Exterminate!

All this week Diamond Geezer's doing posts about the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who. I think the most interesting link he's dug up so far is The Doctor Who Video and Audio FAQ: "The purpose of this FAQ is to explain the survival of many pieces of rare Doctor Who material, either video or audio, or to explain why certain episodes are considered untransmittable from the master copies currently held by the BBC.[...]" Perhaps the most shocking (and infuriating) piece of information I read was that the BBC were still destroying old episodes of Doctor Who (and other programs) as late as 1978. Way to go BBC!