[James2001]

At one time Moving Image, who handle the TV-am archive, actually had a searchable database of their holdings- which was VERY detailed with what they had, and there were a lot of video clips- not just of the programmes, but also things like some ad breaks and even one of the IBA startup captions as well. There was some stuff missing... or at least not listed, but yes, the vast, vast majority of their output was on there. Sadly it vanished when Moving Image got AP to handle the sales.

Yes, with The Big Breakfast, I remember it being explained that they had the tapes, but they needed to be gone through and catalogued to work out what was where (which, for a show which went out 5 times a week for nearly 10 years is of course a big and time consuming job and likely not the highest priority) before they could properly licence clips. Somehow someone interpreted it as the episodes actually being wiped, and then it got taken as gospel. The increasing amount of material appearing on Screenocean suggests that cataloguing is slowly taking place.