BBC tinkering with end credits on old shows

We all know that old repeats have to go through the "compliance" department nowadays, in the name of modern standards and in order that J. Savile and his ilk are fully airbrushed from history. (Although I was surprised to see Nick Cotton's reference to Pakistanis – using a truncated version of the word – wasn't removed from the very first episode of EastEnders shown on iPlayer recently).

Some edits are harder to understand, though.

I've just been watching the archive game shows on iPlayer (part of the BBC Four Collections series) and noticed that on Bob's Full House and Big Break, present-day changes have been made to the end credits.

BOB'S FULL HOUSE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02mb106/bobs-full-house-series-4-19121987#group=p02nm7g8
(Watch from 34:15)
The credits are far too crisp for 1987, especially when viewed in HD and compared to the rest of the show's graphics, and don't match up with the first and final credit boards that appear on the wide shot of the rotating board (e.g. there's no drop shadow under the text on the wide shot) and the © symbol on the "new" credits is from Windows Arial font – definitely not in service in 1987.

BIG BREAK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02m43pm/big-break-series-13-19052001#group=p02nm7g8
(Watch from 28:00)
A slide has been inserted that says "Format owned by Roger Medcalf" which totally clashes with the style of the original credits. I appreciate there must be a legal reason for this (despite the fact that Medcalf's name appears in the credits anyway) but I'm more intrigued as to why this slide was created in a completely random and stylised font, when the original credits are in Gill Sans - hardly the most difficult font to identify or recreate.

But more importantly, the end credits have been replaced with those from a completely different episode from 1998, when the actual show is from 2001. For heaven's sake, WHY ?

My wider question is why the BBC have developed this growing obsession with messing around with archive shows? Exactly who is watching them pre-broadcast in such forensic detail? A team of media lawyers or media historians? Isn't this all a bit over the top?

My take ,,,

The programmes are all out of the normal transmission cycle and as such are now no longer available to be broadcast, special clearance for their re-appearance has been sought, one aspect of which has been acknowledgment of the current format owner. Rerecording the credits being the agreed method of doing this.

Says he, watching them in forensic detail...

There was a lawsuit regarding the ownership of Big Break in 1998, asserting the new ownership. A later dispute with the BBC led to a whole series being canned post recording. There were other arguments over the ownership of the 'Bingo Quiz/Trump Card' format that became Bob's Full House. Not wanting to suggest anything, but those two shows had the same devisors (Moore and Mardell) when these were originally broadcast...

The new Bob's Full House credit seems to point to a lawyer, based on my Googling, any ideas?

Surely if something needs to be added a slide following the credits is the best way to do it.

Depends how important it is.
Clearly in the Big Break example, it's so important it had to be inserted prior to adding to iPlayer.
That being said, when the first series of Big Break aired on Challenge, there were no credit changes.

As I recall, the original end credits of Bob's Full House were displayed on the game board in electronic lettering with a studio camera focused on it (much like early series of Family Fortunes) rather than the bog standard graphical text based credits added to the final edit in post production as we see with this re-edit on the iPlayer.

If they had to add an extra credit slide for certain legal reasons, how difficult could it have been to do redo the end credits as they originally looked by recreating the electronic game board lettering in CGI of some form?

I don't think they used the game board for the credits of later series of Bob's Full House. I think it might either be real or a recreation of the original - watch how the last credit is on the board as it spins out of view. I guess they had a physical caption stuck to the board and keyed the computer generated credits over it. That dodgy shadow is typical of the kind of thing people used to do just because they could in the 80s and early 90s!

ITV do this quite a lot with their old dramas. I was watching the pilot episode of Inspector Morse on ITV3 last weekend, and part way through the end credits appeared "© ITV STUDIOS LTD - MCMLXXXVII", a company which didn't even exist in 1987.

More confusing, was at the end it was still referred to as a 'Zenith Production for Central'.

Here's the original end credits from Bob's Full House on an episode in 1989:

Well to be fair, the Inspector Morse episodes have been remastered in HD, although that is still an odd copyright notice.

I've also noticed ITV doing this for several years now. I've noticed it on other programmes such as Poirot and The Darling Buds of May, and in some cases this results in 4:3 programmes having widescreen end credits (in letterbox format).