Chains Intro - Revision history

Jon Preddle at 01:24, 26 October 2015

2015-10-26T01:24:35Z

Jon Preddle at 23:46, 11 May 2015

2015-05-11T23:46:04Z

Jon Preddle at 23:43, 11 May 2015

2015-05-11T23:43:41Z

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Jon Preddle at 23:26, 3 April 2015

2015-04-03T23:26:05Z

Jon Preddle at 04:11, 3 April 2015

2015-04-03T04:11:17Z

Jon Preddle: Created page with "BICYCLING CHAINS: INTRODUCTION {{TOC right}} '''''The previous version of the Bicycling Chains was based around the (admittedly flawed!) con..."

2014-11-23T23:07:47Z

Created page with "<span style="font-size:200%;">BICYCLING CHAINS: INTRODUCTION</span> {{TOC right}} '''''The previous version of the Bicycling Chains was based around the (admittedly flawed!) con..."

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 If the Audition process failed to attract a buyer, the prints would be sent back to the BBC or to another potential buyer. [[Iran]] purchased the series on the back of assessing two episodes of [[Marco Polo]]; that serial wasn't included in the package they subsequently acquired, so in all likelihood, the "Auditions" were sent back to the BBC in exchange for the purchased set, or sent to another country for assessment. Given that all the sales to Middle Eastern countries occurred in late 1967 / early 1968, it's possible that those two sample episodes did the rounds between various other countries in the same region, such as [[Saudi Arabia]] and [[Jordan]].
-By the late 1960s, as the sales to Commonwealth countries and elsewhere began to dry up, the BBC would have sent out recent serials as samples to countries in Europe -- such as an unknown Dalek story being sent to [[Norway]] in 1967, and [[The Ice Warriors]] going to [[Germany]] in 1968, only five months after its UK broadcast. (All the Dalek serials had been withdrawn from sale during 1966 and all of 1967. Only [[The Daleks]] and [[The Dalek Invasion of Earth]] appear to have been exempt from that arrangement with Terry Nation, so it's unlikely that the BBC would have been offering any of the other Dalek stories as an Audition if they were not actually able to sell them!) The BBC had obviously selected [[The Ice Warriors]] as a good example from the latest run of stories, and chances are that particular serial was the '''new Audition story''' to replace the one/s that had previously been used. (Is that why prints from that serial were found in 1988; they were a set of unused or returned Auditions?)
+By the late 1960s, as the sales to Commonwealth countries and elsewhere began to dry up, the BBC would have sent out recent serials as samples to countries in Europe -- such as an unknown Dalek story being sent to [[Norway]] in 1967, and [[The Ice Warriors]] going to [[Germany]] in 1968, only five months after its UK broadcast. (All the Dalek serials had been withdrawn from sale during 1966 and all of 1967. Only [[The Daleks]] and [[The Dalek Invasion of Earth]] appear to have been exempt from that arrangement with Terry Nation, so it's unlikely that the BBC would have been offering any of the other Dalek stories as an Audition if they were not actually able to sell them!)
 Since very little else is known about what was sent as Auditions and to whom, we have not even attempted to try and figure out and tabulate what happened to the early Audition Prints from the first four serials.

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 Some programme sellers and distributors utilised a Customs or Bond service, through which films that were imported into a country were kept by an independent third party – a bond store – and released only once the purchaser had paid the seller. The ABC in [[Australia]] operated via such a system, and the surviving film traffic records from New Zealand record that the NZBC often sent films to different intermediaries in Australia and the UK. (NZBC did not send any films to [[TIE Ltd]] - see below.) It's not known how many other countries utilised this process.
-*If a country was known to have been a customer of [[TIE Ltd]], it is marked as such in the tables, although there is no absolute certainty that TIE played a part in managing or continuing to manage any of the chains that are depicted. It is fairly certain that [[TIE Ltd]] bicycled films between the countries that it represented
+*If a country was known to have been a customer of [[TIE Ltd]], it is marked as such in the tables, although there is no absolute certainty that TIE played a part in managing or continuing to manage any of the chains that are depicted. It is fairly certain that [[TIE Ltd]] only ever bicycled films between the countries that it represented
 *Of note, the first three countries that TIE bought '''Doctor Who''' prints for – [[Gibraltar]], [[Aden]] and [[Trinidad]] (which are bracketed together on other sales documentation) are located geographically as if those were the starting points for specific (and already-established) lines of distribution from key points around the globe: (1) Mediterranean / West Africa, (2) Middle East / East Africa, and (3) the Caribbean and South America. TIE would have met the cost of sending the films from its London base to each of the three locations, with the cost of moving them on to the next destination being met by the recipient.
 *Also of note is that BBC sales records indicate that [[TIE Ltd]] acquired '''only the first five serials / 26 episodes''' for distribution to four countries in 1965. There is no other existing BBC paperwork that identifies TIE as the middle man, and there is no absolute certainty that they provided prints of any other serials sold to those four or any of the other (subsequent) countries that were in their distribution network. It may be that TIE Ltd acted as broker for '''those five serials / four countries only''', and once the ink had dried on the sales papers for the first batch of episodes for those countries, TIE was out of the picture, and the sale and distribution of subsequent batches of serials was handled directly by the BBC (with the Caribbean sales via their New York office)...

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:26, 3 April 2015
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	Films were therefore being moved from country to country '''regularly and quickly''' along these pre-established chains; there was no real reason for any station to hold onto films for longer than necessary. Only the final country in each chain would be the one responsible for destroying or returning the films, otherwise by being at the end of the line they'd have mountains of expired films to store and administer. In most cases, destruction or return to the original supplier would be the ultimate fate of the films. (A third disposal method was to send some or all of the prints as "Audition Prints" to another broadcaster.) The BBC's "return or destroy" policy applied only to those countries that were at the end of each chain; the films were retained by the last country until such time that they received instructions to dispose of the prints in the manner dictated by the BBC. That directive sometimes came many years later, and in a few very rare cases maybe not at all… (This is covered below.)		Films were therefore being moved from country to country '''regularly and quickly''' along these pre-established chains; there was no real reason for any station to hold onto films for longer than necessary. Only the final country in each chain would be the one responsible for destroying or returning the films, otherwise by being at the end of the line they'd have mountains of expired films to store and administer. In most cases, destruction or return to the original supplier would be the ultimate fate of the films. (A third disposal method was to send some or all of the prints as "Audition Prints" to another broadcaster.) The BBC's "return or destroy" policy applied only to those countries that were at the end of each chain; the films were retained by the last country until such time that they received instructions to dispose of the prints in the manner dictated by the BBC. That directive sometimes came many years later, and in a few very rare cases maybe not at all… (This is covered below.)
		+
		+	And is it coincidence that most of the chains end in Africa? Was that the BBC's strategy from the beginning, to have films starting out at various points and continents around the globe but bicycled in such a way that they all end up in Africa? After all, from a perspective of longitude the continent of Africa is directionally south of the UK …

	And with so few prints in circulation being shared by as many countries as possible the BBC's film laboratory and processing costs were kept down (as noted in the ''Listener'' article above); a fresh 30 minute 16mm print cost somewhere in the vicinity of £12 in the late 1960s, and when most countries in Africa were paying less than £10 per episode – and even less than that in the Caribbean - the BBC wasn't going to send a fresh print to a country paying less than the cost of that print if it couldn't recoup that cost elsewhere by bicycling. In other words, the BBC wasn't going to send a new print to a country if that film wasn't going to be subsequently bicycled. Therefore, we have where possible kept chains with just one country to a minimum.		And with so few prints in circulation being shared by as many countries as possible the BBC's film laboratory and processing costs were kept down (as noted in the ''Listener'' article above); a fresh 30 minute 16mm print cost somewhere in the vicinity of £12 in the late 1960s, and when most countries in Africa were paying less than £10 per episode – and even less than that in the Caribbean - the BBC wasn't going to send a fresh print to a country paying less than the cost of that print if it couldn't recoup that cost elsewhere by bicycling. In other words, the BBC wasn't going to send a new print to a country if that film wasn't going to be subsequently bicycled. Therefore, we have where possible kept chains with just one country to a minimum.

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 <span style="font-size:200%;">BICYCLING CHAINS: INTRODUCTION</span>
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 With '''Doctor Who''' being sold in packages made up of specific serials or a set number of episodes (usually in "blocks" of around 26 episodes, such as {{A}} to {{E}}; {{F}} to {{L}}; {{M}} to {{S}}), countries that got the same groups of episodes were likely to be in the same chain – i.e. they got those episodes ''because'' the others in the chain did.
 * The groups have been placed in order of "first to screen" the series. A BBC memo dated '''July 1965''' lists the first ten countries to have been sold the series, and these are also the first ten to screen the series: we have therefore taken the approach that these '''ten''' were at the start of each of the bicycling routes. In most cases, these routes had already been established years earlier (as noted above); if Country A was already bicycling, say, '''Z Cars''' to Country B, who in turn sent it to Country C, it made economic and logistical sense to sell and bicycle '''Doctor Who''' to and between the same countries. But if it was only Country A and Country C that had bought a series, it made sense to try and flog it off to Country B as well, even if it meant charging them at the bottom end of the scale, since the films were already going that way anyway. This is expanded upon in the sections above.
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 *TIE Ltd helped a couple of the countries that aired '''Doctor Who''' in Africa and the Middle East to set-up their TV service, so in those cases they'd have stuck with TIE as their on-going purchasing agent, not only out of loyalty, but also because being so new to the industry they had yet to build reputations and relationships with programme makers and suppliers, so having a sales / purchasing company backing them from the get-go was certainly beneficial. (The set-up contract would have stipulated the terms and conditions by which the relationship between TIE and the TV station operated, and the length of time those Ts & Cs were in force. TIE would certainly not have been their ''only'' service provider, otherwise the broadcaster would be left high and dry in the event of TIE going out of business…)
 *In Africa, TIE helped establish the TV stations in [[Ethiopia]], [[Kenya]] and [[Sierra Leone]] only. In this 1967 gazette entry (see above) for Ethiopian Television Service, TIE was their purchaser for '''"US programs"'''; despite the office of contact being the one in London, this does not mean TIE was necessarily ETV's British programmes purchaser as well. (Of course, that position may have changed by 1970, the year that '''Doctor Who''' aired in [[Ethiopia]].)
-*'''TIE''' was just one of '''''many''''' independent radio and TV sales companies operating at that time, but it's the only one that we know of that had some direct association with '''Doctor Who''', at least in 1965. (As stated above, there's no certainty that that association continued beyond that date.) The 1966 edition of the [[WRTH|World Radio Television Handbook]] has a directory naming over one hundred international programme distributors – and TIE isn't listed! Is that because it wasn't a distributor and merely an agent? (It does have a full page advert elsewhere in the same book, but the word "distributor" is not used anywhere in the text.) In the grand scheme of things, as an agency, TIE wasn't all that important. It's only real claim to fame was with selling '''Sesame Street''' in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, but again the time frame for that deal is isolated to a brief period in the early 1970s.
+*'''TIE''' was just one of '''''many''''' independent radio and TV sales companies operating at that time, but it's the only one that we know of that had some direct association with '''Doctor Who''', at least in 1965. (As stated above, there's no certainty that that association continued beyond that date.) The 1966 edition of the [[WRTH|World Radio Television Handbook]] has a directory naming over one hundred international programme distributors – and TIE isn't listed! Is that because it wasn't a distributor and merely an agent? (It does have a full page advert elsewhere in the same book, but the word "distributor" is not used anywhere in the text.) In the grand scheme of things, as an agency, TIE wasn't all that important. It's only real claim to fame was with setting up twelve TV stations in the early 1960s, and then selling '''Sesame Street''' in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, but again the time frame for that deal is isolated to a brief period in the early 1970s.
 *Two of the very first sales promotional publications for '''Doctor Who''' (see [[Buying and Selling]] and [[United States--1965-1969]]) name the global distribution offices through which the new series was being sold. TIE is not in either of them.
 **Just to clarify how TIE's purchasing operations would have worked: TIE would act on behalf of their clients (TV and radio stations) by approaching programme makers and distributors saying, "We represent these countries who are interested in buying your programmes; what do you have to offer?". The BBC would provide TIE with the standard printed promotional material. TIE would then negotiate a deal with the BBC, "We'll buy this, and sell it to these countries for this price and under these terms and conditions". TIE would go back to the clients with "We've bought these series for you", and the films would then be sent to the TV stations (via whatever bicycling network they were part of) and that was as far as the deal went. All future purchases between the TV station and the BBC (once the BBC had established that the station was reliable) would be conducted without TIE as a middle-man.