French catch

[David Mantell]

By 1978 TF1 was in colour and the INA does have some TF1 bouts from that period including that Oct 15th 1977 broadcast which I've reviewed before.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems there was only one TF1 broadcast in 1976.  It was taped in colour presumably as a test but only aired as 819 line B&W -and the colour tape got sent to INA like that one lucky unwiped colour tape from January 1969 (Delaporte &Bollet Vs Montreal & Zarzecki) was.

 

In which case the four 1975 TF1 bouts were the very last bouts to be shot only in 819 line B&W and since the INA probably didn't have an 819 line video recorder, they didn't record those bouts. 

They probably were kinescoped and sold as 16mm b&w film like all the 1956-1974 footage we have but the INA probably didn't bother going back to the former ORTF's overseas sales department (or however it was organised after the ORTF breakup) to buy an update on the stock they had onboarded upon the INAs formation in early 1975.  Or if they did, those bout got filed separately under some funny indexing.

If the INA don't have those bouts, there are still three possibilities for finding them;

1) They are in an archive somewhere in the world gathering dust.

2) Prints got nabbed and taken home by staff either at the last station in a bicycling chain or else back home in France, and are now in the hands of some elderly film collector

3) A very rich French fan bought an 819 line machine.years earlier when the format still had a future and was still routinely taping bouts in 1975 (or else worked in the VT engineering department and was routinely knocking off their own copies of stuff like the person at ITV who made their own copy of Johnny Saint Vs Keith Martinelli that same year 1975.)

 

[Phil Lions]

24 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems there was only one TF1 broadcast in 1976.

Three:

- March 20, 1976: Kader Hassouni & Claude Roca vs. Bernard Caclard & Albert Sanniez + Mr. Montreal vs. Inca Wiracocha
- April 30, 1976: no specific matches advertised
- August 7, 1976: Bob Plantin vs. Fred Magnier + Antonio Pereira vs. Jean-Claude Bordeaux + Michel Chaisne vs. Michel Di Santo

[David Mantell]

And that last one is in colour too.  Possibly another test. Perhaps by that stage they may have advanced from just filming stuff in colour to doing test run transmissions. 

By way of comparison, here in Britain, BBC1 and ITV both went colour Saturday 15th November 1969  (the first official ITV broadcast being World of Sport. indeed including some Wrestling although not as the first item of the show) but the colour UHF signal was switched on in August and certain programmes -famously including the first 8 or so episodes of Monty Python - were simulcast on the colour frequency as tests , usually only at a few minutes notice. Some older fans report that both World of Sport and the midweek wrestling were beneficiaries of the colour testing.

Another possibility is that some of this wrestling was part of the few hours per day colour broadcasting TF1 did between September 1975 and Spring 1977 although most of this was reportedly recycled FR3 programming.

By contrast, all the 1975 bouts were before September so could only possibly have been in 819 line monochrome.  If they are ever recovered, it will be as 16mm b/w kinescopes, same as all bar one match of everything we have 1956-1974.

Incidentally, Bob Plantin's copy of the August 1976 broadcast and the late Albert Sanniez's silent copy of his 1977 bout with Angelito both look very much like colour kinescope films, which ITV was also doing by the mid/late 70s (apparently someone has a print of one of the Marty Jones-Rollerball Rocco matches that had been used on a plane as in-flight entertainment.)