Two things to update you all on this week, the first is good news; the BBC has finally opened up their archives on the BBC Store. The BBC is making more than seven thousand hours of TV available to buy from its archives, including current shows and lost gems, from the new BBC Store. The digital service, which launched on Thursday, allows the public to buy and keep more than sixty years of BBC shows. Shows will typically cost £1.89 an episode and can be downloaded through bbcstore.com and iPlayer. Billed as the most comprehensive collection of BBC programmes published, it includes some banned programmes, and importantly for us, some classic single dramas. Unfortunately, however the classic Play For Today's, Screen One's etc currently on offer are already available on DVD as you can see from the following link https://store.bbc.com/explore/collections Threads, The War Game, The Firm, Brimstone and Treacle, Up The Junction, Cathy Come Home...they've all been available on DVD for some time and, in a few instances, have been released more than once to DVD. It's frustrating - and perhaps indicative of the fact that the BBC Store is, as Marcus Arthur, UK MD for BBC Worldwide has stated, intended as a long-term replacement for DVD sales, the market for which has halved in the last three years. So, it's a kind of good news, and we can only hope that the months to come will feature more variety. But more importantly, we need to convince the BBC to broadcast these classics on TV itself, specifically BBC4. We're currently almost at the half way mark for the 500 signatures change.org have now set this petition, and that - along with the many kind and insightful comments some of you have left alongside your signatures - proves to me that there is a substantial audience who wish to see these programmes again. Now for some sad news. As many of you will no doubt now be aware, earlier this week saw the death of playwright and actor Colin Welland. Welland's contributions to classic single dramas like Play For Today, Screen One and Screen Two, cannot be denied as he was responsible for writing and starring in several. Leeds United and The Hallelujah Handshake immediately spring to mind for the former, and Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills for the latter. For an obituary/tribute, please see the following post I put up on my blog http://randomramblingsthoughtsandfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/rip-colin-welland.html RIP Colin. Please keep signing, keep spreading the word and thanks once again. Mark