40th anniversary of the ITV strike

I wish other ITV companies put their archive oddities online in the way Channel do.

Thing is that there aren't really any other ITV companies and within England and Wales the main archives have long been merged into ITV Archive. The only people in the regions who will deal with archive footage will be doing so for the daily news programmes

The HTV Wales archive is a significant record of Welsh popular culture, politics and history captured on both film and video and it constitutes a large part of the Screen and Sound Archive. An archive of that size and age will have an assortment of conservation challenges, especially in the area of restoration. By far the most common problem with old tape is Sticky-shed syndrome (SSS) or hydrolysis. SSS is symptomatic of the breakdown of the tapes’ polyester binder due to absorption of moisture.

The tell-tale squealing of the tape as it passes over the playhead and the accumulation of dirty deposits upon the guide and playhead indicate a tape has SSS. A tape with SSS will, amongst other issues, exhibit ‘crabbing’, i.e. the moving from side to side of the moving image, and if not treated continued playback could further damage the tape.

So how do we restore that believed lost episode of ‘Gwesty Gwirion’? The answer may surprise you! The standard practice is to bake the tape at low temperatures for relatively long periods of time, such as 130 °F to 140 °F (54 to 60 °C). Strictly speaking we don’t ’bake’ our tapes but instead use a commercial food dehydrator that removes all moisture from the tape pack. How long we do this to the tape will depend on the severity of the SSS; up to a week we’ve discovered is time enough. We have been successful with the majority of the tapes that have undergone the process, with many lost gems brought back from the brink of oblivion.

By 1984 the move to 1" C-format was almost complete.

Although I think Quad was still being used to playout stuff that was originally mastered on Quad?

I remember 1985 watching a episode of Spike Milligan's Q series fall off the air, with characteristic Quad style artefacts. They attempted to restore the broadcast from the point of failure twice before CA David Allen said 'we' re going to have throw in the towel on Spike'

As James mentioned, you'd often see TK failures in the 80s too

Although I think Quad was still being used to playout stuff that was originally mastered on Quad?

Yes - and until relatively recently for transfers.

AIUI the BBC no longer own a single Quad 2" VTR (at least one that works) - and their 2" archive is now at the BFI?

Although I think Quad was still being used to playout stuff that was originally mastered on Quad?

I remember 1985 watching a episode of Spike Milligan's Q series fall off the air, with characteristic Quad style artefacts. They attempted to restore the broadcast from the point of failure twice before CA David Allen said 'we' re going to have throw in the towel on Spike'

As James mentioned, you'd often see TK failures in the 80s too

As James mentioned, you'd often see TK failures in the 80s too

There's a quite infamous one on YouTube from around Jan/Feb 1985 of the film from an episode of Star Trek snapping on air!

The Meldrum Private Parts had one from even later, as it was preceeded by the COW ident, of a Jimmy Savile PIF beginning with a telecine fault (with the frame line in the middle of the screen, and a lot of jittering).