Pop Culture

The Search for TV's Lost Treasure

The Australian, 6-12 December 2001

Thanks to a public appeal, the BBC has recently been filling gaps in its television archive. Two episodes of "Dad's Army", considered lost or destroyed, were retrieved from a private collector. Long-lost episodes of "Hancock's Half Hour", "Z Cars" and "The Likely Lads", and live broadcasts dating from 1936, have all returned home. Even a lost audio recording of the Beatles, from the TV talk show "Juke Box Jury", is safely back on the shelf. All they need now are the visuals.

Despite these finds, there are still substantial gaps in the collection. The entire first seasons of "Hancock" and "Dixon of Dock Green" no longer exist. Neither do several episodes of series like "Till Death Us Do Part" to "Doctor Who". Even some of the BBC's classic dramas, including early Dennis Potter plays, are nowhere to be seen.

This raises a few questions. For a start, how could an organisation with the BBC's reputation be so careless with their priceless treasures? The answer is that, as television gradually became popular entertainment, few people predicted the medium's cultural and (occasionally) artistic value.

"For years we were told that television was a wasteland," says Patrick Loughney of the US Library of Congress. "We now look back on television, with all its faults, as basically a programming record, in news and public affairs broadcasting and entertainment programming."

"In the early days, it was just seen as disposable," adds Graeme Evans, collection development manager at ScreenSound Australia. "They were just beaming it out. There was no capture medium, just a camera pointing at the monitor."

Much early television, broadcast live, was never recorded. This included news and variety, of course, but also early dramas and comedy series. Even recorded shows, however, have not been safe. Film recordings were disposed of, to clear storage space or make way for new equipment. Video, a useful but expensive medium, was frequently erased and re-used.

Even now that we accept the importance of keeping television footage, the tradition often prevails. Network Ten in Sydney, for example, still disposes of its self-produced material after seven years, while its Melbourne studio keeps very limited supplies.

Though television was always collected by ScreenSound (even when it was called the National Film and Sound Archive), the organisation is still better known for projects like The Last Film Search, in which officers travelled the country for early film footage. Compared to film preservation -- targeted by some well-funded campaigns, with high-profile supporters like Rupert Murdoch and Martin Scorsese -- television preservation has received very little attention.

Nonetheless, much of our television heritage has indeed vanished. In the US, even several episodes of "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy" no longer exist, despite their marketing potential.

Australian television, meanwhile, has a mixed report. The Nine Network, unlike Ten, has extensive archives in both Sydney and Melbourne. According to a Sydney spokesperson, they preserve countless films and videos of all their productions, even live variety shows like "In Melbourne Tonight" and the entire 14 years of "Bandstand". Many of Seven's productions also survive, including most (though not all) episodes of "Homicide", "The Mavis Bramston Show" and Australia's first television soap, "Autumn Affair".

The ABC also keeps a large archive -- though Mary Jane Stannus, the ABC's national archives manager, says that there might be gaps in the pre-seventies programs, as format changes (film to video, black-and-white to colour) might have resulted in the disposal of old footage. The ABC prides itself, however, on its collection of news footage, prudently kept since 1956 for documentaries and current affairs.

Even Ten, despite their "out with the old" policy, have donated footage to various archives. In May, they handed some 5000 videos to ScreenSound, mostly from the past two decades, and including episodes of "Prisoner", "Neighbours" and "Mulligrubs". SBS, despite their relatively short history, have also donated much of their backlog to ScreenSound.

At the same time, we are missing a few classics. As producer John Bowles discovered when he trawled the Network Ten archives for the recent "Young Talent Time" anniversary special, very few complete episodes still exist, and he found himself resorting to pirated home videos. "We re-used the videotapes," laments a Ten spokesperson. "Year five was recorded over year three."

"Young Talent Time" is not the only victim. "Of the 24 Australian drama series shown on the first 10 years of Australian television, we only hold 11 of them," says Evans. "In terms of variety, children, all the other genres, it would be less than that."

According to Evans, variety is one of the largest gaps. It might be useful record of Australia's singers and entertainers, but it was often recorded live, and was rarely distributed. Virtually nothing is left of the innovative pop shows "Go!!" and "Kommotion", featuring the TV debuts of, respectively, Johnny Young and Molly Meldrum; nor of the pioneering kitchen show "Entertaining with Kerr".

Children's television is another problem area, and little remains of early favourites like the ABC's "Six O'Clock Rock" and Ten's "The Magic Circle Club". "When you think about it, they are programs that would date very quickly," says Stannus. "Adults want to see the programs they saw when they were kids, but kids aren't necessarily interested. If a station can't really see an audience for those programs, why would they keep it?"

Nowadays, of course, our entire television heritage could easily be converted to digital format. However, as this would be expensive and time-consuming, storage space is still limited. "That's something that archives are now dealing with," says Stannus. "How do you decide what's the most worthwhile material? There's quite a cost involved in storing things for a long period."

The dilemma here is that nobody can predict which current series will be cultural essentials in 20 years' time. When "Doctor Who" won a strong fan base in the seventies and eighties, the BBC regretted destroying so many early episodes of the series, which they had previously regarded as mere children's drama. Aware of the demand (and the commercial advantages), they focused on retrieving "Doctor Who" episodes, and even found a missing episode in the ABC vaults.

The most intriguing "Doctor Who" find in Australia, however, occurred after one dedicated fan noted that many episodes had been edited for children. A search through the National Archives of Australia uncovered several scenes from missing episodes, excised from the film and stored in a Canberra vault. Now, those scenes -- too violent or gruesome for children in the sixties -- are all that remain of those episodes.

"We've been pretty selective with quiz shows and game shows, taking a representative sample," says Chris Guster, ScreenSound's television project coordinator. "But when it's a mini-series, or a high-profile show like Neighbours or Prisoner, we take it. When we don't, things get thrown away, so we're very careful."

As she is well aware, treasures have been found everywhere -- in garbage tips, in dumpsters outside television stations. Film of "Howdy Doody" was found at a New York garage sale, "Andy Pandy" footage under the floorboards of an English church hall. Last year, workers at a Manhattan office building prised open a painted-over closet which had belonged to pioneer TV producer Max Liebman, and had never been used since his death in 1981. The closet was a veritable treasure trove, containing (among other things) 137 scripts from the live comedy series "Your Show of Shows", written by the likes of Neil Simon, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Despite the popularity of this early-1950s series, almost none of it survives. The scripts, however, are the next best thing.

For now, "Blue Heelers" and "Friends" are probably safe from destruction, as we are now have awareness of the issue (and more space-efficient carriers). "The future for saving television is looking much brighter," says Guster.

In the meantime, however, archivists are still concerned for the past.

Dead or Missing

Some of the most sorely-missed losses in popular television.

Doctor Who
Despite several finds, 109 episodes are still missing, including the debut episodes of the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his assistant Jamie (Fraser Hines). Other popular sci-fi series like "A for Andromeda" (1961), starring Julie Christie, no longer exist.

The Honeymooners
This fondly-remembered US sitcom won a latter-day cult following on the strength of 39 surviving episodes. A total of 118 were broadcast live throughout the fifties.

Number 96
While much of this ground-breaking series has survived (including the first year), hundreds of other episodes have disappeared. "Bellbird" has also fared poorly; the ABC Archives hold only 294 episodes out of 1,697.

Six O'Clock Rock
Only one episode survives of Johnny O'Keefe's controversial ABC music show. Ten's important pop shows "Go!!" and "Kommotion" fare even worse; small segments, used for promotional tie-ins, are all that exist. The first episode of the ABC's "Countdown", broadcast in 1974, is also missing.

Women's Hour
No complete episodes remain of the ABC's important (and oft-requested) magazine show, which was broadcast live.