[James2001]

Also, whenever the 97 election has been shown, it's been the "clean" version without the results graphics or any other captions (though you can see them on some of the monitors in the studio), which makes things somewhat harder to follow. Is that the only version that exists, or just that it was the first version they pulled out and they've used every time since? Every other election they showed had the original graphics, but when they showed 2001 election, the picture quality wasn't great, looked like it was from a composite source and with a fair amount of analogue tape drop-outs (so presumably recorded to Beta SP rather than a digital format), I'm guessing that might be the only way the "dirty" version was recorded as it wasn't seen as a priority to archive (I presume the clean version survives in higher quality), the first few minutes of the post-breakfast coverage were from a clean version as well until the graphics suddenly cut in.

Speaking of which, this user's uploaded the entirety of the 1997 BBC election coverage, recorded off-air with the original captions that are missing from the BBC Parliament/iPlayer versions (albeit with brief gaps for VHS tape changeovers):

www.youtube.com 

They've uploaded the 2001 coverage as well:

www.youtube.com 

Looks like this was the first time they kept a running total of seats on screen- something it's hard to imagine election coverage without now.

Also interesting the Newsroom South East bulletins at the beginning and end of the day two video are uncropped 4:3, rather than cropped to 14:9 as it usually was at the time (and the opts during the Breakfast coverage are)- the bulletin after the 1PM news still uses the 14:9 titles though (and there's several 14:9 clips from the main election coverage sprinkled though the post-Breakfast bulletin).