TV Film Libraries

[ringsider]

I asked a question on another part of the Britmovie forum and was surprised that none of the Britmovie contributors responded. I do hope I am allowed to repeat the question in this area.

Does anyone know the size of the BBC's film library? Ditto for ITV and Channel 4. Are the films listed anywhere? Is there a procedure to influence what they show?

Given the level of expertise on this site, I cannot believe that nobody knows. Even a totally negative response would help me.



Regards - Bernard

[Dandelion]

Something I've never given much thought to, so can't help. I would imagine they hold a fair number of films, though.

[Steve Crook]

I didn't answer because I don't know. But whereas I would imagine that they have an archive/library of all of their own programmes I doubt they have much of a film library. Channels like the BBC usually just get the rights to show a film for a short while. They don't usually get permanent rights to it unless they helped make it. So I would have thought that they'd just get films as and when they wanted to show them.



Steve

[julian_craster]

They can only show what the film distributors decide to make available..........neither the broadcasters or the viewing public have much input into what is screened on tv. Requesting specific rarely seen films is a comple waste of time, I think .......

[ringsider]

Steve, point noted - thanks. However, does that mean that in the case of the BBC, we as license payers can never have any influence over what films are shown. As I suggested in my original post, I feel there are too many "usual suspects" shown, when there must be 100s (1000s?) of hidden gems that would be great viewing (and great recording material).



Regards - Bernard





P.S. I say this as one person at least who thinks the BBC license fee is great value across the board, but perhaps not for films.

[ringsider]

name='julian_craster']They can only show what the film distributors decide to make available..........neither the broadcasters or the viewing public have much input into what is screened on tv. Requesting specific rarely seen films is a comple waste of time, I think .......

Julian, another point noted. Given that the broadcasters themselves have no input into the process, what would possibly be the motivation behind the distributors not making their entire collection of films available?

Economics is not my thing, but to my simple mind the more films they make available, the more oportunities to lease or sell those films to the TV companies. Or is there a law of supply and demand?



Regards - Bernard

[julian_craster]

<< Julian, another point noted. Given that the broadcasters themselves have no input into the process, what would possibly be the motivation behind the distributors not making their entire collection of films available?

Economics is not my thing, but to my simple mind the more films they make available, the more oportunities to lease or sell those films to the TV companies. Or is there a law of supply and demand? >>



Television today requires good quality prints (unlike 30/40 years ago when faded colour and worn prints were common on tv ....) and film companies will prioritise their film restorations and new digital prints to maximize their sales internationally.



If a film can sell to UK, Europe and the US tv and DVD markets so much the better. from their point of view !



Restoring badly faded Eastman Color is a particular problem, and is labour intensive and expensive .....for obscure British titles of specialist appeal, the sums just don't add up...



The deal is that the distributors will invest in providing good quality digital copies for broadcast of titles that they think are of the most commercial value, but don't ask for anything else...

[MrT]

C4 was the first channel to show films that had been transferred to video tape - up until that point actual film copies were projected and screened - on occasion reels were either left out or shown in the wrong order (The Marx Brothers season at Chrisrmas 1979 being a case in point).



The C4 library has shrunk considerably in the last 5 years - the channel has shown many thousands of titles in its 26 year history, but only seems to have access now to a very small range of titles (judging by the copious number of repeats ad nauseam).



One thing that may limit the choice is the need for everything nowadays to be digitally perfect - at one time BBC, ITV and C4 all televised prints that would now be rejected out of hand as being sub-standard. Anyone who has VHS copies of the 1935 musical "She shall have music" (C4) and the Marx Brothers Cocoanuts (1929) (BBC) will know what I mean.



I'm surprised though if distributors call all the shots regarding what is actually televised - political correctness has an influence, and I sometimes wonder whether the continuous cigarette smoking in virtually every "contemporay" British film from the 40s and 50s is one reason why theye're rarely seen now on mainstream tv.



Whatever the reason tv scheduling of films in the UK is just dire - and I don't expect it to change in a hurry.



Mike (MrT)

[Rob Compton]

My understanding of the way it works (or worked) is that distributors license a "package" of films to the TV companies for a limited period. If the BBC, for example, wanted the latest big blockbuster for showing on Christmas Day, they could have that - but only if they took a number of "lesser" films as well.



When the license period expires, the rights revert to the copyright holders.



The point being, of course, that quite a lot of us here on Britmovie would prefer more "lesser" films - 1930's, 40's and 50's - that NEVER get a showing these days.



rgds

Rob

[Steve Crook]

name='Rob Compton']The point being, of course, that quite a lot of us here on Britmovie would prefer more "lesser" films - 1930's, 40's and 50's - that NEVER get a showing these days.



rgds

Rob

NEVER? Check the rest of this Films on TV area of the forum. Maybe they're not shown as often as we'd like, but films from the 1930s, 40s & 50s are shown quite often



Steve

[ringsider]

Exactly - we have gone full circle on this. Of course we see old films, but a pretty limited selection, and repeated several times over. And we viewers have NO choice in the matter.



Regards - Bernard

[Rob Compton]

name='Steve Crook']NEVER? Check the rest of this Films on TV area of the forum. Maybe they're not shown as often as we'd like, but films from the 1930s, 40s & 50s are shown quite often



Steve

AS Ringsider says, Steve - the same ones are recycled. There are hundreds of pre-1960 films that I would like to see that are never shown these days, compared to previous decades with the likes of Carlton Cinema.



rgds

Rob

[Brief Encounter]

Many classic 40s/50s Brit flicks are rarely shown, in my experience... The Wicked Lady is fantastic, but it seems to be on every other week!

[chris48]

What about films that are so say in the public domain. Do the main channels stop showing them when they reach this status. For instance at Xmas the BBC showed George Formby films, but have not done so for quite a few years, yet they are cheaply available as copies on ebay.

[julian_craster]

The Formby films are not in the public domain....E-Bay sellers who say this are telling porkies in an attempt to cover themselves in case they are prosecuted for illegal trading !

[chris48]

Going back to the original question, for over 20 years I showed films for a charity film society to residential homes and folks who couldn't get to the cinema, first with 16mm and then LCD projection. And no matter what requests were made to the library, they completly ignored them and sent their choices, and many of them were dire. I had a complete audience of about 15 leave when I showed "Joe and the Volcano".

[blacknorth]

Very informative thread, thank you, but frustrating too. I also agree and protest with the film screening policy on UK TV. There are films I've been waiting 20 years or more to see but we seem to get the same 500 or so repeated endlessly. Only the advent of the internet has allowed me to track many of my list down.



Do you think there's a revisionist sense to all this, that broadcasters can concentrate on a particular era, or actor, or director, to the exclusion of others to make that work fashionable? I remember the kitchen sink drama of the 60's was very fashionable in the early 90's thanks to Channel Four's film seasons of that work. Yet that all seems a bit dated now and the Brit films of the 40's and 50's seem rather more timeless.



Just a thought.

[rskershaw]

I notice ITV only show the "official" Bond films, but I guess this is a renewable lease from Eon et al.

[cornershop15]

I hope the original poster got the answers he wanted. I'm not as knowledgable as others on this subject, to put it mildly, but have noticed certain types of films don't get shown anymore. For example, as a child in the 1970s, one film star who always seemed to turn up was Marcello Mastrioanni. There'd always be seasons of French or Italian films. Much later, in 1983, Leslie Haliwell introduced a season of British films that were censored - just fascinating. Then came a season of Sixties films on C4 that blew me away - 'Petulia', 'Three Into Two Won't Go', several others - not seen since. Back in a minute ...

[cornershop15]

Sorry about that - I was typing in the 'Quick Reply' box, which meant I couldn't preview and would have had to log in ... Forget it.



What I was trying to say was that interesting films, however flawed, were shown in ambitious seasons I've never seen the likes of since - the Italian comedies, the Bunuel retrospective that started weeks after his death, the epic Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock seasons in 1989, the unlike-anything-else British films of the Sixties (many of them shown in the slot currently occupied by David 'Dickinson's Real Deal'!), Carol Reed and Joseph Losey tributes on BBC2, and of course the amazing silent films like 'The Wind', 'Greed' and 'Napoleon' that were shown with Carl Davis's new scores.



Most of these seasons were on C4 in the '80s - the decade I became obsessed with old films. These days I am more likely to see 'Department S' and 'Follyfoot' [Network I salute you] but I still watch films. The trouble is most of the ones I'm desperate to see again aren't available. I often think of those two Desmond Davis films ITV showed - 'I Was Happy Here' and 'The Uncle' - and with each passing year there are going to be more premieres of things I have no wish to see taking the place of the old and rare. Many of them with increasing violence and bad language that's become routine (maybe even bland). There was a time, however, when rude words and the sight of blood were something new so I can be excited by seeing the barriers slowly being pushed up until the mid-70s (since when anything goes).



A couple of obscure titles before I go, to remind you of how good the TV libraries once were. In 1985 the Losey film 'Figures In A Landscape' (1970) was shown for the first time on TV - but never again - and around the same time on C4 the Nicol Williamson-Sarah Miles short 'The Six-Sided Triangle' had a one-off viewing. If NO FILMS had been made since then I'm sure they'd have been shown again (instead of 'Trainspotting' or whatever).



In short, films shown on TV before 1990

and films shown after 1990



That brings to an end more than one hundred hours I've dedicated to this forum this week out of a possible 168. I'm exhausted but thank you to anyone who's taken time to view my posts.