Not just the BBC, ITV were just as bad. Whenever a company lost a region franchise the whole archive of material often got incinerated.

There are similar cases in recorded music too, where tapes were just recorded over. I think people didn't start to realise the cultural value of these things until more recently. They probably thought no-one would ever be interested.

It happened here in Australia too! Station ATV-Melbourne was the host station for Lewis/Young Productions, and later, Television House to produce the legendary "Young Talent Time" which ran from April, 1971 to December, 1988. But there are 800+ editions of the show gone because the tapes were "wiped" on orders from station management to preserve tape for other shows. I sincerely hope Johnny Young managed to preserve his own copies of those editions as there are so many golden moments from that show that I'd hate to think were lost to us forever.

Well, as they are, at this very moment, radiating out into space, there should be SOME way for us to get them off the airwaves.

You'd have to re-write the laws of physics, for they are travelling away at the speed of light and can never be caught.

There are similar cases in recorded music too, where tapes were just recorded over. I think people didn't start to realise the cultural value of these things until more recently. They probably thought no-one would ever be interested.