70's Sitcom's Made Into Films .. Why?

Heres a question for you all
... why did most of the 1970's sitcom have to have a film made about them .. O the buses had 3.. there was bless this house ,george and mildred, till death us do part.. steptoe and son and more blaintley obvious they was nicking scenes and redoing them from the series so why ?

On the buses you can see a lot of scenes were copied from the series and having the makers of carry on films doing the bless this house film well they had peter butterworth terry and june and with sid of course seems like they could of called it carry on bless this house

There was something about the tax codes?

Cashing in at the Cinema Box Office. Not a lot more to it than that.

Of course there was best of benny hill which come out in 1971...

1974 surely.

Surely one reason of rehashing scenes from TV series into movies, is that it appears to be cheaper to repeat the films than the actual TV series.

Before the likes of UK Gold, Granada Plus, ITV 3 etc, when did you see certain sitcoms repeated en masse?

Take for example 'On The Buses', I never saw the majority of the episodes until I went multi channel in the 90's.

I'm guessing regular repeats ceased in the mid to late 70's & after that, you were lucky if you saw the odd episode as a part of a tribute/anniversary.

In the meantime, the Buses films were screened more often regionally, & I remember the scene where they mucked about with the bus radio from the film release rather than the original TV episode. (Wasn't born till 1971!)

What was the reason for the ITV 'Please Sir' repeats in the late 80's/early 90's, as that is an exception, as Season 2 to the beginning of Season 4 was repeated, including the 3 black & white episodes from Xmas 1970.

Season 1 wasn't repeated as they were 45 mins & the later episodes probably wasn't, as John Alderton wasn't in them & everyone knows John Alderton for Please Sir!

From a conversation on Facebook I had with ITV 3, the Doctor series will no longer be shown on tv as it's too unPC now, which is a shame, as apart from it's run on Granada Plus, it hasn't had a good rerun for a few years.

I've only seen a few episodes, courtesy of Plus/Men & Motors repeats, plus I have 'At Large' on DVD anyway.

On the buses was repeated by lwt in the early 1990s. End of part one also got a repeat airing a few years later.
I'm sure some of the 70s sitcom were repeated aswell, mainly used as filler, that's my boy had that pleasure.

I think if the series was repeated was down to how successful it was.

Wonder how many of the repeats made it to the Midlands then?

Don't remember repeats of Buses or Part One.

Rising Damp, Bless This House(not b & w episodes!) I can remember for sure.

Please Sir, apart from one episode networked one Saturday, due to the Zeeburge ferry disaster, was the Thursday 5.15 slot. (Last time this was discussed, Please Sir had a separate LWT repeat on Saturdays earlier in the year, which is where the network repeat came in!)

I've not seen any repeats of end of in atv, granda or yorkshire but the rest did. I check again this evening.

I only remember 5.15 slot being free for a short period mainly in the summer. I'm sure alf got that slot in late80s with different strokes and Benson In early 80s

Most ATV comedy series weren't particularly good....plus the chances are their series from the 70s will have been wiped long ago. Unlike some other ITV companies, ATV tended to wipe most of their material fairly quickly. At that time, the agreement with Equity allowed for one run plus one repeat....anything else had to be paid for again....so the programmes were "worthless", or at least considered so. In retrospect, it might seem a strange decision, but who could have foreseen the demand for DVD boxsets of programmes made thirty to forty years ago. In terms of series spawning feature films, at least in the early 70s, many people still had only black and white TV sets, the films gave audiences a chance to see their favourites on a big screen and in colour, plus the formula and cast had already proved popular.

Wasn't "on the buses" the biggest film of 1971? even bigger than James bond?

The Dad's Army film recycled several scenes from the early episodes "The Man and The Hour", "The Armoured Might of Lance-Corporal Jones" and "Battle School".