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THE BBC recently had to ask private collectors for help in finding lost TV treasures. Music programmes and comedy classics - like the best of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - were all lost when the BBC had economy drives in the 1970s and erased recordings and threw out rolls of film. Turning a blind eye, the BBC has now borrowed back "unauthorised" copies that collectors had rescued from BBC rubbish bins.

You might think that lessons have been learned. But a recent issue of the BBC's in-house magazine Ariel tells a sobering tale. Terry Smith, the BBC's head of programme delivery, recalls how two decades ago the "big debate" was on what to do about a leaky roof in the BBC's film library in London. Twenty years later, he has just found the BBC's stock of 35-millimetre feature films "surrounded by collapsed roofing tiles, plastic sheeting and rainwater".

Some ...

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