The support materials (ie workbooks relating to the series) were paid for by Midland Bank and wouldn't have been covered by broadcast sponsorship rules.
The 1981 Broadcasting Act was vague about sponsorship (in fact the term 'sponsorship' wasn't even used. There were some guidelines issued in 1982 which allowed the use of brands for coverage of events that existed independently of the broadcast (sporting events etc) but it was still pretty much a grey area until the late 80s.
The advent of Cable and Satellite is what nudged the IBA into having a policy on sponsorship, and for many years there were different rules for cable/satellite channels than for ITV/C4.
The advent of Cable and Satellite is what nudged the IBA into having a policy on sponsorship, and for many years there were different rules for cable/satellite channels than for ITV/C4.
Point of order: The IBA never regulated cable services, that was the Cable Authority's job. It was only when the ITC was established that all forms of TV were regulated by one organisation.
I know Tony Currie had a senior role in the Cable Authority, I'm sure he will have something useful to add.
The advent of Cable and Satellite is what nudged the IBA into having a policy on sponsorship, and for many years there were different rules for cable/satellite channels than for ITV/C4.
Point of order: The IBA never regulated cable services, that was the Cable Authority's job. It was only when the ITC was established that all forms of TV were regulated by one organisation.
This is correct, (I glossed over that so as not to get overly complex) but even once the ITC was established certain sponsorship rules were different for ITV/C4/C5 than for cable/satellite.
For instance, so called "masthead sponsorship" (eg The Good Housekeeping Show) was allowed on satellite/cable before ITV were allowed to launch OK!TV.
There's another example here from 1993 and Wish You Were Here, though it's captioned as "in association with" and no reference made by the voiceover (beginning of clip):
Wasn't Brucies Play your Cards Right sponsored in the early 90s but Challenge managed to strip it out so there must be two versions
It was sponsored by The Sun and can be seen here (see start, then from 12:25, then 14:05, and finally 25:55)
The other obvious example of sponsorship in this way was Millionaire, where The Sun logo was plastered onto the break captions and the opening logo (not the titles, they were clean).
When Challenge showed that series of Play Your Cards Right, they basically crashed into the titles after the sponsorship ended- it was quite noticable.
I had noticed the strange edit in the music at the end of the 1994 episodes on the Challenge reruns too - I suspected it was cutting round something, which suggests the sponsored edition is the only cut available - after all I suppose it's logical to suggest the chances of it being repeated would have been non-existent at the time.
Challenge must have fun on occasion editing all this out. When they picked up the original edits of Millionaire there were flash edits, lower third banners appearing for no apparent reason (covering up the original graphics) and new credits as the originals were split screen and littered with references to Teletext, ITV's website, a postal address and the entry phone number and was totally unusable.
Interestingly though when they showed some later episodes of Family Fortunes, they'd clearly got Les Dennis to record 2 different links for coming back after the break- as the original airings had him recapping the viewer competition, whereas Challenge's showings just had him saying "Welcome back, let's get on with the show". They didn't seem to make 2 different versions of the end credits though, as we still had the address for applications appearing over them.
When it came to those Millionaire episodes, it's still interesting that even though they made new end credits, they still cut in the original endcaps at the end, even the "A CARLTON Programme for IT*" one on that appeared after the Celador one during the first series.
Speaking of recording two different links for things, when Challenge did Blockbusters with Simon Mayo, did they get him to record links where he didn't refer to 'All new Blockbusters'? I think they had separate versions of the titles without the 'all new' in them.
The Catchphrase episodes first repeated on Challenge in 2004 (the later Roy Walker years) were usually edited to remove a viewers competition, except one somehow slipped through the net so you had an 0891 number on screen and Roy describing the competition a decade after the lines closed. I imagine they've fixed it more recently though.
I've noticed the flash edits on Catchphrase at the start as well. There was a couple of episodes of Family Fortunes that slipped through the net that must have been the ITV broadcast as they still had the competition question.
Is there any particular reason why broadcasters that rebroadcast programmes such as Challenge edit everything within an inch of it's life? Is it an OFCOM thing or is it because they think viewers might actually try and write in to apply or take part in the competitions?