Status of TVS archive

Action Time's name was on the credits throught the entirety of the TVS run, so they certainly had something to do with the show! Whether they have any paperwork or anything which would allow it to be broadcast though...

Rights holders would potentially include not just the actors, but the owners of every still in a picture frame, composer, writer and performer of any incidental or featured music, any director who worked on it, even the owners of the typeface used on the credits. How they were contracted will entirely dictate whether they still have an interest in future sales or broadcast of the show.

Of course it may not be possible to re-contract everyone involved in the original production - and in some cases some broadcasters who own content may decide to take a punt and 'await claim' - but equally it is possible that just a minor actor in the show could veto it being repeated (though this would depend on the original way they were contracted). It wasn't unusual for 80s shows to contract people for the minimum required rights - not a buy-out (which would have cost more)

Read all 12 pages of this thread - very interesting, although I am still none the wiser as to the actual location of the TVS archive.
One thing that does strike me, seeing the Paul O'Grady clip and the assertion that material was rescued from a skip, is that all this talk of missing paperwork would become (indeed maybe has become) superfluous, if someone has fairly recently taken a decision to send unwanted tapes to an incinerator or a landfill. Not sure of the date of Paul O'Grady Show, but it is fairly recent I would have thought. It would seem to enforce the concept that the archive has remained in the UK, rather than being sent to the US. I suspect if material has been dumped, it is because someone has decided it has no commercial value and wouldn't include everything. However, it is a shame and one would have thought some organisation would have been interested in taking unwanted material.

Sorry, that's bollocks.

Asset sales are usually specified lists of assets. Intellectual property does not transfer with the sale of an asset unless specifically listed. Anything not listed is not included. If I sold my flat, and left behind some sort of artwork I had created - while the new owner could possibly claim title to the physical object, the IP would remain mine.

With corporate takeovers the reverse is true - every asset the company and any subsidiary companies has is included unless specifically excluded (in which case it is usually transferred to another company not within the hierarchy of the relevant company).

The two are very different concepts.

Flextech had an interest in 2 specific assets - The Family Channel, and the Maidstone Studios. They therefore purchased those assets (and presumably agreed some sort of licensing agreement to allow the Family Channel brand to continue on analogue transmissions only). IFE continued to exist, and continued to hold the TVS archive, along with MTM and whatever else they owned internationally.

Fox Kids/Family bought all of IFE - everything. IFE as a seperate entity no longer existed (corporate registrations aside). Everything that was theirs was now indirectly an asset of Fox Kids/Family. That includes MTM, which they were presumably aware of as a valuable asset, and also TVS, which was of such low importance to the sale that they were probably completely unaware of it.

Handily, the 1998 Flextech website lists their assets in detail:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980529103258/http://www.flextech.co.uk/html/flextech_television.html

Under programming they list "Hallmark Rights" but nothing else.

This article from The Independent is also notable: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/media-mathew-horsman-on-the-growing-market-for-template-television-1344218.html - particularly this bit:
My bold.

Jill may be still alive, but with her family going public last year that she is suffering from Altzhehmiers - chances are she doesn't know she starred in Cats Eyes let alone know who to approach to track down the tapes and where the paper work actually is.

Is there any hard evidence that paperwork or a database detailing the rights to TVS programmes was lost / dumped into a skip / taken to the US and never seen again, or is it all just a rumour that continues to circulate?

I think the Paul O'Grady Show is a red herring and the reference to a skip said in jest.



Are the tapes of the TVS archive classed as a physical asset or as intellectual property?

I want cast iron concrete proof of who owns the tapes of the TVS archive.

This sounds like the most likely scenario. After all as I mentioned before, what did IFE do in the UK once it sold off it's channel and building? It didn't own anything, itwasn't producing anything, it wasn't broadcasting anything. I'd say it was very likely that the UK arm of the company was wound up. The only thing left in the UK was a load of tapes which from then on were the responsibility of someone in the US

Are you trying to imply that the documentation detailing the rights to TVS programmes was taken out of the Maidstone Studios and moved to the IFE offices in the US - possibly as early as 1993? When IFE sold the Maidstone Studios to Flextech in 1996 they had a room filled with video tapes but no information about the rights to TVS programmes.

The tapes are a physical asset, the content on them is intellectual property.

Of course without the latter they're mainly just lumps of plastic


Why? I think you're asking in the wrong place of you are really serious in wanting to know.

I did hear about some investigations into their location by some archive enthusiasts a couple of years ago. I never heard their conclusion though

No I'm not, I'm agreeing with what Interceptor said... the company ceased to exist in the UK, everyone was laid off and the operation wound down and the paperwork lost during that process

Many of the people working at Family channel and even Flextech were EX TVS emplolyess, even Nigel was head of programming at TV ended up running Family channel after spending 18months at STV.