Challenge TV - September 2011 onwards

Yes, the same Nick Owen who used to do the voice over on Bullseye too.

No, he used to clean the windows at Central's Broad Street studios, he and his wife were used as contestants on Bullseye once in the 80's, when a couple from Rochdale pulled out 20 minutes before recording was due to commence, it ended up as quite the scandal when the press found out.

He later moved to London and did the same job for TV-am.

From their Facebook page:

Surely they should be previewing newly acquired tapes well ahead of broadcast/scheduling them?

It may have arrived from whoever is supplying it fairly recently. They won't necessarily have had the whole series in one go. Not much they can do though if the tape they're expecting to arrive on time is in a bad state when it does arrive...

Good to see them not only updating their Facebook page but updating it before the event rather than waiting for someone to ask why they repeated the first episode again. It's not all good though, if they get the continuity announcer to mention it I will be very surprised. If they update the EPG to reflect this, I will have a heart attack.

Where would Challenge get the tapes from? ITN Source? If so, would the problem with the tape be a 2012 problem, i.e. the problem happened when someone at ITN made a copy to give to Challenge? Or is there somewhere else that Challenge get the tapes from?

ITV Studios would be my best guess, Central having been swallowed entirely by Carlton, itself merged into Granada to create ITV plc and ITV Studios. When Challenge received new prints of Bullseye (either series 9 or 10) they'd had new Granda endcaps on at least one of them which weren't there previously.

Would ITV keep a copy as well as ITN Source? Challenge seem to have changed their tune today, they are saying 'if' a new copy of the tape is found they will show it. Could it be possible that this episode of Bullseye has been lost forever?

According this this episode guide, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkTH3r6d3JaldFNORXB0SWxPbzl5TWJ1d0dKdUFmV2c which was largely made up by me, there should be a Christmas episode tomorrow featuring Eric Bristow, Keith Deller, Maureen Flowers, Kenneth Kendall, Anne Diamond and Judith Hann. That's assuming Challenge show it in the correct order of course.

Bearing in mind ITV3's shown stuff that's far older than 1983 Bullseye (which itself has almost certainly been shown on what used to be called UK Gold at some point), and it's stuff they've effectively inherited from buying and merging the ITV companies anyway.



The actual phrase from the Facebook wall is "We [Challenge] will let you guys know if and when ep 12 will go out", which far from suggesting what you've written, says it will probably be along at a later date. Please don't exaggerate.

Doesn't ITN look after the archive for ITV or is the ITN archive completely separate and there may be two or more copies of some programmes held by different companies?

Of course, it is possible that UKGold also found this episode to be of poor technical quality and just skipped it. The difference is that they didn't have a Facebook page to let everyone know. I doubt Challenge [TV] would have told us a couple of months ago (unless a viewer had noticed and asked about it). It's only been quite recently that they have started updating their Facebook page with information about Challenge [TV] itself rather than that Quizzical nonsense.



I haven't exaggerated anything. Challenge [TV] implied yesterday that they could get a replacement tape but not in time to broadcast it as scheduled, today they say they are hoping that the episode can be repaired and using the word 'if' when talking about broadcasting it. "If episode 12 is repaired then we will advertised on here when it will play out". You say it will probably be along at a later date. What are you basing that on? Of course, we all hope it will be shown at a later date. I have my fingers crossed as I type this.

Archive is spilt: Between ITN source and Granada, I dont understand it myself, I believe everything from Carlton: ATV, Central,etc are with ITN and Granada well you can guess:

Also sometime master tapes are not sent out by copies of the master tapes...

I should hope the master tapes are NEVER sent out.

Anyway, there was a last minute problem with Pointless at 14:00 today. They showed Classic Who Wants to be a Millionaire? instead apparently.

They say it should be fixed for the 9pm repeat.