British Television Apollo 11 Coverage - Missing/existing Footage

Missing/existing Footage

The footage of the BBC and ITV coverage became victim to the current broadcasting policy of either eventually erasing videotapes or simply not keeping them. It is not definitely known what happened to the original tapes. This led to rumours that they were taped over almost immediately with horse racing, that the coverage was barely taped at all, or that the tapes fell to bits during digital remastering. All these rumours have since been discounted.

BBC footage known to exist is a mix of fragments kept in the archive and amateur recordings made at the time.

• One minute of footage showing James Burke reviewing the Apollo 11 launch on 16 July 1969, on the programme Twenty-Four Hours.
• Various filmed inserts presented by James Burke, featuring him inside the Apollo Command Module, demonstrating Apollo Saturn emergency precautions, demonstrating the Lunar EVA suit and explaining weightlessness training.
• Some BBC News bulletins by Reg Turnill (not part of the live coverage).
• In autumn 2000, an amateur video recording was found of the event. It was found to be unplayable, but there is hope one day that some visual material may be salvageable.
• In 2003 a few tele-recorded clips were discovered.
• A 20-second video fragment of Patrick Moore and James Burke presenting in the BBC studio on 20 July 1969, recovered from an amateur homemade recording.
• 8 mm home movie footage shot of a TV screen, showing some captions superimposed over pictures from Mission Control (although this has not been positively identified as BBC footage).

All that are known to exist from the ITV archives are two taped interviews by Peter Sissons at Jodrell Bank. Footage from Houston while the craft descended onto the moon, showing on-screen data, also exists.