Hidden wrestling footage.

Please continue the discussion here

https://heritagedocs.wixsite.com/talkwrestling/forum/memories-of-the-old-days/hidden-wrestling-footage-edited

It's a matter of whether they want to make money off their footage (wrestling or otherwise.) We know they are digitizing the footage, but right now their focus is on licensing it for academic or commercial purposes. There are some private sales, but mostly that is their focus. Perhaps they don't see a market for a subscription service, or perhaps it's not cost effective. It's a small team (only a handful of people.) About five years ago, the Chicago Film Archive put a 100 or so matches on YouTube and recently people have been sponsoring additional uploads. I am sure people here would pay money to have the digitized footage put on a YouTube channel or offered through some other platform. I think the cheapest transfer option was 40 pounds per hour (plus expenses.) That's still a lot, but people could chip in. If you allow people to pay for access to the archive then yes, some folks will rip the matches and share them illegally, but the sponsorship method could work if they are willing to set up a platform.

lets be really controversial shall we. remember ITV is a business with shareholders. how much do you think it would cost to digitise a 20 minute bout factoring in staff costs etc.

if ITV was to put up a subscription service and make available how much would they charge. you have already seen what has happened with all the VHS off air recordings that were made. most have made their way onto youtube were you can view for free.

BUT and this is a very BIG BUT we have a situation of some making a living by selling DVD compilation of this recording which are pirate copies. they are illegal and just because you have paid for them does not make the DVDs you buy legal. the buyers are just as guilty as person infringing the copyright. both are committing a criminal offence

WHY SHOULD ITV GO TO EXPENSE OF DIGITISING SO SCURRILOUS TYPES CAN STEAL THE MATERIAL AND SELL COPIES ILLEGALLY

The footage might look better now than it did on those old TV sets.

Possibly the easiest way for ITV to make them available would be to make them available to download at a similar price to music tracks , this way they would generate money without too much effort and we could build up our collections gradually without bursting the bank. This would have a worldwide appeal to fans everywhere.

Had a thread on here some years ago listing all the wrestlers with no matches on the internet. Subsequently the list has become shorter but still too long.Hope ITV will reduce the asking price or even show some of the black and white matches late at night

Top of my list , Albert Wall.

Had some good bouts with Davies.

I really hope that some of these many missing older bouts do appear. There are so many that I would love to see (McManus v Pallo, Nagasaki v Howes, a tag match involving the Hells Angels etc). However, in the late 90's I was thinking that I would never again see any of the bouts that I had seen when I was young. The bouts that have already appeared and are available on YouTube or on DVD's are far more than I had hoped for in my wildest dreams. If some of these missing older bouts do appear it would be fantastic but we should be grateful for what we already have.

Prior to COVID The British Film Institue (BFI) archive seemed to have some ITV wrestling bouts available to view at their London HQ. One of which is the Rikki Starr-Steve Haggerty bout from 1973 which was shown in the short lived Thursday lunch time slot on ITV.

I can remember watching Mike Eagers in fact he was certainly a popular wrestler on tv but haven't been able to find any of his bouts , another wrestlers whose legacy is rotting away in ITV archives.

Thank you Hack. That’s all I wanted, just a guarantee he’s not going to be allowed to post nonsense on anymore posts I start. It’s annoying and totally bizarre when your enjoying a conversation and suddenly a bottle of washing up liquid or an advert for a mop pops up. If he wants to do it to his own posts that’s fine. Of course conversation drifts and I love it but how you get from Kendo Nagasaki to Heinz baked beans is beyond my understanding! You and Anglo created a wonderful forum thats a credit to keeping alive those great days and I hate seeing it made to look like a joke and turned into a play ground for simple minds. Thanks for being so diplomatic and apologies for calling Matey Dave an irritating semi literate unfunny half wit who must have been dropped on his head as a baby ...He’s not irritating at all. I’m joking! I’m joking. Peace.

We have always tried to moderate this forum in a light handed way. The contributors who enjoy the forum enjoy it for different reasons and it's not unusual for topics to drift off at unrelated tangents. There have been past discussions that have led to talk about music, gardening, even a long discourse on recipes at one time. Some enjoy the diversions, some don't, but as long as everyone gets some pleasure from the forum that's really all that matters. Most outsiders would consider our core topic pretty trivial, but so what? It's what we all enjoy and we are harming no one.

The one "out of bounds" area is that of making personal comments about other contributors. That is not allowed and the reason two comments have been removed from this topic, with athird removed because it then became pointless.

The initial reply that included the Tizer image did include a relevant comment regarding the tapes that had been lost by flood damage. The forum does not allow us to edit member's contributions, only delete them entirely. By deleting the image we would have deleted the comment about the flood damage.

Humour can be difficult on a written forum. We have fallen foul at times and led to apologies.

Frank and Dave have both enjoyed contributing to the forum and will hopefully continue to do so. Let's stay on topic, and yes that does mean no more irrelevant images or comments in this topic.

So glad you didn’t ‘relate’ , imagine that.

How about you start your own posts then you can post as many pictures of your groceries as you want and you can sit at home and giggle yourself even more stupid while everyone else just scratches their heads, that way your nonsense isn’t posted on mine. You’re probably a decent enough bloke with some interesting wrestling facts, why don’t you share those instead of making yourself look like the stairs don’t quite reach the landing. Anyway you do what you like, this is getting silly. Im spitting the dummy and calling it a day. 💋

It's certainly the old-fashioned approach, as TV studios used to take.

An accessing fee and a digitising fee, adding up to more than most are willing to pay for. It's the same down here in NZ. I agree the French are doing a good job of providing access to lots of their old footage, including wrestling.

I feel sure I read that a few years ago, Vince McMahon of WWF/WWE fame tried to buy all the archive footage that ITV had and the prices was too high. It's not that he couldn't afford it, but that he didn't want to pay over the odds and be ripped off.

there has been a lot of damage to 16 mm telercordings and my lips are sealed as to what happened to many 2" quad tapes

Do not understand why ITV is so reluctant to release what is available

it might be worth noting that a lot of ITV archive material got destroyed by water in Perivale many moons ago. 16mm telerecording of the wrestling were syndicated all over the world by ITC. if it moved, somebody will show it

The ITV Archive states they have wrestling footage from 1961 to 1988.

In my case it really is memory as I have thrown away much of my wrestling paraphernalia over the years, including posters and programmes from my own promotions. There are contributors on this site who have exact details of the TV tapings from this era who will be even more useful to you than I can ever be. Whether they come forward or not is a different matter.