26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

If by 'fair use' you mean the UK 'fair dealing' system - then you wouldn't normally be able to fair deal a clip that you have specifically requested from a distributor for them to supply. You'd need to source the clip independently usually - which is why 'fair dealing' clips are often sourced from VHS, DVD or YouTube (You can tell them because they always have a lot of credit information on them - director/writer, broadcaster/production company etc.)

You can 'fair deal' a clip from your own archive (remember broadcasters don't own all the rights to their shows) - but it's contractually difficult to source a clip from someone else's archive and then fair deal it.

HOWEVER - in this case if the broadcaster has a copy of the material in their archive but can't legally sell it to you because they don't have information about the rights to let them do so, they may well agree to supply it for a fee (to cover costs of duplication/digitising and uploading) if you accept the rights issues surrounding it and chose to use it by 'fair dealing' it.

(Fair Dealing is complex - but you are usually allowed 'Criticism or Review', 'Reporting Current Events' or 'Quotation' usage. You have to use the minimum length possible to make your point - and quotation has to be short - usually <20" and often less than <10". Under criticism or review you have to criticise or review the artistic work you have specifically shown for at least the duration of the material show if not longer, you can't run 1'00" of content and talk about it for 10"...)

It always makes me laugh on those Channel 5 talking head shows where they critique everything to get away with fair usage.

During The Paul O'Grady Story a clip of The Bill's opening titles introduces a section on Lily Savage's appearances on the show, and the voiceover is practically audio description.

Talking heads are cheap and filler, its usually blatantly obvious a talking head only saw what they're talking about 30 seconds previously as its almost always word-for-word perfect even if they then preface it with 'I remember'.

Mind you those talking heads tend to get around because I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are done in front of greenscreen and then you just change the background to match the current show. I remember somebody who used to be in the original series of Crossroads popped up as a talking head on a show of some sort and then appeared in an entirely different show in the exact same outfit using the exact same spiel a few years later just with a different background behind them.

I saw one on Channel 5 which was something along the lines of "the biggest live TV mistakes ever", and it was blatantly obvious the talking heads had only just seen the footage. Not least because most of it was either years old or foreign, so there's no chance they'd have ever seen the footage before. But they still had them talking about it as if they'd seen it at the time.

Not all clip shows are bad, but the Channel 5 ones don’t do anything to change my perception of the channel. I hope shows like Michael Palin in North Korea are a sign of things to come though.

There are some interesting documentries on Channel 5 these days, I enjoy Paddington Station 24/7, and there was an interesting documentry on Atlanta airport on Wednesday (which admittedly helps as I know someone who works there), there's still plenty of trash though such as the aformentioned show where we have to believe Roland Rivron was watching Mexican TV at the exact time a lion tried to maul a baby.

Been a long time since there seems to have been any real comedy or drama on C5 though too, sadly.

I must admit that Channel 5's documentary output is very good. Paddington Station is one example. A world away from its "football, films and f*****g" incarnation of the noughties!

But do you watch that because you like it, or because it's one of the few factual programmes on TV still in 50i?

Like it! Seriously though its a good programme.

The last I can remember were ‘suspects’ as original drama in 2016 and original comedies ‘impractical jokers uk’ and the (IMO) underrated ‘boarderline’ in 2016.

Wasn't impractical jokers actually made for Comedy Central though and just repeated on Channel 5 after, or am I getting confused?

I was thinking in terms of scripted comedy though.

It helps But no, it's a subject I've been interested in for years anyway. The amount of time I've spent over the years reading about the railway's and the big stations.