I know that not to be true having watched April 1976- January 1980 in their entirety over the course of a year before they got nuked from YT. Seeing the build up to each other the significant events and the stories bubbling away for long periods of time was far more exciting, invigorating and watchable than just seeing the big events. Watching Ernie go from photographer self-employed facing difficulty to working at Mikes to get shot and watching the neighbours rally round to help Emily, before seeing her once again embark on her own life was far better than simply watching the robbery episode. Similarly for many other late 70s stories, I know it's a tall ask but seeing that from the first episode in 1960 to at the very least 2011 would be so great.[/quote]

There is a lot more to creating a website than you suggest. I agree that the entire collection has been digitised by now, but I would guess that it has been done in Archive quality so it would have to be transcoded to a web compatible format. That's each and every episode. In mentioning hosting cost you leave out the bandwidth charge. Hosting is not expensive but bandwidth to deliver the video in streaming quality is. The site would have to be secure and search optimised at the very least. If revenue is generated by charging then that's a huge set up, if it's generated by advertising it's less, but the advertising has to be constantly sold and managed.

There may be issues in modern episodes with music rights (music heard in a scene) that would have to be either rights re-cleared or removed which involves editing, again a massive task and in order for anyone to find anything a large database would have to be set up - so that when you search "Elsie bailifs" you get the relevant episodes from the 1960s. Imagine having to do that for every single character/topic/theme/actor/date for every single episode.

Placing 8,000+ episodes of Coronation Street on line is an absolutely mammoth task and would entail a very significant investment in set-up and upkeep and a long project time. You would be looking at a bill in the hundreds of thousands. Why would ITV do that for a a very niche product?

As for being national history, you could perhaps argue that for the very early episodes but beyond that I really don't think you could and as it's copyrighted material no one has a right to access it.

Of the people I've spoken to who have the sets, not one person has said that. OTOH, missing out on the buildup and aftermath of each episode is a common complaint.


Well, has anybody in the thread actually expressed a desire to have every single episode released/put online? It's only the early episodes that are of interest to me and I suspect Corrie_Fan2 as well (depending on your definition of early), which is why I suggested starting small. The first 1587 episodes have never been repeated so they're the main ones I want to see. Everything after that was either shown by Granada Plus (albeit trimmed by a few minutes) or ITV in the video age so is out there on the internet and will probably be back on Youtube at some point.

In a world where Neighbours is being released from the beginning (233 episodes so far according to Wikipedia), Prisoner Cell Block H is out in its entirety (692 hour-long episodes), as well as Dark Shadows (1,245 episodes), all of which are soaps, and Network releasing Emmerdale from start (slowly, I grant you), it seems odd that they haven't at least tried with Coronation Street.

TBH, I would favour the digital route, but again I'm not demanding all 8,900 episodes suddenly go online all at once. I know that's not feasible.


Don't put too much stock in the 'carefully selected packages of highlights' - Network didn't put a team on it! Yes, obvious episodes like weddings and deaths are included but, especially in the 60s and 70s, weddings were hardly examples of Coronation Street at its best and deaths were few and far between. You are lucky to get two so-called 'event' episodes per disc so anyone who has watched those boxsets already has a good idea what run-of-the-mill episodes are like from each year.

I've seen most episodes from the 1970s in the last few years and there are loads of great moments left off. I'm gutted that nobody can see them. So I'll take your bet!


Most of Auntie Corrie's episodes seemed to be around 7/8,000 views from what I can remember, with more views for the January episodes. That's why I think what people did was pick a year and start from the first episode, and not just watch the event episodes. That's not a bad number for an unofficial channel with rubbish picture quality. I would imagine the majority are unique views given how long it would take to get through them all.


Well said! Completely agree. It's true for the first half of the decade too!

I realise I'm on my own in this debate loving the 00s episodes & I too would be interested to see the earlier stuff again also but what really grieves me is that we've had access to those YouTube episodes, which means they are there & they are real but yet the copyright owners, for whatever reason are now refusing to let us watch them!! What an absolute ****ing waste of 50+ year's worth of hard work, great stories & wonderful acting!!
Auntie Soap, you disagree with my claim that Mr Magister, AunieCorrie, Steph Stokes etc were doing a public service by giving access to these episodes & I take your point about it being against the laws of copyright but surely in this case, to coin a phrase the law is an absolute bloody ass since now nobody is getting any benefit from all the years of work & skill that went into making all these episodes!!

It makes me very unhappy & highly annoyed!!

I actually agree with you entirely... there is no loss to ITV in allowing these episodes to be available. In actual fact YouTube now allows copyright owners to monetise content upped by a third party. Sadly the likelihood is that an intern was tasked with dispatching pulldowns to youtube.

I have no personal issue with every minute of Corrie being available to stream, I love the show at it's best. However I do think that it's worth understanding why it hasn't happened.

Sadly it's not just Corrie but so many TV shows and movies are locked away in vaults when they could and should be available. It comes down to cost and unless there is profit to be made it's unlikely to happen. ITV is a corporation that is exploiting the Coronation Street brand for advertising revenue at the cost of all that made it so imporatant to begin with.

I can't disagree with a word you've said here and personally I would never watch it from start to finish but I'd love to be able to dip in and out of the entire show.

What I'm trying to illustrate are the reasons why it is unlikely to happen. Personally the 1960s episodes hold most interest for me.

ITV is a commercial corporation who will only provide content they can monetise... 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 views over a number of years is never going to spur them to provide content.

In my view a curator is the only way this content will ever be available. If an organisation such as the BFI were to manage it, it would be more realistic. Sadly as ITV is a commercial channel this type of affiliation is unlikely

In a perfect world of course it would all be there for us to dip in and out of as we want. I'd love that!

I totally recognise your point, just that there is no precedent for accessing the content in the way there is for the remastered Charlie Chaplin films for example.

Coronation Street is not recognised as genre defining art in the way Chaplin is, although I would argue that it absolutely is genre defining.

So I am not dismissing your point, I just don't feel it is universally recognised.

Where does those figures come from? I agree that the market for old TV is quite limited,although Network have released tons of considerably more niche stuff than Coronation Street. I suspect that they would have happily released more based on their general product range. Might it be that ITV didn't give them access to any further episodes? There was a title announced by Network some years ago called Coronation Street rarities. There was never any information given on the contents. But,it was postponed and then seemed to completely disappear from their catalogue.
Like others on here,I would love to see a continuous run of episodes from any period prior to the Granada Plus era eps. I suppose the other next best alternative would be to release a second volume for each decade,or at least the 60s and 70s. Best of the 60s Volume 2 etc., A lot of the episodes on the released volumes have a significant follow up episode. And there are many other cracking episodes- based on the Granada Plus repeats- that didn't make it onto DVD. I certainly don't agree with the point made by another poster that we saw on those DVDs were carefully selected highlights. The overall standard in the 60s,70s and the 80s was pretty consistent. There were fewer event type episodes. You will,of course,have some obvious stand out episodes,but I would say that the majority of episodes released on the first three volumes were representative of the general standard for those years.

I agree, the boxset fixation on births, deaths and marriages never unlocked the real gems in the vault. The consistency of writing and characterisation was much more consistent then.

Sadly none of that makes it more commercially viable.

When I was referring to the packages of highlights I didn't actually mean what Network have done, but rather what always gets shown in Corrie clip compilations on the telly - ie. the "crowd-pleasing" scenes like "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi", "Woman, Stanley, woman", Bet and Betty rolling down the hill in the car and Ken pinning Deirdre against the wall (alongside us being told that did you know we didn't rehearse that, for the umpteenth time). It's these bits that I was suggesting give a false idea that the whole of the back catalogue of Corrie is one attention grabbing masterpiece of action and dialogue after another. Not that, don't get me wrong, I'd be at all averse to at least having the chance to see for myself...



What irks me is that I bet there are a few people out there who sneakily "decanted" the Auntie Corries when they were up there, and are now sitting on their own private collection... They could upload a few of them again OK, they might get taken straight back down again but they might not - as I said in an earlier post, there's still the odd Auntie Corrie-cloned episode on YouTube that's slipped the net.

Yes; as I said earlier; it's unfortunate but by the time someone like Network look into releasing more, they have to order up the telerecording or video masters from wherever archive they are held to be duped onto d3 digitaltape ;check for stability and quality; arrange clearance and permissions ( money !) ; arrange a duplication master ; arrange for a duplication run ; arrange the packaging.

This all costs money ( for some "Network" titles, for example; rights issues and clearance was cheaper or more straightforward I should imagine) and has to be factored into sales totals that are in the several dozen thousand.

A lot of Dr Who DVD releases were 'carried' by big selling Who titles, and because the programme was grouped " as one" , the big selling titles carried the costs of releasing the small selling titles " as a whole profit".
That can't be done with Coronation Street, so officially, perhaps that's why those ' specials' referred to above by other posters were dropped... probably the reason why repeated episodes were dropped from the schedule too. Just too expensive for official transmission for the small audience.
It's sad but that's probably why no more have been released/shown

YouTube uses a Content ID system whereby a copyright holder can digitally locate every single version of a clip that is on the site and automatically limit or remove it. This is how the site allows companies/artists to monetize their content even if a third-party has uploaded it.

The Auntie Corrie clips have been flagged by the Content-ID system and so if anyone tries to upload them again they will fail to publish.

YouTube ContentID is working constantly on all new footage added but also through the back catalogue so those clips that remain will disappear in time. The unfortunate fact is that it is copyright material.

Providing the content online would take fewer steps but the creation of a database etc would be prohibitive and all the same rights issues would prevail meaning that there could be significant editing required. Given the scope of what's involved that would be a huge task.

I don't understand why if itv3 can show repeats of the likes of heartbeat (which is a bit of a soap, it's certainly a continuing drama) and other dramas which have storylines you have to follow over a number of episodes they can't repeat corrie and ennerdale?! I still stand by the fact I mentioned in my last post in this thread that I believe they didn't carry on with classic corrie repeats when Gplus changed to ITV3 because as the quality of the new corrie episodes on the main itv1 channel were dropping people would constantly (and especially on this forum) be comparing the quality of past episode repeats with current corrie and would have damaged current corrie brand in the long run by showing old episodes where the quality was better. Why else would one day we be getting daily classic corrie episodes and then the next day not just because of a name change but carry on showing all of the rest of Gplus's content on itv3? Hence why as some other poster said we only see the same old clips and same old episodes which show (as the last poster said) corrie as one continuous drama of high action and great dialogue, i.e the Hiilda and Stan clip etc that someone else mentioned

Not every single episode but at least the first 40-50 years of the show either DVD released or put online. Personally, I'm too young for Granada Plus so had to rely on the YT uploads and would like to see at least up to the 50th anniversary released. However, I'd take this being done on a one episode a day uploaded to ITVPlayer/Youtube by ITV basis and yes I'd watch the flaming ads.


Regarding Emmerdale - Networks website only lists up to Volume 5 or 148 episodes. Given they started releasing these back in 2007, I'd not hold out much hope for Corrie receiving a similar treatment any time soon or even if it does being able to watch the entire series in most of our life times. Price point might also be a factor at £15ish to £30ish for a 32 episode DVD.


No, but gradual release of episodes would be great.


This is the crux of it. The DVDS and Granada+ collection were run of the mill episodes and they were bloody great.

Thanks, that's interesting. So how does that technology work, is it like how Shazam can "recognise" a music track? Or would the off-screen recordings from Granada Plus on Auntie Corrie have something digital somehow "embedded" in them?

Agreed ndd! I enjoyed watching back some of the few episodes I got to see from the 00's and other eras before they were all removed. I could understand ITV asking for the episodes they have released on DVD to be removed from Youtube and this wouldnt really matter as fans still have a chance to view them by buying the DVD's but I cant see how it is harmful to them as a buisness to have a load of old soap episodes from 10-50 years ago floating around on the internet if its already been established that they are unlilkely to release them en masse due to a lack of profit in it.

Further to my reply above to Auntie Soap, aren't there any other video sharing sites out there that aren't as rigorously "policed" by the powers that be as YouTube is?

The ContentID system is very complex. It was developed when Google purchased YouTube in order to allow companies to make money from people viewing their content no matter where it originated.

It can recognise audio - the entire audio of a film, or a section with particular song playing etc. It can also recognise image, although this is only emerging now.

When a clip is uploaded it is run through the system - sometimes a few days later and that flags any copyright. Sometimes there is no further action - the copyright holder does not mind the clip being shared - sometimes it is restricted so perhaps made available in the UK only and sometimes it is blocked worldwide.

At a guess I suspect ITV have identified those episodes uploaded and blocked them all. If they are uploaded again they won't go live.

Yes - Dailymotion is not as closely policed yet.

I agree - they seem very strict. I suspect there are music rights issues that the clearance has run out and the could be charged for further use by allowing the content to be out there.

I did think of that one; doesn't look like there's much in the way of "Granada Plus" Corrie on there, sadly

Interestingly The Coronation Street Collection VHSs from Time Life remain online - they're only compilations but they do offer more insight than a single random episode does - in fact I enjoy them more

Does anyone have any of the other early complilation VHSs?

I remember when Corrie released a DVD which took scenes from storylines in 2004 and merged them together. It had things like Todd Grimshaw coming out, trying to kiss Nick and baby Billy's death. The only downside was that it left out the conclusion to the Mad Maya storyline (we already had scenes of her and Dev on the DVD). Would be good if Corrie did more things like that, maybe for each year.

Yes I remember watching the bet lynch one of these and surprised at how much more her character had gone through then I knew or you get on the box sets

Any character that has been on the show for that length of time will have gone through a lot more than be covered in a single hour long documentary.