TVARK

History

TVARK was founded in the dial-up era, as a one-man hobby site called "Television Ark" on 8 November 1998. At that time, there were just a few pages containing a handful of low-resolution clips that were easy to download but were smaller to look at than an average postage stamp. Over the years, the clips and images grew in size and quantity. The site expanded and was run entirely as a hobby by an eight-man team, with updates and additions made whenever time permitted. In December 2005, they absorbed the remains of SchoolsTV.com, a website dedicated to television programming for schools. The site is dedicated to the founder's late mother, Valerie Hackett.

During the summer of 2006, it was announced on their home page that they were having a summer break and would relaunch the site in the future. Unfortunately, higher resolution copies of previous clips were never made. The site relaunched on 25 December 2006 with very limited content. The relaunch saw a few better quality clips put into a new download system in an effort to prevent hotlinking and preserve bandwidth. This proved very unpopular as clips took much longer to view, especially for those with slower Internet connections. In addition, the relaunch saw the addition of a semi-transparent watermark (DOG) to new clips added to the site, in order to discourage "web snatching" of clips. Despite this, clips from TVARK have appeared on other sites, notably YouTube.

In July 2009, TVARK announced the end of RealMedia used on the site, with videos now using Flash streaming in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The service called TVARK iNTERACTIVE will include user accounts, commenting on videos and video statistics.

Forums

It was decided in late December 2005 by TVARK's owners to close its forums. The forum was originally scheduled to close on 31 December 2005, however the forums were removed earlier than planned on 18 December 2005. A new forum, The TV Lounge, was set up by the former forum staff as a separate venture. This forum closed in early 2007, and was replaced by "The TV Shelter", which had most of the members from both its predecessors.

The TV Shelter closed on 8 April 2014, but remains open to visitors and past members as an archive. Another new forum, "The TV Lounge", was established on 30 July 2014 as an initial collaboration with two former members of The TV Shelter. The name was intended as a tribute to the community's heritage.

Since the closure of the TVARK forums, TVARK continues to operate as before, with a new guest book being established in its place.

Current Status

Since mid-2016 updates have ceased on the site. However, its social media pages, notably Facebook, are being regularly updated with new material.

Sections and content

TVARK is divided into many sections that each cover programming, idents and presentation and other aspects of television.

BBC

Includes the pages on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC HD, BBC Parliament, BBC Alba, CBBC and CBeebies. It also includes links to individual regions pages, including all the English regions. It also includes pages of former channels: BBC Choice, BBC Knowledge and BBC Prime. It also has links to the service pages featuring content from BBC Children In Need, BBC Select, promotions, Red Button services, the history of the BBC logo and of Television Centre.

ITV

Includes pages on unified looks and promotions for the ITV network, pages for ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV Breakfast and ITV HD. Extensive collection of pages on the regional ITV companies with a vast array of pages for each region. Also includes information on CITV, the ITV Telethons and of services such as ITV Play.

Channel 4 and S4C

Pages covering Channel 4 and S4C, providing detail into their looks, programmes, promotions including the Channel 4 News and Newyddion pages respectively.

Channel 5

Pages covering Channel 5 including pre launch material, programmes, their extensive collection of idents, and news programmes.

BSkyB

Pages covering the launch of the original Sky Television, Sky Channel, the BSB channels including The Power Station, Now, Galaxy, The Sports Channel and The Movie Channel. It also provides details of the merger between the two companies, their corporate logos, Christmas idents, as well as promotions and advertising.

Also includes pages on some British Sky Broadcasting channels including Challenge, Sky1, Sky2, Pick TV, Sky Arts, Sky Soap, Sky Travel, Sky Scottish, Sky Movies, The Movie Channel, Sky Movies Gold, Sky Box Office, Sky Atlantic, Eurosport, Sky Sports, Sky Sports News, Sky News, Sky Living, The Comedy Channel and The Satellite Shop. Includes previous versions and alterations of names for all channels.

International television

TVARK showcases clips from international television stations as well as British ones. The following table shows the stations in this section as of August 2012.

Other channels

TVARK also has a number of channels added to their Other channels page.

These are divided between the pioneering stations of Sheffield Cablevision, Mirrorvision, Première, Rediffusion Cablevision, The Entertainment Network Movie Channel, Music Box, Super Channel, The Children's Channel, Lifestyle, Screensport, The Landscape Channel, The Arts Channel, MTV, European Business Channel, Discovery Channel and Worldnet.

The remainder of the channels are other channels available in the UK, mainly but not exclusively available on digital services such as Freeview. These include:

Other current channels featured include:

Some former channels are also shown in the sections. These include:

News, sport and weather

The TVARK sections for news, sport and weather are all very detailed and contain a variety of different channels.

The News section contains titles and presentation for a number of different sources, namely BBC News, ITV News (Including the ITN bulletins before them), Sky News, the BBC News Channel, BBC World News, ITV News Channel, France 24, Euronews, CNN International, Fox News Channel and Al Jazeera English. The section also features clips from coverage of major events such as UK and US elections, the millennium, solar eclipse, September 11 attacks and the death of Michael Jackson.

The Sports sections includes detailed insight into presentation, programmes and coverage of BBC Sport and ITV Sport ventures. There are also less detailed looks into Sky Sports, Sky Sports News, Eurosport and Setanta Sports. The ITV Sport pages are currently off line following a rights issue claim.

The Weather sections has videos and images of forecasts and of weather graphics. The section features National and Regional BBC and ITV forecasts as well as those provided by Channel 4 and S4C. There are also a few forecasts from other International sources and some other channels.

Schools

The TVARK schools section is very comprehensive, containing information on various schools programming blocks and their looks, including BBC Schools, ITV Schools, ITV Schools on Channel Four, Channel 4 Schools and 4Learning as well as S4C Schools. The section also includes Open University continuity as well as presentation from the BBC Learning Zone strand. The section also includes the titles to many of the programmes shown in these sections.

Adverts and public information films

TVARK includes a wide variety of adverts in its Adverts section from both national and regional sources. There are some included from all areas of the alphabet and from all regions of the UK, via the ITV companies. The section is constantly updated and is full of all examples from all eras.

The Public Information Films (PIFs) section is also quite comprehensive with many examples of the PIFs played out to inform people, such as personal safety, drink driving, strangers and among others.

Endboards, Testcards & Teletext and Mistakes

The Endboards section details how endboards were originally shown: a piece of card on a stand in front of a camera. Some of these original endboards have been obtained from a personal collection, and these endboards are shown here as well as their messages of gratitude.

The Testcards and Teletext pages shows both a number of Testcards in both 4:3 and 16:9 format from national, regional and international sources, and Teletext pages from Ceefax, Oracle and Teletext itself. It also includes videos and slideshows of various pages, as well as promotions for the service and includes clips from programmes such as 'Pages from Ceefax'.

The Mistakes section shows videos of breakdowns, their captions and music, studio problems such as exploding lightbulbs and powercuts, and other such problems such as failing, or wrong video features and failed opt outs.

Programme genre pages

The programme genre pages contain titles for programmes of that specific genre from all channels, however frequently from the UK originating channels only. The programme genre pages are Chat Shows, Children's Television, Comedy, Drama, Gameshows, Imports, Music and Soaps. The Cult section is similar, however is for all the titles from Cult series, such as Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Gerry Anderson series.

Presenters and miscellaneous

The presenter section of TVARK features all of the presenters they can find in their clips and attempts to detail where they are now and where they were in their career. It is currently incomplete due to the sheer number included in the section.

The Miscellaneous sections includes all of the videos related to the main broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky) that fit in no one section. The BBC sub category mainly includes some of their flagship factual programming, such as Horizon and Arena that does not have a programme category. The ITV and Channel 4 sections includes IBA announcements and promos. The Sky section features other programmes and EPG pictures. There is also a Quantel Paintbox showreel in the Other section.

Submitting material

The organisers accept tapes of vintage television presentation through the post.

Formats accepted by TVARK

Reviews and awards