Who would love to see an Classic tv Channel?

Here in the UK now we get hardly any classic tv channels anymore. Paramount Comedy 2 was great for golden british comedys. Go back 13 years there was UK Gold, Granada Plus, Bravo and Carlton Selcet.

Nowdays it's just basically none, I think if there was to be a satellite/cable/freeview channel introduced that shows 100% classic shows, it could prove very popular in the UK. There's a lot of us in the UK who would love to see a rerun of the old shows.

Well, UK Gold is still a classic Comedy channel, but the other shows have been distributed to other channels.
For example: The Bill has gone from GOLD to Alibi.

Old editions of 3-2-1, Sale of the Century and Treasure Hunt (Westward version - not the C4 one with Anneka)

Old ITV idents and startups (e.g. HTV - der da du-ra du-ra da etc)

Old ITV schools programmes e.g. Stop Look Listen, Basic Maths etc, plus Living and Growing with red triangle warning after the watershed, all complete with interval/countdown clock

Terry and June (particularly "A Day In Bologne")

Opportunity Knocks (1970s Hughie Green editions)

New Faces from the 1970s (complete with ATV ident)

Old Eurovision Song Contests e.g. 1970s / 1980s

Gameshow would get put on challenge ( and all espoides of 321 have been shown)

old School programmes would be utterly pointless

I don't suppose Challenge have ever shown a single edition of the Westward TV "Treasure Hunt", which was on in the late 1970s. I think it was only shown in the Westward region. Surely the SWFTA must have it in their archive.

SWFTA: should do,

you could have the 1970s Channel and have all the classic;

Challenge had horrendous problems clearing Chain Letters, a relatively recent programme from an extant broadcaster.

I suspect that getting clearance for a near 35-year-old show from a broadcaster that has been dead for near 30 years would be almost impossible. This is assuming that they're still around in a broadcastable state.

The interesting times are ahead though -- don't these old shows' copyrights run out after 50 years?

Don't remind me about Chain letters, it took nearly a year to get sorted ( it was just for 1997 version)(

I appreciate that Westward TV ceased broadcasting on 11 August 1981 (TSW took over using the Westward name in vision until 31 Dec 1981). Surely though the broadcast/repeat rights to all Westward / TSW programmes are now held by The South West Film & Television Archive (SWFTA). So wouldn't Sky, UKTV or Virgin Media (owners of Challenge TV) need to approach now need to approach the SWFTA for rights to show the 1970s Westward TV game show "Treasure Hunt"?

As for broadcast state, any Westward programmes e.g. Westward Diary, Sports Desk, Treasure Hunt, Mark It, Walking Westward, Drakes Venture which happen to be held in the Archive - I'd have thought they'd have been made on high quality film or video tape, which would remain in broadcastable condition if stored in thie right conditions. It is the South West Film and Television Archive , I expect the premises is staffed by experts who have all the right equipment to maintain conditions right (temperature, humidity etc) to keep film and video tape in perfect condition for decades.

Just because the programmes exist doesn't necessarily mean the rights are available to buy. In the case of the TVS archive, for example, Challenge stated at one point that they couldn't buy any older episodes of Catchphrase before 1994 because it was anybody's guess as to who owned the rights to them. So technically the Virgin network owns the TVS back catalogue now but they can't use most of it as all the paperwork has been lost.



And that is the issue. The archive for SWFTA should be good as they actively sell and promote it. However the same cannot be said for other archives. I remember reading ATV were pretty lacklustre on archive proceedings, to a point where a fair chunk of it is no longer usable.

Virgin don't own the TVS archive, Disney do. However it's not something they specifically bought so their interest in it in minimal

The lack of paperwork is the major hurdle as even if someone wants to buy a programme or clip they can't license it. The physical archive is in a bit of a state too, see this post for more details: http://www.mausoleumclubforum.org.uk/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=14661&page=2#pid163506

The only exceptions are programmes like Art Attack and Ruth Rendell which were sold to the production companies that continued to make them post-1992

There's a lot to it than that though.

Firstly just because a programme was broadcast doesn't mean that a copy still exists, it could well have been junked years ago or just never kept. If it's from the 70's it would been recorded on an obsolete tape format (or film), there's no guarantee that it would be on a newer format and TV companies aren't in the habit of transferring material 'just in case' - it's done on merit. Then as with TVS there's the matter of paperwork. To show an old programme certain people would need to be paid depending on their contract at the time - the presenter and other contributors, composers etc.

But then your living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that any TV company would decide to broadcast an obscure 1970's regional quiz show that would appeal to an audience of 1