Ford's Blog: My Earnest Review :)

There is a rather annoying twat by the name of Ford Timelord. Here is his blog: https://fordtimelordblog.wordpress.com/ But! Before you waste your time clicking on it, read on and save yourself the hassle as most of it will fit on the back of a postage stamp!

His first page of any note just has a couple of JPGs. No dates or nuffink! Noob. So to save you the monotony of having to trawl through this one-armed bandit's break from his latest self-polishing project, here they are:

So what precisely does this research amount to? Bugger all. The guy's a putz.

His next post "TIE Discovery" is just reheated forum quotes from www.planetmondas.com and wherever - so skip that.

After that, his analysis is another equally childlike and pathetic (Hi Ford!) attempt which amounts to another couple of clippings, so here they are:

Sad, isn't it?

God only knows why Ford feels that his next post deserves to be split into two parts (one per clipping now?), but it's about TIE (Productions) Ltd. And here it is:

Did you enjoy that?

Part 2 of the post:

What follow [sic] are some examples of the material produced by TIE (Productions) Ltd.1) ‘Primary School Science – Support for the Teacher (Original)’This educational programme was produced in 1980. It is held in the British Film Archive collection. Details can be found here:http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/1500963522) ‘Churchill the Man’.A film produced in 1973 by Television International Enterprises. It reviews the life and career of the British politician and statesman Sir Winston Churchill. It was released in the USA by Pyramid Films. Produced by Peter Lambert and narrated by Douglas Fairbanks. Possibly held by the US Library of Congress.3) ‘Everest, Ocean in the Sky’.A documentary about an expedition taken in 1986, mounted by SAS founder Sir David Stirling to retrace the Mallory & Irvine route up the North-East ridge of Mount Everest. The resulting documentary was shot at altitudes over 21,000 feet which to that point had never been filmed with professional camera equipment.Undoubtably further programming was made by TIE (Productions) Ltd. Presumably the mastertapes or films were stored somewhere.TIE hub anyone?

And there you have ladies and gentleman. All that build up for the final sentence, "TIE hub anyone?".

Fuck me...

And for his most recent contribution we have this:

I have elided the beginning because it just wasn't worth repeating. He goes on:

And the following Forbes article is worth a read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2016/03/08/doctor-who-fandom-in-japan-has-definitely-regenerated/#6184d9063388

 Specifically, the following paragraph is of interest:

Everyone wanted to know more but it’s here a degree of frustration became apparent, while some of the classic series had made it to Japan during the 70s (dubbed into Japanese on TBS) much of Doctor Who’s lineage was still inaccessible to the fanbase here.

Doctor Who dubbed into Japanese and broadcast in the 1970’s?  Yet no existence of this in BBC records? Maybe someone else provided the film prints.

“Konichiwa. Is that TBS? Do you have any old episodes of British TV series in your vault that you want to get rid of?”

So there we have it. A stranger to punctuation, accreditation of newspaper clippings (what publications were these? What dates where they?) and worthy analysis, who is never in any danger of being relevant or interesting.

Well done, Ford. Once again you have proven yourself to be a monumental putz and waste of time

Cheers, you donkey felching fuckwit. : )

I believe the last clipping came from an edition of Advertisers Weekly in 1968.

You can find his blog here: https://fordtimelordblog.wordpress.com/

Or follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/WGU18G

At Last the 1948 Show

The surviving files that make up the Rediffusion library are available to view at the Reuben Library located at the BFI Southbank. Electronic copying of any sort is not allowed, only the use of a notepad and pencil for note taking. For that reason, file numbers only have been quoted in this article. The documents are free to view and no accreditation is required. A complete set of camera scripts for the classic series of Doctor Who is available as are some minor props from the series. I had noticed them before but mistook them for a film library, until Michael Pummell pointed out my error - thanks, Mike

At Last the 1948 Show: Australia bought both series and paid £700 for each episode of the first series and £850 for each episode of the second series. Both series were also sold to Hong Kong via the Rediffusion station there. There were also further sales via GTS (Global Television Services) Ltd to Dublin, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand. All 13 eps of At Last 1948 aired in NZ as one run, regionally from December 1968 to August 1969. The films were all returned to Global in July 1971. 

I am sure there must have been others but there was nothing to indicate further sales, anywhere. Oddly, the Dublin sale appears to have been to a radio station? Although, AIR (All India Radio) owned India’s National Broadcaster and the Out of the Unknown episode Level Seven was found at Radio Bremen, so that may not be unusual.

"Happily, a 16mm film print of the play was discovered in the archives of German television broadcaster Radio Brennen and returned to the BBC in early 2006.": http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=3086

GTS Ltd was a subsidiary of Rediffusion responsible for foreign sales. Here is a Rediffusion internal memo from TL Donald of GTS to Johnny Johnson of Rediffusion, 4^th of July 1975:

“As you know it was agreed some time ago to junk all the drama/comedy material which would have little non-theatric value and kept the educational stuff till last.

The 48 show was junked some time ago, but when the demand for episodes came up, we were able to rescue two from the rubbish. Since then a third has come to light, and this was sent up today. “

This provides a little insight into their values and more can be found from Johhny Johnson here: 

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/11121/rediffusion-tv-archive

Where Chris Perry also mentions, “I have read 90% of the special collections. It’s mainly contracts for artistes so they get paid, mingled with scripts, stills and limited overseas sales stuff.” So like the BBC, the sales paperwork is incomplete at best. Another Johnny Johnson related quote from Chris Perry on the same thread: “John Johnson always hinted that 'shedloads of film' was taken away privately rather than be junked but I don't know how true that was.”

I saw a bit of other stuff and will be going back for further visits to view files for DNAYS, HMS Paradise, Murder Bag and No Hiding Place as well as others.

Sources:

Jon Preddle at Broadwcast.org

http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=3086

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/11121/rediffusion-tv-archive 

BFI Special Collections files: ITM-8898 and ITM-8899

https://www.facebook.com/pages/At-Last-the-1948-Show/112313235448618?fref=ts

Singapore and ...

Singapore is situated at the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula and gained independence in 1963. In the same year, television services began on 15 February with Radio Television Singapore (RTS) launching a limited TV service. Regular TV services began on Channel 5 on 2 April 1963. Channel 8 launched on 23 November 1963 – a date with obvious significance.

Singapore became a republic in 1965, and RTS began transmitting Doctor Who 7th April that year. RTS operated two TV channels: Channel 5 (showing English and Malay programmes), and Channel 8 (mainly Chinese and Tamil). Malaysia never bought the same programs as Singapore because TV signals from Singapore could be picked up with clarity in Malaysia and vice versa. Though, Singapore did broadcast fifty-six episodes of Doctor Who that are currently missing from the BBC archives: Nine Hartnells (Marco Polo and the two missing episodes from The Reign of Terror) along with forty-seven Troughton episodes.

RTS bought the first ten seasons of the classic series of Doctor Who except for:


1 - Mission to the Unknown (1)

2 - The Daleks’ Master Plan (11/12 depending on whether you include FoS )

3 - Inferno (7)

4 - The Mind of Evil (6)

5 - The Daemons (5)

6 - The Green Death (6)



The ‘A’ (Adult) rating received from The Australian Film Classification Board prevented screening in Australia. It seems likely that further sales to other countries did not follow because none of these were bought at the much higher rate of $600 AUD that Australia normally paid for Doctor Who. None of these stories were broadcast in New Zealand by the ZNBC who paid closer to £50 (presumably GBP).

Paul Vanezis indicated on the missingepisodesforum.proboards.com that the archives of Singapore had been checked, turning up nothing. This seems to leave two possibilities, either the prints were disposed of on site, sent back to the BBC or they were sent on to somewhere else, but where? At after Singapore screened the War Machines in 1972 the prints were sent on to Nigeria. The recovered films stilled bared the censor cuts made in New Zealand and were eventually returned to the BBC. Aside from The War Machines, Enemy of the World and Web of Fear, the fate of the prints is still unknown.

Though we can't know for sure, there have been plenty of rumours and supposition over the years, and as always, scepticism is advised but the Facebook comment below is talking about The Celestial Toymaker is interesting nonetheless:




Richard Molesworth, author of Wiped: Doctor Who's Missing Episodes, posted the following on Gallifrey Base Forum:

I wrote to the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation just after 'Tomb' was returned from Hong Kong in early 1992, asking them what episodes of 'Dr Who' they had screeed, and if they still had any copies. (This was waaaay before we knew which countries had screened what and when, as we do now for 95% of the world.)  

They replied with details of sales dates and serial codes which (as later paperwork proved) was pretty comprehensive - not totally, but enough to tell me that someone had actually sat down and done the research to answer my query, perhaps about 90% accurate to what we know now. The letter ended with them saying that they'd checked their archive records, and that they didn't retain any of the programmes. As the answer was pretty damn comprehensive, I have very little reason to doubt that Singapore didn't retain any 'Dr Who' prints. They'd done the research, which was more than could be said of most of the other countries I wrote to in 1992! 

Without actually going there and checking in person, who's to say 100%, but I'm quite satisifed that SBC have no 'Dr Who' films at all, missing or otherwise. 

Regards,
Richard

The clipping below is from Wednesday, July 1975 and provides some insight into the problems facing RTS at the time, the subsection 'Bundles from Britain', is particularly noteworthy:







With thanks to Jon Preddle, and the British Library

Options

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.”

DWB ISSUE 40

Uganda: Been and Gone

Rather than re-invent the wheel I quoted James O'Donnell from the Planet Mondas Forum in a post where he talks about the state of the television archives in Uganda. I had suggested James that he put his on his own blog: http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/ So If you are out there and reading this James let me know if you want this taken down.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Had a look at MEF and, with regard to 'the quest', all I could find were statements from Paul Vanezis to the effect that Uganda was one of the first four African countries Philip visited in 2008, and that they had no BBC programmes, or indeed, any archive TV at all, apart from an almost complete run of MASH.

However: independently of that, I also found quite an interesting document from 2009, which has some possibly relevant information in it:

http://mobile.wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/8940/25%20Magara.pdf?sequence=1

Some headlines are:

(1) Uganda TV was fairly thoroughly looted in 1978-79, as a result of which surviving records are very sparse - so that's bad news.  But, on the other hand, it opens up the possibility of films having escaped into the wild - although, doubtless, tracking them down would be a nightmare.

(2) As of 2009, the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (successor to UTV since 2005) and the government's Department of Information did have audiovisual records, but they were in a bad state, full of unidentified stuff, hard to access, not subject to a formal retention and preservation policy, and not run by trained staff. The document describes the formats held but, frustratingly, doesn't say anything about numbers or content. For what it's worth, this is what they held at the time of the study:

"Betacam Short Play (SP) tapes
U-matic & U-matic SP, 3⁄4 in. low and high band tapes
Video Home System (VHS)
DVCAM (Advanced Metal Evaporated Tapes C/1/16K and Mini DV tapes)
16 and 35 mm film reel
2" tapes"

They can't all have been MASH - although I suppose they could all have been local programming.

Anyway! Quite a fractured and confused archive landscape, it appears. And, that being so, could someone who was visiting Uganda for the first time in 2008 - at which point he had no track record and had yet to set up TIEA - really have been in a position to conclude with finality that there was nothing there but MASH? In the absence of further details of what the search actually involved, I'm inclined to be doubtful.

Tangentially, I noticed the  other day that the Director of Television at Uganda TV in 1968 - as listed in the 1968 TV Factbook - was Mr Robert Coulter. According to the news story I've linked to below, he was there to help develop the service in 1967-68, had previously been Assistant Head of Programmes at BBC Belfast and, on his return to the UK in 1969, became Head of Programmes at BBC Scotland (another source suggests that he then became Controller of BBC Scotland, until he retired in 1976).

I would guess that his work in Uganda was some kind of secondment from the BBC and that he would have been well placed to obtain programming from them direct. So there's perhaps no need to speculate about other distributors (eg TIE) having supplied anything while he was there.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19690211&id=5X9AAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0KMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5863,1933526

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On the current state of Ugandan Television:

http://nextvame.com/6-content/uganda-fails-to-generate-high-quality-local-content/


Uganda fails to generate 70% local content

 by Debarati Das | May 14, 2014


"Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) published a local content quota monitoring report earlier this week to point out that none of the televisions operating in Uganda has hit its target of 70% locally-made programmes.

According to the report, which monitored Uganda’s prime time TV content between January and March 2014, Nile Broadcasting Services (NBS TV) had the highest local content coverage with 30%, followed by Top TV and Bukedde 1. However, other broadcasters including – Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), NTV, Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS), Bukedde 2, Urban TV, Record TV, and Citizen, had below 15% local content coverage.

Ideally, UCC expects local drama to contribute 50% of TV broadcasting, local documentaries to have 10% of the airtime, while local children’s programmes and sports should contribute 5% each. Foreign content can take up the remaining 30% of the broadcast time on local TV stations. However, local television stations argued that high quality local production requires time and finance from UCC which was not provided."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It has been mentioned by PV that Phil had been to Uganda and a couple of other countries in 2008 and came back with Malaria. So it was searched pretty early on and as Broadwcast states Uganda sent its prints to Kenya and they entered the TIE chain from there.

Very much treading old ground here but I thought this post was worth making.

Although, it seems this did not last: http://nextvame.com/6-content/uganda-fails-to-generate-high-quality-local-content/

Uganda fails to generate 70% local content by Debarati Das | May 14, 2014

"Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) published a local content quota monitoring report earlier this week to point out that none of the televisions operating in Uganda has hit its target of 70% locally-made programmes.

According to the report, which monitored Uganda’s prime time TV content between January and March 2014, Nile Broadcasting Services (NBS TV) had the highest local content coverage with 30% , followed by Top TV and Bukedde 1. However, other broadcasters including – Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), NTV, Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS), Bukedde 2, Urban TV, Record TV, and Citizen, had below 15% local content coverage.

Ideally, UCC expects local drama to contribute 50% of TV broadcasting, local documentaries to have 10% of the airtime, while local children’s programmes and sports should contribute 5% each. Foreign content can take up the remaining 30% of the broadcast time on local TV stations. However, local television stations argued that high-quality local production requires time and finance from UCC which was not provided."

Sierra Leone: Pheonix or Final Resting Place?

In January 1999, Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown, came under a bloody three-week occupation. This was part of a civil war that had begun in 1991 and would last until 2002. During these three weeks, the SLBS studios and Gramophone library were destroyed.

The History:

Sierra Leone’s SLTV began in Freetown on the 27th of April 1963. SLTV jointly owned by the government (40%) and TIE Ltd, NBC, RCA and Thompson international holding owning the other 60%. This turnkey TV station was equipped with equipment for broadcasting films and live programmes but lacked any means of recording local programmes. This essentially limited the station to the role of exhibitor for the UK and US television producers the jointly owned SLTV.

During the next five years, SLTV provided a service which was on-air for 4-5 hours a day with 75% of its TV schedule being composed of imported material. This lasted until 1967 when NBC and RCA withdrew their interests and SLTV merged with SLBS (Sierra Leone’s radio station) for about six weeks. Due to difficulties they separated again until finally merging again in 1971. By this time, the television broadcasting equipment, after years of neglect, was in a state of disrepair. Attempts to create local programmes had been thwarted by a lack of equipment and properly trained staff. Until, in the same year, some second-hand foreign equipment was purchased including two videotape recorders.

Construction began on a new ‘Broadcasting House’ in 1974. Broadcasts continued from the old building and improved signal strength now allowed for transmissions to extend beyond Freetown. Frequent equipment and power failures resulted in frequent periods of dead air. Breaks in transmission lasted days, weeks or even longer. In one survey in the late seventies, only 0.6% of the population of Freetown responded that they were happy with the quality of the picture on their sets. Building work on the new structure was never completed. In the early-1980s, the roof of the original Broadcasting House collapsed during a storm with leaving all the stored equipment to be damaged beyond repair.

In 1987, the government sold the colour PAL transmitter that had been installed in 1978. At this point, all transmissions ceased until the television service resumed in 1993 with the backing of a private consortium from Hong Kong. The consortium began work on a second new ‘Broadcasting House’. This was adjacent to the abandoned project that began in 1974. In 1995, the original new Broadcasting House was converted to class rooms for a local university who vacated the premises in 2009 with ownership of the building reverting to SLBS. 2010 saw the SLBS replaced SLBC

The Rumour:

We had a first hand account and a dated description of what was seen. This was passed onto Steve Roberts and the description described "the first one with the white hair" and the story was "about cavemen living in a wilderness outside a futuristic city who were captured and put in a machine and tortured."

The date then given was 1982/83 and was for that single story. The information was forwarded to Steve in 2009.

Regards,

Paul

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/7956/all-rumours-discussion?page=10&scrollTo=81762

In addition to the above quote from Paul Vanezis, Richard Molesworth states: 

“Certain records were also found, which indicated that the fate of the 16mm prints of certain stories sent to Sierra Leone was uncertain: 'Galaxy 4', 'The Myth Makers', 'The Massacre', 'The Savages' & 'The Celestial Toymaker' were the stories in question. This certainly tied in with the report of the 1980s screening. But it was very clear that if these films were still in the country in the 1980s, then they were later destroyed during the war in the 1990s.”

http://gallifreybase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9948076&highlight=sierra+leone#post9948076

And onto yet another statement by an authority on the subject, during a  Facebook Q&A Philip Morris Director of TIEA stated:

"Hi Michael yes I have found evidence of audition prints.Yes I have visited sierra leonne .and I do posses there programme traffic records .I can tell you all Doctor Who prints were sent back to london in 1974.”

And further to that, Philip Morris in December 2016 had this to add surrounding the events in 1999:

 "People always thought that Sierra Leone had… there was a fire there, they had… the story with Sierra Leone, I was there, I worked quite closely with the head of their station. Their archive (Gramaphone Library) had been destroyed. The story is that it was destroyed by the head of the rebel group because he thought that they had some film of him which would then go to the UN and he’d be tried for war crimes. So he decided to shoot a mortar shell at the big metal shed which was the archive (Gramaphone Library). Burnt it to the ground. However, there weren’t any Doctor Who episodes there. They were returned to London in the early seventies. And from then… well, we don’t know what happened. It’s all right saying well they’ve gone back to London and been destroyed, well were they? We don’t know. There’s no-one can tell you that for sure."

In an attempt to add some clarity, the observations of Wolfgang Bender should be noted. This comment in particular is intriguing:

“Wolfgang Bender’s (1987) meticulous inventory of SLBS’s Gramophone Library further testifies the relatively broad output of popular records, both local and from other African countries, during the 1950s and early ‘60s. Besides the mass-produced Tin Pan Alley sounds and the growing number of released maringa, highlife, calypso, palm wine etc. songs, Freetown’s music and recording scene of the 1950s was further eked by a number of traditional musicians from upcountry. The B-Side of Bender’s (1988) collection of 1950s’ recordings from Freetown indicates a wide range of musicians from the provinces who came to the city’s studios to record their performances.”

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/22179/ASC-075287668-3302-01.pdf?sequence=2

A poster by the name of Jason Mahoney Jason Mahoney on www.planetmondas.com had this to contribute: 

“Had a reply from that German professor who copied some African music from the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service gramophone library that was destroyed in 1999. He confirms that he only dealt with African music and that no film material was kept in the gramophone library.

He also states that there was a separate TV building to the gramophone library. The gramophone library was a kind of shed whereas the TV building was constructed from concrete.

I've got another contact to try who should be able to provide further information.

I also notice my post about Sierra Leone over at MEF has quietly been deleted. No matter, it's recorded here for posterity and is based on a post from GB anyway. 

One final bit of information. The German Professor recalls a large fire in the early 1990's at a TV station in Accra, Ghana (GBC) where a lot of tv and film footage was destroyed.”

And then another post fills in detail, here:

Jason Mahoney » Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:21 pm

“Sierra Leone.

Some interesting information, not concerning Doctor Who but to do with the archiving of materials. I have referred previously to the archiving of the contents of the Sierra Leone Gramophone Library (destroyed in the civil war in January 1999). Copies were made of some of the contents of the library prior to this and then these were later used to restore some of the destroyed music collection in Sierra Leone.

It seems this was not a one-off project but part of a systematic approach throughout Africa. Music collections from Ghana, Malawi, and Rwanda were also archived by the 'African Music Archive' in Mainz. Germany. There were also plans to preserve collections in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (separate state, formerly Zaire), more from Ghana, and Nigeria.
What this shows is that in the 1980s / 1990s there was a concerted effort to archive or back up these music collections. If only the BBC or other party had done the same for Doctor Who''s Missing Episodes.
What's also interesting is that apparently there was a lot of "bootlegging" going on (illegal copying of material).

Here's a couple of pictures from the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service in the 1980's. Music and radio related I'm afraid but gives you a taste of the facilities.”

"To reiterate the gramophone library was located in the Original Broadcasting House 1. But music collections were backed up and stored elsewhere before they were destroyed in 1999."

Suspicion Over The Timeline:

Elsewhere on the Missing Episodes Forum Dec 16, 2011 Paul Vanezis stated that:

"Guys, seriously, there is nothing there anymore. If we had the slightest inkling there was we would go personally.

There are no missing DW films in Sierra Leone. The station was shelled and burned down. Any film was destroyed entirely. I admire your enthusiasm for the search, particularly after the latest recoveries, but energies need to be expended elsewhere.

Regards,
Paul”

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/6653

Much later on PMF (April 2014) Snacky presented a photo of Philip Morris outside the gates of the new Sierra Leone television station:

“Check the metadata on the photo. The date says January 25, 2012, shortly after Paul Vanezis had denied that Phil had ever been there. Time stamps can be forged, of course, but why would it be forged to an earlier date? Rigelsford supposedly said Phil Morris had just come back from Sierra Leone when he gave that picture to Aron recently, but the date was much earlier.”

I think I see one possible reason why TIEA was in SL in Jan 2012:

"For now, the SLBC is running old programs of its two predecessors, and as such, it cannot yet be described as the new voice of a free Sierra Leone. Indeed, Kaikai appealed to Sierra Leoneans to be patient; he said the SLBC needs at least 18 months to become fully functional internally and another six months or so to develop an original slate of programs."

http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf

(Page has since been removed, but archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120306191705/http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf)

It is possible that TIEA could have been helping with the SLBC get on its feet after the restructuring and rebranding away from SLBS. And of course taken the opportunity to delve into the archives.

Still speculation was rife on the MEF:

"Rubbish! The television vaults at Sierra Leone are far from destroyed! I known of two people who are employed as researchers there and I was in touch with them only two years ago. I did ask then about the rumours about the civil war reducing the building to rubble but they denied this saying that only the entrance suffered damage during a mortar attack. The complete destruction reported widely stems from propaganda stories initiated by the opposition forces (they also reported the apparent destruction of other landmarks). I will definitely ask them next time I contact them to enquire exactly what’s in the archives. It’s probably more a case of what has been saved to this day than what’s been blown to smithereens."

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/9023/missing-episode-rumours?page=11

In the End:

I doubt there is much room for any missing television material to have remained but there is always the possibility of a small number of prints to have survived somehow. Though let's not forget the stories of the Doctor Who serial 'The Savages' having been screened in Sierra Leone in the early eighties, but you can read more about that here: 

http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-sierra-leone-doug-mcclure-conjecture.html

Sources:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000325/032528EB.pdf

http://gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/Sierra_Leone

Jason Mahoney and www.planetmondas.com (All Rights Reserved © 2015 & ™ by Jason Mahoney) :http://www.planetmondas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2479&p=74131&hilit=+wolfgang+bender#p74131

http://missingepisodes.proboards.com

National Archives file: FO 953/2155, CO 1027/503, DO 191/235

http://www.audiencescapes.org/resources/field-blog/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulfill-its-public-mission/will-sierra-leones-slbc-fulf

http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-sierra-leone-doug-mcclure-conjecture.html
http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/part-8.html

Introduction

Well, here it is then, the first page of my new blog and I suppose I should tell you what it is all about then.

It is many things to many people for instance to me it's a space where I can dazzle you all whilst laying out my uniquely original and insightful thoughts on my interests with razor sharp wit and grace.

To others, it is the frothing, gibbering, incoherent nonsensical ramblings of somebody who is old enough to know better. It definitely isn't big and it definitely isn't funny!

"But what is it about?"

It's about my attempts to make sense of the Omnirumour and attempt to understand what missing (or previously missing if you prefer) episodes of vintage sixties and seventies TV series may have been recovered by the founder of TIEA Philip Morris. So there will be rumours, research, analysis and inference - expect lots of inference.

This blog does expect some familiarity with the Omnirumour itself and will no doubt veer off into surrounding areas which may not seem whole relevant but will hopefully redeem themselves.

A couple of sites I am sure you are familiar with but are worth mentioning to the uninitiated are:

http://www.broadwcast.org

For all things Doctor Who and television distribution related: http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/ 

The blog of the indomitable J O'Donnell who describes his blog as "A journal of pointless and suspect research into television history. Mainly about Doctor Who."

Enjoy,
Steve