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I thought I would try and assess the likelihood of returns from certain avenues of investigation - just for my own amusement.
Cinemas and Mobile Cinemas:

In Brazil the TV signal didn’t extend over what is a very large land mass indeed; therefore, prints had to go into distribution through Cinema circulation. I imagine something similar could have happened in Nigeria, but as Philip Morris said, at the Pandorica Convention, Nigeria’s Cinemas largely went bust in the eighties, things changed when Nollywood started up in the early nineties, but that isn’t strictly relevant. Places like Jamaica had Mobile Cinemas, but as always these were mainly for educational purposes and the prints would not have had a stable resting place. I personally feel prints are unlikely to have turned up via this avenue and would most likely be educational or locally produced material and news films if they did. As the countries that are most likely to have been the final resting place for these items don’t have much economic stability then I think this compounds the unlikeliness of something being recovered via this route.

Universities, Embassies, Hospitals and other Governmental institutions:
The BBC always offered first refusal to the National Broadcaster when it came to selling televisual material and most National Broadcasters in the poorer countries were run under Government or Quasi-Governmental departments: The Department of Education or the Department of Information, for example. Some Embassies actually edited film prints, which were sent out to Universities for educational purposes and in the case of ETV in Ethiopia, the Broadcaster was actually located in Addis Ababa City Hall. As I have mentioned before, there were plans to use localised Hub distribution from educational or information departments under the guise of Media Centres.

National Broadcasters:
These places didn’t have a lot of storage space. If there was any kind of recall, and in the case of VT which was expensive and reusable there certainly was, then locating these prints to return or destroy should have been fairly easy. However, paperwork is notoriously unreliable. It isn’t hard to imagine a whole plethora of ways in which material could have survived and leaked into circulation. Logistically unless things are somehow misplaced then they are unlikely to have survived. ‘Tomb’ was sent back along the bicycling-chain so there was no record of its location. ‘Web’ and ‘Enemy’ were sent to another local broadcaster supposedly illegally – I say supposedly because no paperwork has survived which doesn’t guarantee this was an illegal transaction, although it’s a fair assumption to make and we know they did happen. Phil Morris has even contradicted his, “They never throw anything away” statement from the original Facebook Missing Episodes Q&A at the Pandorica Convention with a story about how Lagos dumped prints on the beach and a couple of other references I can’t recall right now.

Private Collectors and Ex-Employees of TV stations:
Prints are most likely to have entered circulation through Employees of TV stations or people retrieving items from skips. Prints being returned via this route could depend upon the philanthropic nature of the individual and would certainly be one of the hardest to quantify the chances. Auctions would be untraceable and every instance is unique.

Audition Prints:
Audition prints are nothing special. Once it was purchased it was no longer an audition print, but then set could be used or broken up for audition purposes. I have a theory that a set would be sent out for audition purposes but if other requested an audition print rather than get another print sent out it would be more economical to split a set. There was a broadcaster in Brazil, Global TV I think, that used to order Audition Prints; broadcaster them and then return them refusing to pay for them. Obviously, sending part of a serial rather than the whole thing would be a wise move to prevent this kind of practice.

National Archives:
A lot of countries in Africa still don’t have National Film Archives. I don’t think TIEA would even entertain the idea of searching a whole archive without reason, be it financial or otherwise, despite Morris’s famed tenacity.

TV recordings:
Illicit copies by employees are possible and did happen on a small scale, but this is a situation that’s very similar to the Private Collectors scenario. Obviously, prints would more likely than not be close to their point of origin, but the story about illicit copies being made and then the guy moving to Ireland are could be true. It’s been a long time and neither people, or prints are static, but obviously big cities or capitals are more likely locations for recoveries provided they haven’t been passed along the Collector chain.

Hubs/Distribution Points, Airports, Bonded Storage and Customs:
I could have just given this the heading, “Red-Tape”. This would obviously, be only relevant to poorer, more corrupt and disorganised countries, but would be a massive boost for the chances of returns. If proven true. I could write quite a long post about this, but I think that’s outside the scope of what this post intended to achieve.

Private Auctions:
This is a no go really, as lot descriptions are often vague and bidders are usually untraceable.

Other:
There is something unconsidered, or an outlier. Prints have been found frozen inland fill under the permafrost of the Yukon, Ivor the Engine episodes were found in a pig pen on a farm and the recent ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ episode found with a French Awards Organisation are all clear reasons to, “Expect the unexpected.”

64,000 Film Cans

Two posts today, I really am spoiling you. I gave a lot of thought to what I was going to post but then realised it was all bollocks and posted this instead. A few people have said on very occasions this past month or so, "Have you found anything in your research that proves the Omnirumour?" Of course, the answer to this is no. Only one thing would prove the existence of more episodes and that is a clip of the episode itself. Although some would still claim that only the clip itself had been found. If a clip had surfaced somewhere nobody would dare post it as that could cause all sorts of potential problems or delays.

My personal paradigm is to try and disprove the most suspect rumours in order to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were. That which can't be disproved I then consider whether I personally believe it and there is a lot if you look that can't be disproved. So I see no need to be glum.

One thing that I think has been disproved is the notion of a TIE hub. It makes no sense logistically to insert an extra node into an ad-hoc distribution topology that already has plenty of redundancy. The costs of maintaining a facility and the return to the hub make economically unsound. Especially when there are statements like this one to consider:

As far as I can ascertain that is from early 1964 so there was plenty of time for things to change although I see no reason to suggest that TIE would suddenly switch from moving things from station to station as required to adopting such a nonsensical business model. Of course, there is always that blind spot. That unknown variable that we just can't predict or compensate for. I have been wrong before and will surely be so again but there is little that can be done about that. We don't always get to make decisions knowing all there is to know. Often we have to make choices without all the available information. If somebody said to you that your house was burning down would you demand proof or go back and check on your house? At the end of the day, nothing is lost through daring to be wrong.

So what rumours do I think are credible? Well, the idea that 90 out of what was at the time 106 missing episodes being found is on the face of it rather borderline and considering how poorly Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks were known to have sold then something rather unlikely has to have happened. So sticking to just the highly likely certainly isn't going to give us the full picture but for me it cannot be satisfactorily disproved.

I also find the high number of film cans and tapes (let's say 64,000 with a 54,000/10,000 split in favour of film prints) plausible. I also find the idea that it could all be British material plausible. Although I think the majority would be ITV material and not missing, then there are dupes to consider but the thing that amazes me about this one is the people are so keen to ignore the context of the 64,000 number. Finds in Australia and Hong Kong I also think are highly probable, although Australia would probably only yield a couple of stories at most and most likely from a private collector. Anyway, there are three rumours there and I am sure I could find more, such as anything Anneke Wills says for one.

So is not knowing a blessing or a curse? Probably a bit of both to be honest but I am as upbeat as ever. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of times I yearn for this to be over and one day it will but I am digressing. The point of all this is that some people I have spoken to have become increasingly frustrated at the lack of evidence whereas I see it as hope. Not being able to prove something is not necessarily such a burden.