4Music to become E4 Extra

[James2001]

Personally I'd have liked to have seen a "4Decades" type channel exploiting the C4 archives, but longer term this probably makes more sense.

I think part of the problem there is I don't think Channel 4 own the rights to those old shows, they belong to the companies that made them and they'd have to buy them in in the same way as anyone else, so it's likely not as easy as the BBC or ITV showing their old shows. Especially as I imagine many of these indies from the 80s and 90s no longer even exist and could be in rights hell.

I think all Channel 4 ever made themselves was Right To Reply and the first 4 years of T4 (if the latter counts as a programme rather than just continuity). And fairly obviously neither of those will get repeated (however much I'd like to see them!).

The thing I'd most like to see repeated is Brookside from the start, though I don't know if it will ever happen, just like how I doubt we'll see the 1972-89 "Emmerdale Farm" episodes shown again. Living showed up to around 1994-ish in the 90s and early 00s (sadly when we didn't have access to the channel) before Sky One took it, skipped over the best part of a year, juggled it around the schedules and quickly dropped it- I think it was being shoved out around 3AM at the end.

Interestingly I found a Brookside episode guide online a few years back, and it revealed every episode had a title (though never appeared on screen- and the last few months where it was basically treated as one long episode once a week still had 3 different "titles") and the show had several "series" a year. All aired continuously of course, though all the major changes that happened to the show (new and revised titles, new theme tune, going three times a week, going 16:9, the film look being added etc.) all co-incided with the start of what they classed as a "series". Apparently there were 70 "series" over the course of the show's 21 year run.

I can't find the actual website any more (it was very detailed with trivia and the likes and information about the Living and Sky One repeats) but this page has copied the episode guide part into text format:

http://www.brooksideepisodes.com/Brooksi...%20Guides/

Amusing they kept track of every appearance of the "magic rabbits".