December 16, 2008

Pirate material helps BBC out

For broadcasters during the 1960’s the storage of programmes was not one of their top priorities, this is because these programmes were stored in tape and took up lot of space. Which is in stark contrast to today, where hundreds of hours of film could be stored on a hard drive?

Some early series are therefore incomplete, but thankfully, the BBC has discovered that they are able to restore lost or damaged episodes by resorting to something that is unthinkable, pirated copies.

It is an old favourite “Dads Army” that has benefitted from a pirate copy to complete the series. There were eighty shows made but one episode “Room at the bottom” was deleted to make space from more recordings.

This has now been found in a collection of copies made by a former presenter of BBC Radio, lucky for the show’s producers, because the entire series has now complete and in fact, this lost episode has been aired for the first time since it was made and with no legal action taken either.

Source [Torrent Freak]