Coronation Street

Guess that name was inspired by Morrisons' Bettabuy brand.

I wasn't aware of the existence of Morrisons' "Bettabuy"-branded product range until quite some time after Corrie's era of Reg Holdsworth & the fictional "Bettabuys" supermarket had already been and gone. In fact, I don't think we even had any Morrisons stores in the midlands & the south until quite some time post-Holdsworth (our direct equivalent down here being Safeway, until it was ultimately taken over by Morrisons anyway).

Which "Bettabuys" came first, Morrisons' or Corrie's?

I had always assumed that Morrisons got the idea for the "Bettabuys" name from Corrie, and not vice versa?

Having used to work for Morrisons I am fairly certain Bettabuy used to exist before Coronation Street took it.

I remember on some mid 1990’s episode the Morrisons signage was very clear. Not sure at what point they switched to Freshco’s.

I'm in the Midlands (albeit a part of it that is only a few miles from Yorkshire!) and our first branch of Morrisons (or "WM Morrison" as they were putting on the external signage of the time) opened around 1992, when Reg & Curly were still running Bettabuy! Funnily enough the interior of our store looked much more dated than Curly & Reg's did despite being newer.

I've started watching the DVDs now (onto the first episode of the 1961 disc), while most episodes have the "Granada Television International" front cap with 1969 date, a couple have had this one:

http://image.wikifoundry.com/image/1/tVqXJC8E5Nvv6-DapIfpbQ23239/GW263H171

While it's clearly an earlier endcap, I'm still pretty sure it's not original- cutting into the beginning and end of the episodes with a clear film splice, and without the distortion and video lines of the telerecording. Still looks like something made for export- to give people in other countries an idea where "Granada" was.

On most of these episodes it cuts into a split second shot of a rooftop before cutting to the pan down on the street, and it has me thinking the original frontcap was superimposed over the rooftop shot. Would the originals have gone out with the "From the North" frontcap, and they thought that wouldn't mean anything to international viewers? I know repeats of the first episode have had recreated "from the North" frontcaps attatched.

Unfortunate that the episodes as they were shown originally no longer exist, but considering the state of the archive of the 60s I guess we should be thankful they exist at all.

Yes, there is (or was) an example of this somewhere online - had a brief look just now but I can't find it.

EDIT: found it!
https://www.facebook.com/CoronationStreet1960ToToday/videos/1049916245060390/

I'm guessing early eps of Corrie are now in the public domain due to copyright laws?

I have no idea if they are or not, the Network DVDs I have are officially licenced from ITV.

Shows at least some of the telerecordings have the original front/endcaps on then. I don't know if any of the episodes on the DVDs have that frontcap on (the episode in that link isn't on the DVD- it looks like it's this one: http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_13_(20th_January_1961) ), I'll know in a few weeks when I've got through all of the 60s discs!

I also wonder how many 60s episodes survive on videotape? Of all the episodes I've glanced though, the only VT ones are the two colour episodes, and the 1/10/69 episode. Of course with only 8 episodes representing each year sadly you can't get a grasp on which episodes survive with their original frontcaps or on video.

This page has a list of what episodes are on the DVDs if anyone's interested: http://coronationstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Coronation_Street:_The_1960s_(DVD)

Yes - any episodes up until 14/10/1967 as of today.

Here's the first episode: https://archive.org/details/CoronationStreet9thDec1960

Wait, wouldn't that mean all of the Hartnell era Doctor Who is also public domain? You'd think the fact the two shows are both still running would protect them.

Aren't there often technicalities like the "programmes" are public domain but the scripts aren't or whatever?