Missing Believed Wiped

Stumbled on a great book the other day; Missing Believed Wiped: Searching for the Lost Treasures of British Television, by Dick Fiddy. It details not only the search for missing British TV shows, but also the annual screenings held at the National Film Theater in London. There's also been a BBC series on the subject, and on the BBC's missing-show "Treasure Hunt."

The screenings sound marvelous; most intriguing, they showed a copy of a 16mm film made of BBC transmissions carried across the Atlantic by freak weather conditions in 1937, and received by RCA researchers in New York. (Here's a more technical, albeit slightly blurry, article on the event.

Would that there were more publicity for this situation on this side of the Atlantic; The Museum of Television and Radio has long maintained a list, of course--but dammit, I want a screening series too. The first "Tonight Show" is out there somewhere.