WIPED: The Destruction of Australia's Television History

[AccordionManiac]

seems like a fascinating story, looking forward to seeing the documentary on television. apparently networks around the world have made the same mistake. sometimes for political reasons (in some less democratic countries), but i never thought just because lack of foresight. hope the documentary comes out sooner than later

[aussietv2]

I'm not part of this but I think it's an important story that has to be told. Just Think it's a shame they wiped it. But alot of schools recorded alot of shows on u-matic recorders for educational purposes and are still floating around out there.

One guy is Todd Emslie at this website: hxxp://home.iprimus.com.au/tod­demslie/archive-TV.html

Check it out.

[nzoz1983]

The whole thing hurts... but it is encouraging to know that, in spit of a large proportion of Countdowns were wiped; there is, however, a lot of surviving Countdown performances.... ie; Teenage Radio Stars doing 'I Wanna Be Your Baby' on Countdown.

[nzoz1983]

lol, I was meant to be interviewed for this show... I guess I was supposed to rant and rave about getting hold of old Donnie Sutherland shows from Donnie himself and making a youtube channel about him... buuuuuuuuuuttttttttttt........­......... i missed the boat! On ya Troy!!! Good to see you're a part of this!

[aussietv2]

It was liked burning money destroying those tapes. Imagine how much they could make on DVDs of tv shows .

[luvpuppypt]

@aussietv2 ..I'm still shocked that my parents allowed me to watch Number96 and I was just a small brat LOL... such a shame that this has happened and so much has been lost. I'd love to watch it all again but they are gone. Great to see you involved in all this Troy! :-)

[punji73]

so we might have been making shows like 96 when the yanks were still making Brady Bunch, but least the yanks kept their copies of the Brady Bunch shows? what were we thinking!

[RetroToledo]

@punji73 Usually filmed productions in the US were kept if they were popular enough to go into syndication later on.

[GitarStu]

I've never understood the mentality of the TV stations to do this sort of thing. They must have followed the BBC's lead when they decided it would be a good idea to 'purge the archives' in the 70s. Over 105 episodes of Dr Who are still missing for example. It would be a lot more if it wasn't for fans of the who who recorded episodes and made them available again.

We have to stop this from ever happening again. Allowing it to happen is almost criminal!