Defunct ITV Regions:What Still Survives

Nice to see NOT even the Wexford films know who brought what and how. That is what causing half the trouble,


What happened to the first 27 eps or 11 stories from 1987-1990?


YET ALL the Epsoides from TVS has been broadcast on UK Last time being on ITV3 back in late 2008, which in all fairness is a Terrestrail TV channel


That makes the claim it was NEVER controlled by Saban or Disney!
SIMPLE as mud!

1993: TVS sold to IFC
1996: The UK operations were slipt in two. with TV library staying with IFC and everything else to Flextech.
1996: News Corporation's Fox Children's Productions and Haim Saban's Saban Entertainment merged to form Fox Kids
1997: Fox Kids Worldwide, Inc. acquired IFE,
1998: IFE and MTM archives were folded into 20th Century Fox Television.
2001: The Walt Disney Company acquired Fox Family Worldwide

NOTE:
* 20th Television IE FOX held on to MTM Archive,
* NON MTM archive went off to ABC, which is part of this Disney mess!

Its not Disney that must control it, it must be ABC Family a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. see how muddy it is!

Addition NOTE:

* Saban Entertainment is different to the NEW Saban Capital Group founded in 2001, which strangely were both owned by Haim Saban

* Saban Entertainment where was founded in 1988 which merged with Fox kids in 1996, and was sold off to Disney ABC in 2001/2002, taking a whiles of course since the paper for A LOT of stuff needed to be updated look at what was then owned with most NOT ALL, in disneys hands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saban_Entertainment#List_of_television_series_and_films

If a firm goes into liquidation, the appointed liquidators then try to sell off the assets, as quickly as possible, but trying to get the best price. That includes the rights to broadcast material. So, the liquidators cannot simply tear up the paperwork and throw it in the bin, pretending they never existed. Creditors would be up In arms if that happened.

So, liquidators had to have sold those rights, even at bargain basement prices. Someone owns those rights!

What your said it bang on, Money would have been made with the sell off asset of broadcast material. That is what happened in the case of , Entertainment Rights, which ended up with classic media.

I would love to know who these so called Liquidated company was, I get the feeling that a load of old crap. as far as anyone know none of the companies which owns tapes have ever got liquidated. I think someone lead those people up the garden path to try and outsmart the cast member., from Paying the royalties

Here's how I understand the distribution system works. We'll use the example of Syfy acquiring Thunderbirds for this example. This, I'm sure, is much simplified but gives an overview of how I understand the transaction takes place, and how the situation you describe occurred.

Syfy decide they want to show Thunderbirds. After making enquiries, they discover that the rights to that programme are held by ITV. Following some negotiation, ITV agree that Syfy can show Thunderbirds 10 times, over the course of no more than 6 years. ITV provide the source material, and Syfy transfer the agreed sum of money to ITV. ITV ensure all necessary parties are paid for the 30 repeat screenings.

Syfy can now show Thunderbirds until they have shown it on 30 separate occasions (normally excluding +1 and HD simulcasts nowadays) or until January 1st, 2019, whichever comes sooner.

It doesn't matter if Syfy only choose to broadcast it 25 times - they've paid for 30 repeats, and that's what the relevant parties declared in the paperwork will be paid based upon.

Now, imagine it's December 1st, 2018 - Syfy realise that their rights to show Thunderbirds will soon expire, and are keen to renew them. They contact ITV, but ITV inform them that the archive was sold to Fremantle in 2016. Syfy then ring Fremantle, who tell them that portion of the archive actually belongs to Disney. Syfy ring Disney, who say they can't help (because they have no paperwork).

Syfy are now in a position where they can repeat Thunderbirds for another month (because they still have the right to do so from the package they agreed with ITV in 2012, and ITV correctly paid the necessary parties), but thereafter they will not be able to show it any longer as it would not be possible to ensure everybody gets paid correctly.

That's pretty much what happened with Challenge and TVS Catchphrase. At some point, The Family Channel UK or Challenge acquired Catchphrase for a number of years/showings which expired in 2001. These rights were assumedly sold/granted by The Family Channel International who at that point held the TVS Archive. By the time it came to 2001 (or whenever Challenge sought further repeat rights), the paperwork was lost and the archive holder had no choice but to decline the request.

Which may also be why DVD releases in certain territories, such as the UK, can't take place?

There is actually an interesting case in the USA, for March 2013, with regards to rights being in limbo, which is similar to what we're talking about. It concerns a film called the Sorcerer, and involves Paramount, Universal, and the now defunct CIC video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_Video

In reality, if anyone was trying to sort out who owned some of the TVS archive in this country, court may be the only alternative.

ITV3 have shown all of the TVS era Wexford stories in the past 5 years, but are more likely to play the 3 Meridian shows these days, so maybe a rights issue has cropped up again? A recent retrospective on the show crops up time to time on the channel laden with TVS clips.

Although of course there are 2 sides to a contract, so I'd have thought that if George Baker or his agents still had the contract relating to him then that's fairly good proof of what he's owed.

That's a good example. What about private collections. Are they covered by the same rules?

It must be sorted somehow, we cant have quality shows dusting away in Leeds or Kent, because the paperwork was junked.

I was under the impression that Wexford was a separate issue, as I've noticed TVS-era episodes on ITV3, although not recently but certaintly in the last 2/3 years or so. With regards to TVS so much belongs to Disney, but am I right in thinking News archives belong to ITV/Meridian? To me this sounds like that anything valuable in that archive has been sold, distributed whatever, now I'm not saying Catchphrase, All Clued Up etc are worthless, but aside Challenge TV they're not much use to anyone and it's safe to say it's not high priority on Disney's archive list now is it?

If at the time the producers, showmakers etc knew that their shows would get repeated again in the future on satellite then I'm sure the contracts would have been renogciated to include repeat fees, right fees etc etc, as repeating gameshows costs very little, it probably costs more getting someone at ITV to get the tapes out of the archive and transferring them by whatever means.

In every case that I know of - the "local" archive is transferred to the successor. This also includes regional programming AFAI, so would include that current affairs/investigation programme hosted by a young Dermot Murnaghan - so the Southern and TVS regional programming archive went to Meridian at Northam, and is now in Leeds.

The only exception I know of is TSW, who gifted their entire archive (including what they'd bought from Westward) to a specially formed concern (mentioned earlier in this thread).