BBC News nostalgia, including BBC World

I'm going to argue full election coverage reruns like we see on BBC Parliament is one of those things that the commercial sector can't make work, otherwise it would have happened by now, surely.

No, because the audience for such programmes is probably imessurably small. There's no reason, if extended footage even exists, that BBC Parliament couldn't show ITN elections?

What ITN want for it is a very good reason, considering BBC Parliament has (or had) a "programme" budget of somewhere like £2m in 2018, most of which was cut the following year so its literally running on next to sod all itself.

They probably could, they could buy it like any other old programme. There are plenty of clips from 1979 available on Getty Images - https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/videos/the-nation-decides?collections=itn,itna&phrase=%22the%20nation%20decides%22&sort=best&license=rf,rr&page=1&recency=anydate&suppressfamilycorrection=true - which they've made available for people to licence for clip shows. They've been used in numerous docs as well, like the one ITV did in 2015 and the great Swing Time in 1997.

But obviously the point of the election repeats is to tell the story of the election itself, rather than how it was presented. It would be a bit interesting to see the whole of the ITV coverage of 1979, for example, but the Beeb have already got their own coverage of that, and of course much of the footage is pretty much exactly the same. And as mentioned, the budget for BBC Parliament is microscopic.

Of course this summer this does appear to be an opportunity to compare the BBC and ITV coverage of an event, with the Beeb showing some Euro 96 programmes just after ITV have done the same.

One thing I have noticed from clips shown in various programmes is ITN have at least some of the 1959, 64 and 66 elections on videotape, whereas the BBC only have theirs as telerecordings.

Are you sure about 1959? I thought there were only two Ampex Quad VTRs in the UK in 59, the BBC had one, ATV had the other? It would have been hideously expensive to use one back then, and not much cheaper in the mid 60s?

Yes, they showed some clips from it in the ITV 2015 documentry mentioned a few posts above.

Just saw Clarence Mitchell on News at Six being interviewed about the McCann case.

Well, unless someone applied modern 50i 'fluid' treatment to telerecorded footage, it must be the case. Seems a strange thing to use what was a hideously expensive and rare facility in the 50s, and even more remarkable the tape didn't get reused. The earliest VT footage I've seen was some Tyne Tees stuff from 1962, and some of BBC2's opening night in 64

Edit: I wonder if the original Quad tape was redubbed to an 'industrial' VT format some years later (mid to late 60s)?

He has aged quite considerably since I last saw him on TV.

Aged??? erm, naturally. Wouldn't you having managed a case for 13 years?

I’m just saying because I haven’t seen him on tv for a few years. I know he’s the McCann’s spokesperson.