World of sport tapes

Sky Channel 191 regularly show British Bouts from PCW Preston City Wrestling

AEW have variety in their bouts not formulaic WWE matches where you can call the moves before happen. That said the roster could be better used than it is at the moment but AEW is the better promotion.

AEW have some pretty good wrestlers,as well as some good showmen,on the roster.

A few of their women wrestlers would give anyone from the past (apart from Mae Young) a bit of a pasting.

I enjoy AEW as entertainment.

Walk like a Panther wasn't particularly good and wasn't well marketed, Talking Pictures is nostalgia central. If any channel was suited to showing British wrestling from the 1960s and 1970s it has to be Talking Pictures, will it get an audience big enough to justify keeping it on? If they show it we may well find out.

Matey Dave comment:

Many living in the past forgets what it was really like. There are some genuine exciting old time matches on YouTube plus many with headliners looked like carve ups. Should old style wrestling from the smoke-filled halls return to our TV screens? There is AEW being shown on ITV and WWE on Channel 5. If you miss it one can watch on demand. English wrestling comes across as a cheap version of American with very little charisma

Walk Like A Panther did crap business of £260,108.

How many members of this site would invest their savings in bring back old school wrestling?

It is just perverse that French TV have made available all their matches from 1956 onwards and more and more black and white matches from the USA and Canada appear on You Tube.The usual laws of economics do not apply here.If something has no value the price falls. In this case the reverse applies ITV charge a high price for access to something it perceives to be of no value

Thanks for the various comments on here and by e-mail, which I've added to the page.

What a great project for them. I did not know of this Channel and have just watched Outer Limits on it. The good old days. 1963 would be a great year for wrestling.

I thought they got back to you very quickly, hats off to them.

At least they replied Alan, which is a good start.

Hi everyone, Talking Pictures TV have replied to my inquiry. Perhaps it can be classed as a wee bit generic, as they must receive countless request, but at least the channel took the time to reply. As we expected it all boils down to whether the tapes still exist and who owns the rights. If i receive any further correspondence from TPTV i'll let everyone on Heritage know. I've chopped/Cropped the top of the email as it featured my email address. I trust you guys but you never know who's lurking out there LOL. Keep positive and we might be lucky. Alan

Definitely worth a try, maybe they will come up trumps

Nice one Alan

I think the phrase "Pot Luck" is accurate as ITV don't seem to have a grasp of what they actually have in stock footage. An example i've used before was the early 1970s children's show "The Adventures Of Rupert Bear." ITV were adamant for years upon end that all 4 series were lost, either wiped or destroyed in a fire. Roughly 5 years ago "Network On Air" (who Talking Pictures are linked to in some way) released all 4 series on dvd in perfect condition. Whether Network On Air obtained the Rupert series from ITV or perhaps another source i don't know.

On a positive note i've emailed Talking Pictures TV today (and i suggest more do the same) politely requesting if they would consider airing ITV wrestling footage from the black & white to early colour era on their channel. I stated it's popularity during the 1950s-60s, wrestling's importance to the ITV scheduling (being aired twice weekly) and also Powerlock's great suggestion of possibly having a regular weekly "Grappling Slot" similar to The Saturday Morning Club and late night Cellar Club.

When/If i hear from the channel i'll certainly upload their reply., but! we do have remember that Talking Pictures TV probably receives many requests each week about airing particular favourite shows.

Just as a side comment to all this. I have been dealing with ITV Sport to view some early footage of Haystacks for my book. I paid £200 plus VAT for an initial search of wrestling material featuring Haystacks which yielded 29 results (out of 69 matches filmed between 1975 - 1988). I requested three to view. Once paid for they said they couldn't find two of them as the tapes had been mis-labelled and they had no idea if they had them or not, and the third (and earliest match) thankfully they had, which I have now been able to view. But its all a bit Steptoe & Son dealing with them. Unlike requesting material from the BBC, which has always been utterly professional and organised.

The problem is, in my view, that if Talking Pictures approached ITV over this they would very likely be offered the material which has already aired on the Wrestling Channel and which mots of us have seen and possibly recorded. That is the "low hanging fruit". It is highly unlikely that Talking Pictures have the money to pay ITV to delve deeper into their archive, and to convert the material into a format suitable for broadcast.

Things have moved on from Mad Mac's comment that "They're not in any way "indexed", it's very much a "pot luck" what, if anything, is on a particular tape."

Thanks to the help of a friend of mine, ITV Sport are now much more aware of what they have on their reels and tapes.

A valid point Powerlock. My old man mentioned last year, that World of Sport Wrestling had been aired briefly on ITV 4, for a grand total of 15 minutes! The action cut short, to say the least.

Thanks Alan. My potency has had its moments.

My point is that Talking Pictures know how to overcome all the obstacles.

Oliver Hardy once stated to Stan Laurel "That is a very potent suggestion" Anglo. Any black and white footage would certainly keep in theme with the Talking Pictures channel, it would all boil down to the price ITV wanted as a certain number of films that TP show are in the public domain, so little to no charge is required for airing. Plus i think TP channel are connected in some way to the "Network On Air" company as they seem to televise a lot of films and tv shows Network On Air have transferred to dvd/blu ray format. A very good channel and a very good company by the way.

Of all the things they show Sport isn't one thing they've gone for. They have been running a children's cinema club format on a Saturday morning with quite a success, they would have to go for the Saturday 4pm slot for me, its a significant time slot and would bring back a lot of memories for fans of yesteryear.

The Talking Pictures channel seems to have access to plenty of fifties and sixties ITV series, even some crown jewels like Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Those guys would know how to access the wrestling tapes, and they'd have a platform to screen them.

Most old stuff seems to get buried forever in Britain , certainly the Black and White.

We seem to be better getting to see some old American stuff like Rawhide or Bonanza.

Can you imagine them ever running Z Cars again or Emergency Ward Ten. Seems to me it will just never happen. Probably nothing personal against the wrestling.

Would they show 1960's match of the day again. Doubtful.

Well, I seem to have remembered the details pretty much correctly! One issue that may ultimately arise for ITV is having the equipment to actually play the tapes as time goes by (said the fellow with four fully working VHS units in his home!). I'd also add that WWE/F have done a tremendous job in restoring their old recordings.

If the company that owns Reslo has gone bust, doesn't that mean that a new company could buy all the assets (i.e. tapes) from the receiver?

I think Mad Mac and John have just about covered everything. The only thing i can add is remembering someone stating that ITV charged a search fee of £500, and that was quite a few years ago. Whether the cost was for a general search for existing tapes or for a specific bout is unclear, but i would edge toward the latter, as if even the WWE thought the prices asked for ITV's back catalogue was astronomical then the search charge of £500 per bout makes more sense. The only thing hoped is that ITV do digitalise their stock before the tapes eventually rot. Personally i'm pleased that the ITV recordings weren't lost to the WWE.

Video recorders have been around much longer than people imagine (1960s although very expensive) so there is a "faint" possibility that a someone has footage that hasn't been released or even a huge collection. I did wonder if some of the more shall we say wealthier men such as Kendo or Max Crabtree possibly owned such a collection. Max certainly owns some of Shirley's unaired contests as mentioned in Ryan Danes book, he states he viewed a contest during which Hans Streiger interrupted a Big Daddy contest and Shirley man handled him out of the hall. The bout was pulled from the television/airing schedule. If such collections exist i could also imagine ITV slapping some kind of preventative measure on any new substantial quantities of footage from being sold or aired.

Just as i side note i inquired to S4C a few years ago about their "RESLO" productions. It turns out that S4C don't own the tapes, and the company which did have gone bust, which means their recordings could be lost forever!

I recently added a page to my ITV Wrestling site that covers everything I could find on this topic: http://itvwrestling.co.uk/archive.html

I believe we've we've covered this here before, so I'll summarise what I recall:

1) They're in a warehouse in Manchester or Leeds (possibly spread between both).

2) They're not in any way "indexed", it's very much a "pot luck" what, if anything, is on a particular tape.

3) Whoever owns them (Granada?) charge the proverbial arm and a leg just for a look through them.

4) WWE/F was interested in buying them a while back: they want outright ownership, but the owners are only interested in "licencing" them, so that's at an impasse.

5) There was some mention a couple of years ago that an exercise was in progress to "digitise" everything (not just WoS) they had: where that currently stands, I don't know.

You'll have to make do with whatever is on YouTube as ITV it seems would rather let them rot than make them available, the ITV hub would be a great place for them especially if they set up a sports archive section on the hub.