Coronation Street

I’ve only got the 1990s boxset but it’s a brilliant collection, with episodes well chosen - for ones that were already available on previous DVDs they’ve chosen the one before or after instead, like Bet’s exit and Judy Mallett’s death. Some are big episodes, others more unique ones with of-their-time plots such as Mike Baldwin getting a mobile phone and Ken Barlow using the internet(!) and in a nice touch they’ve included both the highest rated episode of the decade (broadcast on the very first day of it!) and one in 1995 that got low ratings at the time as everyone was watching the live VE Day anniversary celebrations on BBC1 instead.

There’s enough memorable episodes to fill a 2010s one nicely, with Jack Duckworth’s exit, the tram crash, Hayley’s last episode and Deirdre’s death all immediately coming to mind.

I imagine ITV doesn't want to pay too many repeat fees as they can be quite expensive for older programmes, it's one of the reasons Classic Corrie is on ITV3.

[quote=Sad that so many of the Corrie legends are no longer with us for the 60th. In the last decade alone we have lost Bill Tarmey, Liz Dawn, Jean Alexander, Roy Barraclough and of course Anne Kirkbride.[/quote]

There have been quite a few who have passed away including Tony Warren who created Coronation Street. In one sense it is a shame that episode 10,000 didn't fall on the Anniversary but had been done differently. I liked the way we heard voices of the past and they tried to replicate the original opening shot; but the storyline itself for the episode was a bit daft IMOHO.

Any episodes before 31 December 1979 are out of copyright now though. Surely that means no need to pay the residuals to actors/their estates either unless they signed very generous contracts?

The cost would primarily be any music rights - which aren't an every day occurrence in soap.

I know there's one episode known to be missing from the archives. But even if there's a handful more surely they could be gapped with an explanatory VT at the beginning of the ep after them.,

Are they out of copyright? Never heard that before.

And while there is an episode missing, it seems it went missing very soon after broadcast, probably accidently, as they had to film some bridging scenes to fill the gap to attach to the following episode for international broadcast, so if they were to repeat those episodes they'd presumably just show them.

I know there's 4 episodes from the 80s that only exist as timecoded VHS copies as well, Granada Plus showed them with the picture zoomed in to cut off the timecode (and one of them is on the Network DVD 1980s boxset, also zoomed in). It's actually two pairs of episodes that are missing, which has me assuming they had two episodes per tape, presumably to save money and space.

I know music used to be out of copyright after 50 years in the UK, but that’s changed now. I wouldn’t have thought TV programmes would be anything less than that.

Broadcast copyright lasts to the end of the year 50 years from the end of the year in which it was broadcast and can't be extended beyond that by repeating the episode. So by default any episodes broadcast before 31st December 1969 (apologies, last post said 1979 by accident). So by default 1960 went out of copyright at the end of 2020, 1961 at the end of 2011 etc etc

Now whether they've been covered under another copyright that would extend that to life of author plus 70 years or could be is matter I'm not 100% on. Someone else might now the ins and outs of that. And whether there's separate contract for actors is another matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Kingdom#Broadcast_copyright

Actors residuals are naturally a separate matter but you'd imagine stuff so old it's out of copyright wouldn't have residuals owing to anybody?

Oh I wasn't suggesting that there's one missing and we don't know whether any others from before the Granada run are missing - as they've never been part of repeat runs (Dec 1960 - May 1976 if I remember correctly) so if they were to get an outing we'd need to be prepared that the odd ep may be skipped. We know of one, there could be more.

Music is life of author + 70 years.

TV Broadcast is 50 years from the year in which it was shown. Obviously given nobody can get hold of these because there stuck in an archive at Granada means the association between repeat fees and this fact is untested but surely must have cropped up with some other 60s shows? Might explain how Talking Pictures functions.

And whether they could have copyrighted it as an original dramatic work (life of author + 70) rather than broadcast is another point, that would take it to 70 years after anybody involved in the episode died.

Ok thanks for clearing that up. The suggestion of 1979 being out of copyright confused me.

The fact they could either be out of copyright or at least 70 years, in all probability 80 years away from expiring is what I find fascinating.

Do people think EE going off air will have any effect on Corrie's ratings?

I wonder if when we get to the post-lockdown episodes they'll explain Ken's absense by saying he made up with Claudia and moved back in to the retirement village?

The hype surrounding that still seems completely ridiculous. We were told a character was leaving during the 10,000th episode, but then it turned out to just be Ken announcing his intention to leave, then when he did move to the retirement village a few weeks later he was still appearing on screen, then he decided he didn't like it and was back in Number 1 in a matter of weeks as if nothing had happened.