What were the BBC thinking in the 1960s and 1970s - deleting their archives?

This was a cost saving exercise, as the recording tapes at that time were extremely expensive. Shame, really. This policy changed when David Antenbough became the head of the BBC. Dr Antony

This was TV industry-wide in those days...the 2" videotape reels used in those days were horribly expensive so programs were often erased in order to reuse the tapes (this affected ITV as well as the BBC). Thankfully, much has been recovered from film collectors (a lot of videotaped shows were syndicated on black and white kinescope [telerecordings] for foreign distribution; others with early VCRs and open-reel Shibaden video recorders taped things off-air when they originally aired; fans of certain shows recorded the audio and took off-the-screen stills...even filming the screen with their home movie cameras) and foreign TV stations over the years.

They used to use the same tapes as the cost was so high for blank media -film survived this.And lots have been found recorded by enthusiasts

Apparently the tapes were ridiculously expensive so they had to re-use them. We know better now but most of us thought that programmes would carry on being so good that we wouldn't want to watch repeats all day.

They probably only had so much tape to store the recordings on, and maybe did not think that the episodes would become classics...

They didn't foresee the market for home video sales. The first Super Bowl game was not archived.

Bloody fools - Pete and Dud wanted to pay for their tapes but were refused. Z Cars - that goes back a long way! No Hiding Place was on ITV I think