ITV 60 (Network DVD Region 2) (1 Viewer)

[stuartfanning]

This release celebrating the 60 years of programs from the UK oldest commercial TV channel, will be of interest to archive TV buffs. Just available direct from Network at the moment.


http://networkonair.com/shop/2287-itv-60-502762644674.html


Here is the list of the original airing dates for the programs on this DVD set. (Credit to research by Billy Smart)


22 Sep 1955 ITV Opening Night Preview (ITV)
26 Sep 1955 The Adventures of Robin Hood: The Coming of Robin Hood (ITC)
29 Jul 1959 Murder Bag: Lockhart Finds a Note (Associated Rediffusion)
01 Apr 1960 The Army Game: April Fool (Granada)
01 Sep 1960 Four Feather Falls: Horse Thieves (Granada)
11 Sep 1960 Pathfinders in Space: Convoy to the Moon (ABC)
01 Oct 1960 The Larkins: Frightful Nightful (ATV)
22 Oct 1960 Strange World of Gurney Slade: Episode 1 (ATV)
30 Sep 1962 Armchair Theatre: Afternoon of a Nymph (ABC)
08 Dec 1962 The Arthur Haynes Show (ATV)
19 Mar 1963 No Hiding Place: A Bird to Watch the Marbles (Associated Rediffusion)
25 Sep 1963 Our Man at St Mark's: The Facts of Life (Associated Rediffusion)
18 May 1964 Coronation Street (Granada)
04 Jan 1965 Crane: A Cargo of Cornflour (Rediffusion)
07 Jan 1965 The Saint: The Contract (ITC)
16 Sep 1965 Gideon's Way: The Wall (ITC)
30 Sep 1965 Thunderbirds: Trapped in the Sky (ITC)
28 Nov 1965 Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV)
13 Dec 1965 The Power Game: The New Boy (ATV)
18 Feb 1967 The Avengers: The Winged Avenger (ABC)
24 Nov 1967 The Prisoner: Checkmate (ITC)
05 Feb 1969 Callan: Let's Kill Everybody (Thames)
20 Aug 1969 Public Eye: My Life's My Own (Thames)
09 Oct 1969 Nearest and Dearest: What Seems to be the Trouble? (Granada)
15 Feb 1970 Catweazle: The Sun in a Bottle (LWT)
17 Apr 1970 Doctor in the House: What Seems To Be The Trouble? (LWT)
26 Oct 1970 The Main Chance: The Best Legal System in the World (Yorkshire)
28 Nov 1970 Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased): Could You Recognise the Man Again? (ITC)
25 Jan 1971 Man at the Top: I'll Do the Dirty Work (Thames)
17 Nov 1971 Jason King: To Russia With... Panache (ITC)
28 Nov 1971 On the Buses: The Strain (LWT)
03 Dec 1971 Justice: A Nice Straight-forward Treason (Yorkshire)
06 Sep 1972 Ace of Wands: Peacock Pie 1 (Thames)
08 Sep 1972 Shut That Door! (ATV)
27 Oct 1973 Upstairs Downstairs: Miss Forrest (LWT)
09 Jan 1974 Man About the House: While the Cat's Away (Thames)
06 Feb 1974 The World at War: It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow (Thames)
21 Apr 1974 The Tommy Cooper Hour (Thames)
07 Sep 1974 The Stanley Baxter Moving Picture Show (LWT)
13 Dec 1974 Rising Damp: Black Magic (Yorkshire)
30 Aug 1975 Tiswas (ATV)
04 Sep 1975 Space 1999: Breakaway (ITC)
26 Dec 1975 Rainbow (Thames)
06 Sep 1976 George and Mildred: Moving On (Thames)
27 Sep 1976 The Sweeney: Tomorrow Man (Thames)
26 Nov 1976 Magpie (Thames)
19 May 1977 21 Up (Granada)
26 Sep 1977 Pipkins: Cowboys (ATV)
02 Dec 1978 The Professionals: Blind Run (LWT)
30 Oct 1979 Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia (ATV)
01 Mar 1980 Tales of the Unexpected: Royal Jelly (Anglia)
18 Aug 1980 World in Action: The Chart Busters (Granada)
26 Dec 1980 An Audience with Dame Edna (LWT)
21 Feb 1982 A Fine Romance: Marriage? (LWT)
01 Jan 1983 Whicker's World: Aboard The Orient Express (Yorkshire)
26 Oct 1983 Crossroads (Central)
13 Jan 1984 Auf Wiedershen Pet: The Alien (Central)
13 Apr 1985 Robin of Sherwood: The Greatest Enemy (HTV)
17 Jan 1990 Inspector Morse: Driven to Distraction (Central)
26 Mar 1993 The Bill: The Short Straw (Thames)
20 Sep 1994 Soldier Soldier: Stormy Weather (Central)

 

[mark27b]

There is a review here

http://www.denofgeek.com/dvd-bluray/itv-at-60/37469/itv-at-60-box-set-review

It says a lot that ITV60 only goes up to 1994. Anything newer would be soaps, game shows and reality shows!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

There is a review here

http://www.denofgeek.com/dvd-bluray/itv-at-60/37469/itv-at-60-box-set-review

It says a lot that ITV60 only goes up to 1994. Anything newer would be soaps, game shows and reality shows!

Yeah, but wasn't '94 when they really started killing off the regions and homogenizing it all into one big ITV?


And I assume that all newer hit ITV shows (Downton, Doc Martin) are produced by outside companies?

 

[stuartfanning]

And I assume that all newer hit ITV shows (Downton, Doc Martin) are produced by outside companies?

Yes most productions made for ITV and the other UK TV networks these days are made by outside companies. Downton Abbey, for example is made by Carnival which is owned by NBC Universal (Comcast).

 

[turtledove]

Yeah, but wasn't '94 when they really started killing off the regions and homogenizing it all into one big ITV?


And I assume that all newer hit ITV shows (Downton, Doc Martin) are produced by outside companies?

Not really.

The reason it only goes to 1994 I expect is because the content was selected by Network and not ITV so it wouldn't surprise me if ITV themselves have first shot at anything made in the last 20 years . Network are used by ITV to exploit the back catalogue that ITV can't see a market for.


ITV's destruction of the regions started around 1988 when they first removed the regional idents that used to appear before the start of every ITV programme. 1994 was probably around the starting point when the mergers began with Carlton taking over Central , Granada taking over LWT etc but the big drop in ITV's output didn't really start big time until 1999 when a fool called David Liddiment decided ITV would fight the multi channel tv output of Sky Digital even to the point of making ITV unavilable to Sky viewers, hoping that desperate ITV fans would go for digital terrestrial instead.

In desperation this meant daily visits to Emmerdale, increased visits to Coronation Street and frequent entire weeks with new hit Who Wants to be a Millionaire sandwiched in between daily double bills of the soaps. At the time soaps were ITV's only big hitters so Liddiment decided to go as downmarket as possible.

World In Action had already been scrapped and rather famously ITV's innovative Up series was banned from the channel with Liddiment forcing Granada to air it on the BBC for the first time. A real low point for ITV.

Knowing about the need for content Carlton spent a few years buying up as much content as possible including the Rank Film Library and also bringing the ITC/ATV archive back home after it had spent almost 15 years in foreign hands.

Carlton bought Select tv too and began a couple of channels using this output but it was all repeats so even after On Digital became ITV Digital the whole sorry company went bust.

Thankfully they learned their lesson and decided to embrace multi channel tv instead of fighting a war they couldn't win so over a few years we got ITV2,3 and 4 although still hungry for subscription revenue the HD versions of those 3 remain available only on pay tv.


Although ITV is most often a resolutely downmarket channel it does keep away from the bottom of the barrel where it was in the early 00's.

Where 42up was refused a slot at all on ITV the most recent 56up got 3 primetime slots - an indication that ITV cannot survive on soaps alone. A few years ago Corrie was taken off Sundays and I had hoped they might cut it back further but despite fairly unexciting figures ITV still rely on it and Emmerdale too much.

And it was probably almost a decade after 1994 before the proportion of ITV programmes made by independents would become an issue for a boxset like the one from Network.

Historically, contracting work out is cheaper than doing it yourself but that leaves the problem that since the independents took over the size of the library that ITV own and can exploit grows very slowly compared to what it used to.

Once they screen a show they can usually repeat it over a period of time after which they lose the rights and they often won't have home video rights either although this will vary from one series to another.


But I digress.


The problem with the Network boxset is that most fans interested in what it contains will already have purchased the majority of it so the price is way too high for the small amount of new content.

 

[bigshot]

Is there anything in there that hasn't been released?

 

[Silverking]

Crane, Murder Bag, No Hiding Place - not sure beyond that.


One of the problems in the UK is that any new release has to be certified by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors). They charge by the minute & it can work out very expensive to certify a whole series in addition to the other costs such as rights, manufacture, retail etc.. A lot of the stuff on this boxset has been released before so no further certification or charges are required.

 

[stuartfanning]

Crane, Murder Bag, No Hiding Place - not sure beyond that.


One of the problems in the UK is that any new release has to be certified by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors). They charge by the minute & it can work out very expensive to certify a whole series in addition to the other costs such as rights, manufacture, retail etc.. A lot of the stuff on this boxset has been released before so no further certification or charges are required.

Correction - BBFC is British Board of Film Classification.


Yes this is the first release for material produced by Rediffusion, as the three titles mentioned are. This gives hopes that a release of all No Hiding Place episodes that still exist will get released. 236 episodes were made but it seems only 25 episodes survive.

 

[turtledove]

Is there anything in there that hasn't been released?

Apart from the ones mentioned there is an episode of Tiswas from 1975 - god knows where that came from. Its pretty much the only thing I want on this boxset but I expect it will be from a home video source the same as the current Tiswas repeats are on the Midlands local channel Big Centre.

There's also an unreleased episode of Rainbow but it is an odd set because it contains far too much material unlikely to appeal to the general public but the hardcore fan will already have what they want leaving it as something I might go for when it hits £20 although I hope the much awaited Tiswas Volume 2 might be out by then.

Crane, Murder Bag, No Hiding Place - not sure beyond that.


One of the problems in the UK is that any new release has to be certified by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors). They charge by the minute & it can work out very expensive to certify a whole series in addition to the other costs such as rights, manufacture, retail etc.. A lot of the stuff on this boxset has been released before so no further certification or charges are required.

It's not been openly admitted yet but I think its clear the BBFC are becoming a real burden to the home video industry in the UK.

Just recently new rules were put in place that required all special features to be classified where previously they didn't ( probably how Network got away with the C word in The Persuaders documentary) but now niche companies like Arrow have found their BBFC bill increasing by a huge amount and rumours abound that various niche tv titles have been cancelled simply because a long running series that might only sell hundreds of units will have a BBFC bill of thousands.

I'm also convinced the BBFC are the reason why there is an ever increasing amount of catalogue Bluray movies that are being released in the US and much of Europe but the UK missed out all the time. It's surprising the number of mainstream movies ( for which you would expect there should actually be no further BBFC fees anyway) that are being released by Warner, Paramount and Sony all round Europe but not the UK. But add on a new 90 minute making of documentary that used to be free and now look how much the BBFC want to pass it and you can understand why