Ownership of tapes aside, let’s take a closer look at the other major slippery slope and Problem #3: The content itself. Three issues instantly come to mind. The first is the fact that, technically, it’s mostly content originally broadcast by mainstream corporations. Now granted that most of it was broadcast 20, 30, 40+ Years ago and, as I said above, Copyright in theory has an expiration date. But some institutions take their copyright a bit too seriously… Think the Olympics, the Premier League and Formula One. Which means some archivers are going to be occasionally playing Russian Roulette with their whole collection when they attempt to upload, for instance, whole soccer matches and F1 races, even if they were being broadcast by those who had the original licence to broadcast, mostly ITV and occasionally the BBC in the case of the latter.
The second is that some content and advertising has frankly aged poorly. Whether we should judge 2000s content by 2020s standards is an Analytical Aspie for another day. However, I would make the argument that it should continue to exist in some form so that we, as society, can at least have a record of its existence for a variety of potential purposes I’ve outlined two pages ago. That, I would say, is one of the main purposes of Archiving in general.
But how people react to ancient content that would now be considered disturbing is another matter. And It’s so Archivious (UK) knows better than most what happens when a viewer gets funny about exactly that. Last year (2024), they uploaded a collection of adverts from the 2010s, one of which was for a KFC iTwist. If you don’t know what it is (which I don’t), it’s basically a miniature KFC Twister Wrap. Now, for some reason, the advert in question made one viewer so afraid that they took it upon themselves to report the whole video and inflict a copyright strike on the channel (subsequently reversed)! And, unsurprisingly, the channel was far from impressed… And made the following points in a YouTube post rant:
“There are adverts that you may like or that may thrill you or adverts that you may not like or that scares you or upsets you. … Asking [YouTube] to remove a video because of an ad that scares you is… the most CHILDISH, RIDICULOUS, FOOLISH, INCONSIDERATE, SELFISH, WORTHLESS thing you can do to someone.” [7]
He went further:
“I CAN’T control what you like/hate/love or what upsets/scares you. You CAN’T tell everybody to remove adverts or ask [YouTube] to give someone copyright strikes just because YOU don’t like them. It’s not our business. That’s only your problem. It’s YOUR taste. It’s YOUR emotion. It’s something PERSONAL not something objective. It’s YOUR OWN responsibility to control YOUR emotions and to NOT let your emotions control you.” [7]
In another season of this Blog, I would like to analyse in detail the whole idea of Copyright Striking and the ethics and motivations behind it. But in this case, I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above. Especially since, if a whole channel of archived content disappears and can’t be recovered by a DCA, or re-uploaded by the user itself… I would consider it a damn shame, especially if the reason why termination happened was something like this!
While finding advertisements upsetting is to be expected sometimes, it’s not the only thing that might send a shiver down the spines of some of us. My third and final problem with the content itself can be the unavoidable inclusion of personalities we grew up loving but subsequently disregarded for a variety of reasons. The main modern example I can think of is the one and only Philip Schofield. Now he has presented a smorgasbord of shows and specials most of us grew up watching and looked forward to with every series. He even came out as Gay in 2020 [8]. But the wheels came off in 2023 when he admitted to an “unwise but not illegal” (his words, not mine) relationship with a young production member of This Morning. Now The Try Guys situation of just a few months before (and especially this Film Theory about it) drove home to me the dangerous nature of such a thing. But it was the fact that someone like Schofield, who had worked in the media for decades: a) engaged in such a thing to begin with while b) being married to a straight lady and c) hiding Point A from everyone, especially his agency, which left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Having said that, in the world of Television Archiving, I personally believe in separating the presenter from the show itself. Especially since TV Shows big and small that I watched is one of my core interests in this sector. Which is why I will still love any discovery of episodes The National Lottery: Winning Lines, despite Mr. Schofield being host for four series, because I’m a UK National Lottery geek. I will always appreciate the discovery by James Booker of almost all of Test the Nation, most of it hosted by Mr. Schofield and Anne Robinson, because it’s one of those TV Oddities that would have been lost media otherwise. And I will always love The Cube in my heart because everything about it was absolutely glorious! Although me actually stepping inside it… Was sometimes a source of nightmares…! Now, of course, you don’t have to agree with my stance. And if you don’t, here’s what I’d say: I’m most likely going to disagree with you but ultimately, if certain things in this whole part of YouTube make you uncomfortable, the best way to respond, in my opinion, is not adding them to your Google Chrome Bookmarks and instead just watching something else altogether. And that just doesn’t apply to YouTube VHS Archives, but all platforms that host classic content.
The ADog Blog 