Does anybody think it realistic at all that the archives would be released from the beginning to view, I know many on here would love it, myself included - especially if some sort of pay monthly streaming service at a reasonable price could be arranged, or failing that a repeat on one of the many ITV channels?

It seems a dire shame for glory years of the show to sit idle, while the current rubbish is broadcast five (soon to be six) nights a week.

I'd attempt to watch every episode, surely I can't be the only one?

We've had this conversation many times & I dare say we'll have it many more times!!

If they have no intention of releasing thm to view in one of the ways you say then what the f*** was the point in having them removed from YouTube when so many other shows are left in peace!!
It grieves me now & it will probably grieve me for the rest of my existence that all that rich history & all the hours & hours of work that went into making the 50+ years of episodes for our enjoyment is just left rotting in some vault somewhere (so to speak) where new generations of fans have no access to it & cannot benefit from seeing the history that shaped & formed the characters they are watching today into the characters they are!!

Pointless, shameful, upsetting & BLOODY FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope they do but I doubt it.

I do miss watching Corrie episodes from the 80s, 90s and early to mid-2000's.

What's even more galling is that the selection of 'classic' clips that are slowly being uploaded to the official ITV Coronation Street YouTube channel are the most obscure and bizarre clips you could ever imagine. Just the other day I stumbled on one clip from the early 90s that featured Mavis turning up late to work because she had got frisky with Derek. Yet, genuinely classic and well-remembered scenes from the same era, such as Reg Holdsworth's infamous water bed are nowhere to be seen?!

Just trawl through the official ITV channel (if you have the time to wade through all the current crap that they post) and you'll see a swathe of random clips that hardly reflect what were Corrie's strongest periods. Some cracking examples:

Percy warns Des about leaving the gate open.

Ivy checks if Vera's still got water. (Ivy actually checks with Rita, not Vera)

Audrey refuses to go to the shop if Ivy is there.

Personally, and I'm getting very conspiracy theory here, I believe that ITV are doing this on purpose to make the old days of the show look substandard and a bit corny. The reason? To make the current garbage they serve up seem Shakespearean by comparison.

You could be right. Definitely an agenda at play, which seems more apparent as a massive chunk of old episodes have been removed from Youtube over the past year.

Wasn't there also a clip where Vera asked someone to use their toilet?

You know what KK, no one hates 'conspiracy theories' more than I do but I do really wonder if you aren't right!!
I have no doubt you have seen the official Corrie site's 'best bits' You Tube videos for each character which contain maybe a snippet from their first episode & the rest is all scenes from 2015/2016!!!!!
WTF???????????????!!!!!!!!!

Are they doing them videos monthly? as there's no Sarah video of her best moments yet.

YES!

'Sally's best bits' has some random scene of her in the corner shop in the early 90s and then it's practically ALL post-2010. Nothing of her with Hilda, her infamous cat fight with Natalie Barnes, anything from the Greg Kelly era or from the early 2000s when she became obsessed with Rosie going to stage school.

As for Gail's 'best bits' ... it pains me to comment. There is NOTHING pre-2004. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. No Elsie Tanner, no Suzie Birchall, no Brian, no Ivy, no Martin ... for ****'s sake there isn't even ANY Richard Hillman. WHAT THE ****?

Wow if Sarah gets one of those videos I hope it's not all from 2015 onwards there are many scenes where she was great before her return as well.

Well if they can happily overlook 30 years of Gail's history on the show then a few years of Sarah in the early 2000s is nothing!

You're massively overestimating the importance ITV places on Corrie's Youtube channel, and of the channel itself. It's not meant to be comprehensive and I'd be surprised if more than a couple of people work on it (who, I'm guessing, aren't that knowledgeable about classic Corrie - but so few clips are uploaded from past decades that it hardly matters).

I agree.

Fair enough.

I think the biggest insult was treat the entire thing as a ridiculous joke with that Aprils fools thing earlier this year, it kind of backfired with the widespread support but they've not made any progress on releasing stuff. I can only imagine it's a rights issue, that or they're just being deliberately over protective.

I hope one day there will be a release of past episodes.

Actually, forget 'fair enough'.

It does matter to me and many others. ITV have set out on a huge deletion programme on YouTube, removing lots and lots of material that was uploaded by many users who are huge Corrie fans. All they wanted to do was make classic Coronation Street available to as many people as possible, something which ITV seems loathe to do. This material has not been 'officially' replaced by ITV, so it seems quite clear to me that ITV do not want people to access this material.

If ITV have 'a couple of people' working on the YouTube channel who, as you say, 'aren't knowledgable about classic Corrie' then what does that say about ITV's feelings towards Corrie more broadly? That they really don't give a toss.

It would take a few hours at most to make a list of some of Corrie's most iconic moments, find them in the archive and upload to the YouTube channel. Instead we get obscure clips that must actually take quite a lot of effort to find in the archive. It'd be much easier to pinpoint the classic and memorable bits that viewers know than random find scenes of Percy telling Des to lock his gate.

Finally, David, I have to say that I find your tone with me quite disappointing at times. I have been very good and very generous to you in the past but often feel like all you do is try and shoot me down at every opportunity. I'm all for discussion and debate, but I get the impression that all you want to do is shut me up.

Do you work for ITV now or something?

They won't release it.

For starters it ain't commercially viable and secondly it'll take the gloss away from 'here and now' Corrie. I thought Jean Alexander's death was a perfect example of this.

Granada Plus was a godsend, but in this day and age you'll be lucky to see Classic Corrie repeated on ITV3.

No, I was just applying some common sense. They're videos watched by a few thousand people (and the classic clips, less than that). No one would be happier than me if ITV put them all online but that's clearly not on their agenda if the April Fool's joke mentioned above is anything to go by. I'm confident that the episodes will at least make their way back onto Youtube though. Someone will upload them.

RE: the bolded paragraph, this comment surprised me as I don't remember us having cross words before. I seem to recall we're normally in agreement.

I would like to reassure you PDS, but on the evidence of all the ones I've watched that's exactly what it will be!!

There is this Facebook page here which I found that has random episodes from over the years, not great but better nothing...

https://www.facebook.com/CoronationS...Today/?fref=ts

Why can't they put old episodes on ITV encore?! I mean thats what that channel is there for isn't it, ancient drama series, why not soap episodes as well It's gotta be better than 965th repeat of an episode of Heartbeat.

I can understand ITV getting rid of the episodes on YT if they had a channel showing them etc, but to get rid of them when they aren't showing them anymore is ridiculous and makes them look like a killjoy.

Gah, I am still waiting for Brookside episodes to be released on dvd


There's no Leanne best moments either, both those characters have rich history on t'street and have had many exciting storylines over the years, yet they have best moments for drab characters like Alya

I agree with you KK, and don't think it is conspiratorial.

I remember years ago they removed a couple of old 90s episodes i uploaded to Youtube, so i emailed them about it and asked if they could be restored? Their response "Sorry we don't allow this blah blah... we hope you follow Corrie on ITV"

I would dear ITV.. granted if you showed the classic episodes!

I'm all for them protecting their brand and commercial product, but if it's so commercially viable as to warrant old episodes being removed from YT then why not release them on ITVPlayer or something.

They've already got a section dedicated to Coronation Street, why not add in a from the beginning and shove it behind a paywall if they must?

The clips on the ITV classic channel seem to me to have all been lifted from the episodes which were put onto the Network box sets released 10 years or so ago. I'm not sure if this is because they feel bound to show clips which are commercially availabile, or just because they were easier to upload than delving into the archives!

(Incidentally, though random, there are some gems from the early 1960 episodes in there, and some of the clips like Mavis refusing to let Vera use her toilet are genuinely funny - IMO at least!)

I would pay good money to see some of the never-repeated episodes again - in whatever format - particularly 1961/1962. However, the ship for releasing/repeating old soaps seems to have sailed - even the likes of Network DVD who specialize in niche, cult markets seem to have stalled all their soap releases. It seems we are a very small minority who nobody wants to cater for commercially - which makes the over-zealous removal of any classic soap content on YouTube very petty in my eyes.

Thanks for the link to that page. Just hope some a***hole (or someone from ITV) don't try and shut it down.