BBC4 - Saturday Night TV Season

[Larry the Loafer]

I’d love to see bbc 4 air the old Saturday morning shows like live n kicking and maybe even swap shop

I suspect clearance would be a nightmare, and I can't imagine how much butchering would be involved considering all the programmes they used to show within the likes of L&K.

[Steve Williams]

I'd be surprised if it wasn't an edition that featured Mr Blobby.

Surprise!

[Andrew]

Must be hard to find an episode of NHP that showcases all the elements that everyone remembers. In reality peoples memories are an amalgamation of multiple different series, and different features that may not have appeared every week.

A relatively early one in the original set with the basic features before they got daft (Grab a Grand in the basic cubicle for example) would be my prediction.

[NinjaBoi]

So they're airing series 1 episode 10

[TVNerd]

You would be right Andrew as it will be Series 1, Episode 10 originally broadcast on 1st February 1992 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001b0dh

[NinjaBoi]

You would be right Andrew as it will be Series 1, Episode 10 originally broadcast on 1st February 1992 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001b0dh

Snap haha

[JK1985]

And for anyone who can't wait to see that episode of Noel's House Party .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiZXnsCfM0Y

---

Here is the Radio Times description of that 1st Feb 1992 edition of House Party

"Noel welcomes you to Crinkley Bottom where tonight the House Party hosts the first husband and wife phone-in. Gunge with Radio 2's Derek and Ellen Jameson. Perhaps special guest star Kathy Staff (Nora Batty from Last of the Summer Wine) will help clear up the mess! The cast of 'Allo 'Allo! will be singing this "only once" in the Lyric Game. Dennis Taylor adds a Gotcha Oscar to his trophy cabinet. Plus your chance to call in and Grab a Grand"

[Neil Jones]

I’d love to see bbc 4 air the old Saturday morning shows like live n kicking and maybe even swap shop

Yeah good luck with repeating Swap Shop considering the bulk of it was either never kept or was wiped - the story goes that the tapes used to record Swap Shop were later wiped and sold to an Australian TV station. So most clips you see of it are domestic copies (the same thing happened with Tiswas, which primarily only exists as off-air recordings as ATV wiped them). Plus its not really suitable for repeat anyway to be honest, being a piece of live TV in the first place.

The problem with a lot of the Saturday morning shows is that once you take out all the acquired programming (which you'd have to pay for to show again) and any other tiime sensitive material (competitions, "call to ask somebody from Take That a question", any "original" programming you'd still have to pay for) plus anything else inappropriate and what was a three hour magazine style show suddenly becomes a 20 minute disjointed mess.

[Brekkie]

Let's see how badly they edit out the phone numbers that presumably wouldn't work anyway. Hopefully a simple graphic advising people they'd be stupid to call a TV show made 30 years ago will suffice.

[tellyblues]

Can't wait for Pointless being shown.

[Fanoftv]

What a brilliant idea, especially when BBC One have Commonwealth Games coverage over the next couple of weeks.

[Neil Jones]

Let's see how badly they edit out the phone numbers that presumably wouldn't work anyway. Hopefully a simple graphic advising people they'd be stupid to call a TV show made 30 years ago will suffice.

This is BBC Four, an audience that is smart enough to realise its a 30 year old programme. Its not like ITV where you have to put a disclaimer on the graphics and spell it out even for +1.
And 0891/0898 numbers haven't worked since the 1990s after the so-called PhONEday system, but I don't think those were reallocated.

[Argyess]

I’d love to see bbc 4 air the old Saturday morning shows like live n kicking and maybe even swap shop

Great as that would be, Swap Shop repeats would sadly be highly unlikely to happen.  The BBC wiped most of them.  

If they did try showing an edition, they'd also need to acquire the rights to the cartoons shown during that particular episode.  Granted, those could be edited out but it'd then look a bit clunky.

[Steve Williams]

Yeah good luck with repeating Swap Shop considering the bulk of it was either never kept or was wiped - the story goes that the tapes used to record Swap Shop were later wiped and sold to an Australian TV station.  So most clips you see of it are domestic copies (the same thing happened with Tiswas, which primarily only exists as off-air recordings as ATV wiped them).  Plus its not really suitable for repeat anyway to be honest, being a piece of live TV in the first place.



The problem with a lot of the Saturday morning shows is that once you take out all the acquired programming (which you'd have to pay for to show again) and any other tiime sensitive material (competitions, "call to ask somebody from Take That a question", any "original" programming you'd still have to pay for) plus anything else inappropriate and what was a three hour magazine style show suddenly becomes a 20 minute disjointed mess.

Funnily enough, among the earliest footage of Swap Shop that still exists is this edited edition, created for the Beeb's Festival 77 that selected a significant show from each of the previous 25 years. 1976's most significant show was, brilliantly, Swap Shop and they created an edited version with all the cartoons and some other stuff edited out - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/se...5#at-19.40

In terms of what else exists, you're right to say that Richard Marson suggested it was regularly kept, because Rosemary Gill the editor came from Blue Peter and was a protege of Biddy Baxter, and just as Biddy asked for every episode of Blue Peter to be kept (and it was), so Gill asked for Swap Shop to be kept as well - until Australian TV asked if they had any U-Matic tapes going spare and they sent them those. However, if that was policy, I get the impression it was not continued for very long as I've seen an episode from 1980 where someone writes in to ask to see again something that happened a few weeks ago and Noel says they can't because they didn't record it, so it had either stopped being recorded as a matter of course or it never was.

As for what exists now, the first three series are pretty poorly represented - for the first series in 1976-77 there is that edited episode and the pre-recorded Swap of the Pops special from 27th December, from 1977-78 there are two full episodes, from November (the earliest one that still exists in full, where Noel visits the It Ain't Half Hot Mum set) and March, plus the awards and the Rock Garden Party from May, and from 1978-79, just the one, from March, plus the awards. There are a couple of other film inserts that still exist from those years as well. From 1979-80, things get much better and I would say that for the last three series, about half of the episodes still exist pretty much in full. Would be nice if there were more, especially if you had vivid memories of something that has been wiped, but there's enough to give a decent representation of the series. I mean, you wouldn't get a Top of the Pops-style complete rerun, but you could happily show a few as a novelty if you really wanted to.

For SuperStore, the first two series similarly have about half of their episodes still existing, but from the third series in 1984 it becomes much better and I think pretty much everything from then on still exists, and the whole of Going Live and Live and Kicking, albeit the odd episode has missing beginnings and ends and there are a few in slightly ropey quality. I think that would probably be the case with most live programmes at the time. In fact I think the most poorly represented Saturday morning programme in the archives is The Saturday Picture Show, I'm not sure any of the first series in 1984 exists as all, and there's probably fewer than a dozen shows in existence from all three series.

In terms of the cartoons and other acquired material, mind, the programmes mostly exist as studio tapes rather than what actually went out on-air, and so they would usually stop the tape while the cartoons were on as they came from another source, so you wouldn't have them on most episodes anyway. Much like how on some of the election repeats you don't get the hourly news summaries. So you would probably never be able to show them completely in full in any case.

One Swap Shop story that I find fascinating is in John Craven's autobiography, where he says one episode was cancelled just before they went on air because of a strike, so John and Noel spent the rest of the morning in the studio just answering the phones and explaining to distraught viewers why they weren't on air.

[James2001]

I didn't realise the cartoons were played in from elsewhere, epecially as I recall them usually being mixed in and out with effects, and the credits shrunk down etc. which gave me the impression they were run in via the studio. But maybe that wasn't the case/