c4countdown

Aside from playing Countdown, Countdown History is a huge interest of mine. I can sit for hours in the evening reading Wiki Apterous. It frustrates me however, that our wiki is incomplete, that there is little information on early series. I would also like to obtain more footage of Countdown from the 1980's. There is quite a lot unknown about the early days of Countdown, and I would like to get all this missing information and make it available for others. Surely there are some people out there who recorded in the 1980's, early 90s who have missing information we require to complete the wiki.

I have noticed through Scrabble circles that there are a lot of people still actively playing Scrabble who featured in the early series of Countdown. I am in the same Scrabble groups as some of these former contestants so perhaps if I was to put out an appeal for footage or missing information I may be able to get something.

The Countdown Goofs channel on YouTube was before my time but looking through it they got some very good stuff together, not so much early countdown episodes but had it not ceased due to copyright issues i'm sure they might have gotten more episodes online. It is something I would love to start again, if I were to gather enough footage of course, such a channel could possibly work as a Facebook life page, maybe likely to be less copyright issues that with YouTube.

If there were people out there who would be willing to help with trying to gather more information in order to complete Wiki Apterous, I would be grateful. It would be nice to form a group of interested people in order to complete this project. Also if you have old Countdown footage you would be willing to share or any notes written down on early series that Mike Brown missed please come forward, I would be grateful for any information, missing scores, selections, declarations, conundrum scrambles etc. I know a lot of work has been done in the past in order to get the Wiki together, and a marvelous effort has been made, it would be nice to continue what has been done.

I look forward to hearing from you. My email address is edburn07@gmail.com

This has officially kicked off, people have come forward, and it looks like I may be about to source recaps from unrecapped episodes, more to follow.

Awesome.

It's worth mentioning a few years ago I made an FOI request to Channel 4. Behind all the legal preamble it was confirmed to me that they themselves didn't write down the scores in the early days so having to go back and watch the episodes is probably the only way it can be done.

we can confirm that Channel 4 does not hold this information in aggregate form. Countdown was the first programme shown on Channel 4, when it began broadcasting in November 1982. Since then thousands of episodes have been transmitted over a period of 31 years. As you have noted, some of the information you have requested is available, but not all of it. Accordingly, were we to attempt to collect all the information we would be required to search every script for every episode and cross-check these against what was broadcast. This would involve months of work. Accordingly, even were this information within the scope of the Act, responding to your request would far exceed the Act’s costs threshold appropriate to Channel Four Television Corporation. This is currently £450, with staff costs calculated at a rate of £25 per hour (i.e. a total of 18 hours).

It looks as though I will be getting a couple of episodes from series 1. I have six recaps from the 90's that I will put on the wiki in the coming days

FAO anyone who is contacting others to obtain recap data: Make sure that after you get it from them, you kidnap them and only let them go if they agree to join Apterous too. SUORETPA EHT NIOJ!

You can see my recent Series 1 finds by joining this group on facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/277220849308976/