[Neil Jones]

Also if you ever wondered why pre 1987 episodes of Krypton Factor were never repeated on Ftn/Virgin1/Challenge, the observation round will probably give you a clue as to why.

Were they always clips from other films and TV shows at that point then? I guess it would cost a lot of money to clear, unless they could claim fair use or similar.

Is the correct answer. They were usually films, in the example posted that was release the previous year. Probably fair use might have been okay at the time but 40 years later? Hard to tell.

From 1987 Granada made their own films for the Observation round, so they already own all the rights to those films, whereas Flextech/Sky would have had to pay to clear them pre 1987 which gets expensive.