ITV Archive

So basically...ITV don't own all the programmes they broadcast, only the ones they make themselves or happen to buy anyway.

expect the local News???

and why don;t there bring out Worzel Gummidge dvd, Or Even a Sat Banana Best of Dvd/.

There have been a number of Worzel DVDs in recent years, mainly from Delta Music. Sadly, the Southern idents have been removed.

They only own the ones they make themselves, and those archive programmes which they inherited.

Films and programmes that are bought in are done so for a limited amount of time or showings. ITV (or any TV company) don't own these, the just buy rights to show

Not sure quite how it works with programmes they commission from independents, the rules on that have swung towards the Indies now, although it would depend on the contract

No, ITV dont own every programme they've ever made, they only own stuff made by a current franchisee under ITV plc's ownership. The big exceptions are the ATV/ITC/Rank archives which were owned by Carlton (ATV because Carlton bought Central, which retained ATV's material because Central was merely a restructuring of the same company, and ITV/Rank because Carlton bought it from Polygram) and so are now also ITV plc.

As of this year, DVD releases of certain material now seem to be back-copyrighted to ITV Productions even if it was made before that company was created; the boxed Upstairs Downstairs set released in November 2006 had '(c)London Weekend Television Ltd 1971-1975' on it, whilst the Thomas & Sarah spin off series released this year has '(c)1979 ITV Productions Ltd' on the cases (although they haven't removed '(c)LWT MCMLXXIX' from the credits of the actual programmes themselves).

According to the people at Challenge, most, if not all of TVS-era Catchphrase was junked years ago although a few episodes may be kept at the BFI.

I don;t believe that as there still showed them on Challenge about 6 years ago!

the master are probably still in Maidstone attic

What was probably meant is that the TVS Catchphrase is not generally available. A huge amount of programming is not available for licencing due to rights issues, the format it's stored on, or cataloguing issues meaning that the rights owner can't readily locate something within their archive, but virtually all recorded British TV since the late 1970's still exists in some form - junking just isn't done any more.

The Granada Television archive is a case in point - they didn't believe in junking and have only ever lost recorded programmes by mistake or by degredation of the film/ VT before it could be transferred onto something newer. Nevertheless, most of their recorded material from before the mid-70's is officially unavailable even though virtually all of it physically exists.

All that needs to be done is for proper cataloguing to be made, rights issues resolved, and the programme to be transferred onto a modern format and it'll be able to be shown again. Most big archive owners are plowing through this, but understandably it is going to be a slow process.

A correction about Fraggle Rock. Although TVS was shown as the UK 'programme maker', in actual fact it was a syndicated programme. The core Fraggle material was produced in Toronto and every country around the world that bought the programme would produce their own 'outside world' footage. In the UK this featured The Captain & Sprocket. In the US, it was 'Doc' and Sprocket. In France it was yet another 'Doc' and 'Crocquette'... etc... etc...

The UK Captain stuff was indeed produced by TVS in this co-production deal, but the whole caboodle has always been owned outright by The Jim Henson Company. TVS just had the initial UK transmission rights.

Also, don't read anything else into it, but it's just a fluke that one of the (UK) episodes on DVD release has the TVS ident at the start.

My earliest memories of Fraggle Rock are the Eldorado-style marketing campaign ahead of its launch! They started trailing it before Christmas 1983 IIRC, and the promos were always being shown until the first edition went out some two months later.

can anyone answer this>:

Challenge was original called the "family channel" in turn, that channel was invited by the company who brought over the TVS Back library in 1993.

was Challenge sold on some one else:
did the programmers not move over with them?

But its its still the Same Company

No it's not the same company. It's a complicated story but International Family Entertainment took over TVS in 1993 and inherited all of the archives that didn't stay with meridian (or one of the independent companies that formed out of TVS).

Although Challenge eventually replaced Family Channel in the UK, International Family Entertainment was bought by several companies and ended up in the hands of Disney - therefore the archives are now owned by them.

There are quite a few episodes of Catchphrase in Maidstone so I am led to believe but its a legal thing. One thing I would like to know is who owns the rights to TVS era Ruth Rendell Mysteries, I know an independent company, Blue Heaven was one of the independent companies that was set up so I presume they took over the archives to these programmes - but I have in the past seen VHS releases with MTM branding and on some episodes more recently on ITV a Buena Vista distribution logo followed the programme.