It's not that suprising really, seeing as he challenged his initial banning from the repeats which got rescinded and he got shown again up until his 2015 arrest. Seeing as his case was thrown out of court, and he'd probably challenge them if he got banned again.
Watched The Style Council doc on Sky Arts the other night and noticed a VHS quality clip from a TOTP episode being used (1983 I think, when they performed 'Paris Match', Simon Bates introduced them). Anyone know why this is as other TOTP clips used in the programme were normal broadcast clips.
The only time they performed it in the studio was the 25/08/1983 episode - apparently a live edition, and Mike Smith co-hosted it with Bates, so it was never repeated on BBC4. It was assumed to exist in full broadcast quality at the BBC before this but that does raise questions over its archival status.
At least one other performance from the same show has been shown on TOTP2 before (Level 42), so the only explanation I have here is perhaps the picture quality is poor in certain places, particularly the Style Council performance, and so a VHS copy had to be substituted? Stretching it but that's the only possibility to my mind.
Last edited by mumu03 on 13 November 2020 10:03pm - 4 times in total
I've not seen the documentary myself, but Ben's post points out how other TOTP clips used in it were indeed in original broadcast quality, so I'm not sure them just nicking a clip off of YouTube of that is too plausible here - not much of a point in doing that after already making the effort to use all of the others.
According to a post recently made on Popscene, it sounds as if some sort of restoration of that show has been made internally at the BBC and it indeed exists in broadcast quality up until Bates' link into the Paris Match performance, though I've no idea if that's actually true of course.
Looks like another live edition (like all but one of the other post-1977 editions with some sort of issue), so presumably some sort of cock-up with recording the episode at the time. Does look like the VHS bit comes from a studio recording rather than off-air though considering the long period of black at the end.
Interesting stuff. Ironically the recording used there actually has worse picture quality than at least one of the off-air recordings of that show which have done the rounds, so a better restoration could still be made of it yet.
If Smith's shows were permitted to be rebroadcast, I wonder how they would've handled this one in the repeat run. Even considering how they previously showed David Hamilton's home recording of 31/03/1977 (and made it look worse in the process), I don't think they would've bothered with 25/08/1983 in the end.
