats more interesting from 97 until early 00, we had family late which had a number of IFE programmes, Challenge also broadcast all those TVS gameshows thus the paper work had to be in order for them to broadcast them.

To the best of my knowledge it was just news and current affairs programmes that were handed to Meridian. It's likely that other material only broadcast in the TVS region that was retained by TVS and ended up in the hands of Disney. TVS televised several local events such as the Tall Ships Race, Red Arrows, and the Glyndebourne Opera. There there were programmes like The Real World and various documentaries about things in the south east of England.

If the tapes were moved out of the Maidstone Studios during refurbishment then was Disney involved because it was officially their property or was the move organised by the owners of the Maidstone Studios?

I received a story that what was stored in the Maidstone Studios was lower grade material of little interest to Disney such as the documentaries and local programmes along with TVS specific materials like idents and promos but the children's programmes and higher value entertainment programmes weren't there.

According to Companies House, TVS Entertainment PLC was dissolved on 06/06/2000. Was the address 20 Farringdon Street, London, EC4A 4PP the office where the paperwork detailing the rights to TVS programmes stored that was later dumped into a skip?

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01518771

There's more information about TVS on this website.

At the very least some sport stuff must have ended up with Meridian too, as ITV4 showed a TVS football show from 1983 a few years back.

Hasn't it been settled on here that the reason that Challenge were showing the likes of Catchphrase and All Clued Up until 2000 because around the time Flextech took over The Family Channel, they signed a contract for the shows, and they were able to show them until the contract expired- but couldn't renew the contract because of the missing paperwork.