Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-24162342-20131112232506/@comment-188432-20140106210222

Shada, as starring Tom Baker wasn't broadcast anywhere in the world. Broadcast quality tapes certainly weren't sold to US stations or anything like that.

There was a period of time — 1983-86 to be exact — where JNT was showing what he had of Shada to conventions. And there's a story about one of these VHS copies getting stolen from a convention and then maybe passed on through the fan network.

Might your friend got ahold of one of these almost legendary tapes? It's possible. Would he have taken the time to transfer them from VHS to whatever obsolete format these other tapes were in. Possibly — but that likely would have been something he'd have kept quiet from his bosses.

But if I had to take a bet, I'd say you're probably misremembering what happened that night in the home of your friend. The chances of him having raw footage of Shada — cause that's what it would have been — on any kind of broadcast-quality media are remote to say the least.