Surprise Surprise - previously unaired show

The original Surprise Surprise ended in 1997 but it survived for another four years as Christmas Specials. So the 2003 special is fairly detached from the original series.

I don't think Cilla had particularly rough treatment from ITV. The story goes that Cilla's manager-son Robert was given a very clear heads up that they were looking for an alternative presenter for Blind Date and that it was probably time for a dignified resignation. A story was then spun that they offered it to Dale Winton and he told Cilla what they were doing "behind her back", and then she quit live on air.

The Surprise Surprise special was from a time that ITV had a tendency to hold back programming because they 'couldn't afford' to broadcast it (due to that infamous accounting quirk where shows weren't added to the balance sheet until transmission). I suggest there was nothing more sinister to it than this.

I'm presuming that's not the case any more? I can't really remember the last time we had a programme shown that had been sitting on the shelf for years, but in the early-mid 00s it happened all the time. I remember the first ever show on ITV3 was an episode of Rebus that had been on the shelf for 3 years!

I'm not sure it's the case now, but there is some form of logic to it. A programme cannot pay for itself (via advertising revenue) until it has been transmitted, so it isn't really fair to include it in the accounts until its had a chance to generate revenue.

There was that entire pottery series too which was amongst the launch programming on ITV3 and wasn't that bad to be fair. There was also Bombshell with Zoe Lucker which is still to air but a quick Google just now reveals it is on Youtube so it must have either aired internationally or been released via DVD/On Demand at some point in the last decade.

The only recent example I can think of is an entire series of gameshow My Man Can with Mark Wright and Melanie Sykes, but don't think it's any accounting quirks holding that one back.

There was also some ITV Drama Premiere set in a pottery school or something that ended up getting its first run at some point after ITV3 launched. I remember it being advertised on the ITV Nightscreen as coming soon to ITV1 years before but never showed up.

Jane Hall was a full series that sat on the shelf for two years and I think only ended up being broadcast because ITV had cut back on its drama budget in the mid 2000s to help stem their losses.

I wonder how often stuff gets made in its entirety and indefinitely shelved these days. The most recent ITV series I can think of is My Man Can which no doubt will never be broadcast.

Oh Brekkie's already covered most of my post!

There a few drama which never made it to the ITV1 or 3 which to this day are sitting on the shelf. Shame really.

I'm sure Bombshell was pulled as the finished result was too awful to transmit. I think someone came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be the best idea to give the armed forces the Bad Girls/Footballers Wives treatment.

It has 'enjoyed' broadcasts in Australia and New Zealand however.

It's not ITV and probably a completely different set of circumstances, but when Peter Kay's Car Share was announced as an iPlayer-first series a lot of people (myself included) presumed that this was because the BBC had seen it and deemed it to be not so good, especially when there was no other news about it for a couple of years after it was announced, back in 2013: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/car-share.html

It turned out to be quite successful, so you wonder why it was sat on for so long.

ITV after 2002 when it rebranded as ITV1 also went through a stage of "if it don't perform, it's coming off" and there were quite a few programmes that started off in prime positions, didn't attract a big enough audience and promptly vanished to be replaced by something else while the yanked programme ended up in a new slot or some late-night post 10:30pm slot to die quietly.

TV history is littered with examples of shows that were made, then not shown for whatever reason on the network they were commissioned for. A good third of the 2007 series of Dale's Supermarket Sweep wasn't shown on ITV - they eventually "premiered" on Challenge two years later.

Don't forget Kilroy's Shafted- the majority of which has never been seen! And would probably be forgotten entirely if HIGNFY hadn't had a trend of showing a clip from it regulary a few years back,

Actually between 1998 and 2002 a number of series were never fully broadcast on ITV either, it depended on who owned the station, all because there wanted something else. Its still strange to this day that it wasn't until MAY 2002, when ITV become fully networked. * just to point it there were set times for local shows which in certain block like 60mins slot for certain days etc.s