TVS Post-1993

Indeed. A complete catalogue of the TVS archive from 01/01/1993 and subsequent years is something that I have been trying to get my hands on for many years.

There are confirmed sightings of the tapes from the TVS archive in the attic at the Maidstone studios from the early 2000s but no detailed information about individual programmes. Therefore it's possible that certain programmes of commercial interest were not included in the sale on 18/03/1996. It's a well known fact that when companies are broken apart the family silver is spread far and wide. If the sale was to Flextech then it would resolve the questions concerning the absentee owner and who is paying for the storage costs of the tapes at the Maidstone studios.



Stranger things have happened. If IFE has taken everything of interest then they would be more than happy to dispose of the remnants for just £1. Do you know anything about unadopted roads on former company owned housing estates when companies go bust? They can end up getting sold to the most unlikely of institutions at very low prices.

OK that's fair enough. But as I say, if that's who they sold it to then the result is the same:
If XYZ Ltd sell an asset at £10 million to ABC Plc they then have £10 million in the bank. But XYZs profits go to ABC as they own it so the £10 million ends up back at ABC anyway.


Surely the 'programme library' contained all of their archive, including the programmes they got when they bought MTM?

Also if the library wasn't part of the sale to Flextech and the building was, then it's got to somewhere. It's just one way of doing it - either keep the company 'TVS' and sell the building as part of the sale.... or transfer the thing not included in the sale and sell the company with building

My own stance is what is needed is nothing short of a physical inspection of the attic at the Maidstone Studios to confirm whether any tapes from the TVS archive reside there and which programmes.

MTM was a separate company owned by TVS Entertainment Plc. The 'programme library' mentioned is that of TVS Television Ltd.

There is nothing there, phone them and there will tell you that. The building was gutted out to refurbish it.

Back on topic as with my last post where own the share did Mary sell of share which would be agiast the contract she signed?

Quite simply, it's against company law to transfer assets between companies willy nilly, even if the two companies share a common ownership. I can't believe I'm about to humour the comparison of a television archive to a unadopted bloody road, but once a company has gone bust, things are different. TVS Television Ltd hadn't gone bust, and it still contained assets which had a decent market value. If I've read the accounts correctly, in the last year they owned the archive it generated them about £500k. That's not an insignificant asset that can be sold for £1.

Yes, but you agree they can be transferred between companies of shared ownership willy nilly at market price? Which then turns out as a free transfer anyway

Anyway the nominal value thing was just a throw away idea, let's drop it.

Though remember (as has been said many times) the physical location and the ownership are two different things. Though of course knowing one helps to find the other

Just because IFE didn't particularly want them, it doesn't meant they'd be happy to give them away for nothing.

Precisely.

Physical ownership of 1" (or other TX format) tapes doesn't give you the ownership of the content of the tapes, any more than owning a Rolling Stones album gives you ownership of their songs...

There are obviously numerous issues - which have been discussed ad nauseam :

1. Where does the content reside physically if it still exists? (i.e. where are the 2", 1", Beta SP tapes)
2. Who owns the content on these tapes? (i.e. who owns the intellectual property)
3. Who requires rights payments for continued commercial exploitation of the content on the tapes? (i.e. who has copies of the contractual obligations entered into on original production or re-negotiated after original production for future sale). Any TV show with music, actors, presenters, writers, directors (in some cases), stills, archive etc. will need this information before the content can be commercially exploited in any way other than fair dealing.

Sorry I didn't fully qualify my point then - It also doesn't make sense that Flextech didn't want it either. At the time they were hungry for content and had deep pockets to get it.

I think that we could all possibly agree that considering TVS Television Ltd was still exploiting Maidstone and the programme library until the latter was sold in March 1996 - the physical location of the library was at Maidstone.

Lets assume TVS Television Ltd sold the archive to IFE in 1996
Is there any chance the whole physical archive was removed from Maidstone? Probably very little. But it's possible that the valuable part of the archive (I struggle to think of anything beyond the Ruth Rendell Mysteries) was rescued and the rest was left to rot until (as suggested) the tapes were chucked out during renovation.

I'm not sure there's any evidence for that.


Other than commissioned programming I can't see any evidence Flextech were interested in archive programming and distribution. I refer you to a previous contribution of mine: http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post989636#post-989636

On the contrary - I put forward that it's possible that when it came to buying the Family Channel, Flextech negotiated the price down by removing the TVS archive from the deal. Perhaps they saw it as a rather expensive way of securing the rights to Catchphrase rather than just agreeing repeat runs as required.



I don't think Maidstone was being exploited by TVS Television Ltd - but that's incidental really. It was being exploited by a vehicle owned by IFE up to March 1996, then a vehicle owned by Flextech.




Yes, entirely plausible.