Gerry Anderson has died

oooh I remember that. Pretty sure it was on BBC2 too, might have been a few months after the Sky One showing though, Star Trek style.

t'was. Kwik Save were flogging off the merchandise for years after.

He was also involved in a little-known animation series that went out on CiTV c.2000.

I remember the BBC 2 run - didn't see it all, just the odd episode... Agreed, it is the least remembered series of his generally. ISTR it wasn't bad at all. And Stingray, Thunderbirds eps I'd similarly catch now and again, always very entertaining.

At least he spoke his mind:

He said that it was "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life." when he talked about the 2004 Thunderbird film http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/07/gerry-anderson-thunderbirds-auction

The Saturday show 1983 with Gerry and terrorhawks interlinks Part1

Pretty much everybody hated that film.

Lavender Castle?

When a new company takes over an ITV franchise, it doesn't automatically take over the archive. In this case, ABC's parent company (ABPC) had a 51% share in Thames Television (Holdings) Ltd, the new franchise owner (the remaining 49% being held by Rediffusion's owners BET). While the archive was easily accessible by Thames, I believe each of the two shareholders kept their archives, and when EMI bought ABPC, the 51% share in Thames was taken on directly by EMI, but the archive was still owned by ABPC, which was then renamed EMI Films. This was eventually sold onto StudioCanal. So this explains why FremantleMedia doesn't own it.

I think the archive would've been taken on by Thames, (in those days TV archives had comparatively little value) but ABPC had quite a valuable library of films, not just the television archive.

To bring it slightly back on topic, the ITC/ATV archive was always kept separately to Central in a similar vein to Thames, with Central only keeping the local news archive. The ITC archive only came into the ITV fold when Carlton bought it in 2000.

I was told the archive was kept at Brum, Central head office until it moved.

The ATV/Central Video tape library was always at Birmingham until it moved to Nottingham and then onto Leeds. ITC programmes were at Elstree, no idea what happened when that went to the BBC. Having said that some ITC programming thought lost turned up in the Central TV film library a few years ago when it moved to the ITV Perivale film archive. So some of it must have been stored at Birmingham at one point.

With all the CGI commercial tie ins today its refreshing to see that some of the classics are still well remembered. I loved thunderbirds and captain scarlet as a kid.

Thank you very much Gerry for giving me some of my childhood and Rest In Peace.

I dare say it helped BBC two repeated nearly all of his series in the 1990s, Joe 90, Stingray, CS, Thunderbird all got 6pm slot on BBC two.

Here a one of his lesser well know shows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Service

In the United Kingdom, The Secret Service aired only in the ATV, Granada and Southern broadcasting regions on its original run, appearing on Sunday afternoons on ATV at the regular time of 5.30 pm. In most other ITV regions, The Flaxton Boys was broadcast in this time slot. Although repeats ran until 1972 on ATV and Southern, and until 1975 on Granada, the series has not been transmitted since and remains unsold to new broadcasters. I wonder why:

That isn't the opening to the Secret Service - annoyingly that's an unused version - in the actual broadcast edition, the real Unwin appeared and peered through his window. Not on YouTube - I'll add it later if nobody else does.

It's easy to forget - but ATV in one form or other continued beyond 1982, and the non-ITV programming they held was not transferred to Central Independent Television p.l.c. ITC was one such area - there was also stuff like ATV Music (which you will no doubt have heard lots c.2009 as it was purchased by Michael Jackson).

ITC was a weird one - Grade tried to spin it such that ATV Midlands commissioned the programme from ITC, and thereby counted towards their quota of productions from indie producers. This lead to Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds being officially ITC Productions for ATV (credited as "in association with ATV"). This arrangement left this programming available to the other contractors under standard networking arrangements (I think!).

The ITA expressed their displeasure with the fiddle, and from Captain Scarlet onwards, officially the programmes were commissioned by ITC, and then sold to ATV as an import. This meant that they weren't automatically available to other ITV contractors (I think!) and so the initial contractors acquired copies individually; meaning there were dozens of transfers in circulation in the UK alone - which possibly accounts for the copies MikeGNE refers to. This applied retroactively to the pre-Captain Scarlet productions once their initial number of repeats had been used up by ATV [and the ITV network]. Throughout the 70s and 80s the ITC series were repeated heavily by ATV, and others chose to regularly (Granada, Southern); others possibly not at all (Yorkshire).

Central seemed more keen than others to repeat in the 80s - I suspect ATV "acquired" a number of repeats from ITC in the early 80s, which Central were pretty much free to burn through up to the late 80s.

The ITC library itself had by this point transferred to the control of PolyGram - who were distributing copies based on an increasingly ropey 16mm transfer rather than the 32mm masters (which with a little bit of restoration have lead to Blu-ray releases!). They also insisted initially that only the TV Movie Compillations (which ITC's New York office had created for the burgeoning Cable market) were available for Home Release, before eventually allowing the other episodes to be released.

It was PolyGram who the BBC acquired the ITC series' from in the 90s - and UK viewers thought they had it bad with stuff like The Perils of Penelope - which appeared to have a physical fold in the film. With the emergence of the internet, it would appear that there were greater indignities over the pond.

Carlton acquired the ITC archive, and as we know the rest is history.