Sony's Shenanigans

Yes, it closed last year.

It had some good first-run comedies like Community and Younger.

It also had repeats of classic British TV shows like Spooks, Hustle, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and Hotel Babylon.

Mars and Ashes have both shown up on Drama. Maybe the BBC yanked the content to give to UKTV, and that left Sony Channel short of programming?

Suspect more a case of Sony shelling out for decent British content but not making it pay as the channel just hasn't cut through.

There was a Smithsonian Channel programme that got a pick of the day in the Radio Times recently, pretty impressive for such a new channel.

Both those shows are indie productions, made by Kudos, so I presume the BBC don't have that power over the show.

That programme, that was pick of the day in the Radio Times, was called Apollo's Moon Shot.

It aired on Monday the 8th of July at 8pm.

Those shows are all Indie productions and are outside the standard BBC licensing period - so the indie can sell them to whichever channel they like.

If a show is commissioned by the BBC from an indie (*), under the standard BBC/PACT contracts, the BBC only have rights to show that show for a limited, licensed, period - and don't have rights to sell it on to other broadcasters, or to show it on non-PSB outlets. The indie can decide to market the show via BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide) - but the BBC doesn't 'own' the show.

Rights to programmes made by BBC Productions, or produced more recently by BBC Studios (which is the commercial, programme-making subsidiary of the BBC - making non-News, non-Sport, non-Kids shows) remain with the BBC and the BBC then sells them on.

(*) There are some former BBC-produced shows (Songs of Praise, The Proms. soon Mastermind) where the BBC has tendered the production of the shows BUT not the long term rights. The rights to these shows remain with the BBC (the Proms is a more complex rights case of course).

Millionaire will be starting on True Ent from the 17th August, a few weeks before the rebrand. It’s old Tarrant episodes as expected, they’ve started showing ads for it.

Are they going to be shown as the original episodes or as the "classic" compilations Challenge have been showing for years?

Who even wants to watch the episodes post "classic" episodes anyway? (i.e. before they started to mess with the money tree)...gets very boring watching contestant after contestant walk away with £20,000 or below, Chris himself even said so in an interview!

Surely the reason that Challenge show the "classic" compilations was that they can't show the original episodes, as they included things like the contestant appeals with the premium rate phone number.


I'm guessing True Entertainment will also be showing "classic" compilations.

Challenge have shown the original first series of Millionaire and just hacked away around the contestant appeals, which included new graphics to cover up the original straps where they couldn't chop it out completely.

Note that at least one, maybe two, series of Family Fortunes had contestant appeals baked into the credits towards the end of their runs and there's no easy way to edit that out - so you just get a strap telling you not to write to an address that ITV haven't actually owned since 2004 Not in as many words but...