Rather than re-invent the wheel I quoted James O'Donnell from the Planet Mondas Forum in a post where he talks about the state of the television archives in Uganda. I had suggested James that he put his on his own blog: http://marsanditscanals.blogspot.co.uk/ So If you are out there and reading this James let me know if you want this taken down.
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"Had a look at MEF and, with regard to 'the quest', all I could find were statements from Paul Vanezis to the effect that Uganda was one of the first four African countries Philip visited in 2008, and that they had no BBC programmes, or indeed, any archive TV at all, apart from an almost complete run of MASH.
However: independently of that, I also found quite an interesting document from 2009, which has some possibly relevant information in it:
http://mobile.wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/8940/25%20Magara.pdf?sequence=1
Some headlines are:
(1) Uganda TV was fairly thoroughly looted in 1978-79, as a result of which surviving records are very sparse - so that's bad news. But, on the other hand, it opens up the possibility of films having escaped into the wild - although, doubtless, tracking them down would be a nightmare.
(2) As of 2009, the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (successor to UTV since 2005) and the government's Department of Information did have audiovisual records, but they were in a bad state, full of unidentified stuff, hard to access, not subject to a formal retention and preservation policy, and not run by trained staff. The document describes the formats held but, frustratingly, doesn't say anything about numbers or content. For what it's worth, this is what they held at the time of the study:
"Betacam Short Play (SP) tapes
U-matic & U-matic SP, 3⁄4 in. low and high band tapes
Video Home System (VHS)
DVCAM (Advanced Metal Evaporated Tapes C/1/16K and Mini DV tapes)
16 and 35 mm film reel
2" tapes"
They can't all have been MASH - although I suppose they could all have been local programming.
Anyway! Quite a fractured and confused archive landscape, it appears. And, that being so, could someone who was visiting Uganda for the first time in 2008 - at which point he had no track record and had yet to set up TIEA - really have been in a position to conclude with finality that there was nothing there but MASH? In the absence of further details of what the search actually involved, I'm inclined to be doubtful.
Tangentially, I noticed the other day that the Director of Television at Uganda TV in 1968 - as listed in the 1968 TV Factbook - was Mr Robert Coulter. According to the news story I've linked to below, he was there to help develop the service in 1967-68, had previously been Assistant Head of Programmes at BBC Belfast and, on his return to the UK in 1969, became Head of Programmes at BBC Scotland (another source suggests that he then became Controller of BBC Scotland, until he retired in 1976).
I would guess that his work in Uganda was some kind of secondment from the BBC and that he would have been well placed to obtain programming from them direct. So there's perhaps no need to speculate about other distributors (eg TIE) having supplied anything while he was there.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19690211&id=5X9AAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0KMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5863,1933526
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On the current state of Ugandan Television:
http://nextvame.com/6-content/uganda-fails-to-generate-high-quality-local-content/
Uganda fails to generate 70% local content
by Debarati Das | May 14, 2014
"Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) published a local content quota monitoring report earlier this week to point out that none of the televisions operating in Uganda has hit its target of 70% locally-made programmes.
According to the report, which monitored Uganda’s prime time TV content between January and March 2014, Nile Broadcasting Services (NBS TV) had the highest local content coverage with 30%, followed by Top TV and Bukedde 1. However, other broadcasters including – Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), NTV, Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS), Bukedde 2, Urban TV, Record TV, and Citizen, had below 15% local content coverage.
Ideally, UCC expects local drama to contribute 50% of TV broadcasting, local documentaries to have 10% of the airtime, while local children’s programmes and sports should contribute 5% each. Foreign content can take up the remaining 30% of the broadcast time on local TV stations. However, local television stations argued that high quality local production requires time and finance from UCC which was not provided."
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It has been mentioned by PV that Phil had been to Uganda and a couple of other countries in 2008 and came back with Malaria. So it was searched pretty early on and as Broadwcast states Uganda sent its prints to Kenya and they entered the TIE chain from there.
Very much treading old ground here but I thought this post was worth making.
Although, it seems this did not last: http://nextvame.com/6-content/uganda-fails-to-generate-high-quality-local-content/
Uganda fails to generate 70% local content by Debarati Das | May 14, 2014
"Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) published a local content quota monitoring report earlier this week to point out that none of the televisions operating in Uganda has hit its target of 70% locally-made programmes.
According to the report, which monitored Uganda’s prime time TV content between January and March 2014, Nile Broadcasting Services (NBS TV) had the highest local content coverage with 30% , followed by Top TV and Bukedde 1. However, other broadcasters including – Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), NTV, Wavah Broadcasting Service (WBS), Bukedde 2, Urban TV, Record TV, and Citizen, had below 15% local content coverage.
Ideally, UCC expects local drama to contribute 50% of TV broadcasting, local documentaries to have 10% of the airtime, while local children’s programmes and sports should contribute 5% each. Foreign content can take up the remaining 30% of the broadcast time on local TV stations. However, local television stations argued that high-quality local production requires time and finance from UCC which was not provided."
