The first segment is my absolute favorite one! Peggy is the greatest participant in the dog and loves her house so much to want to know as much about it as possible. And Mick is a treasure.
How do you estimate the price of poo? Has anyone ever bought it? I've seen it - I wouldn't be handing over £36K for it under any circumstances. 'Oh look, viking poo. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight'.
But the emancipation of North America failed! Only 13 states managed independence - there was an attempt to 'liberate' Canada in 1812 which only formalised the border. And the White House got burned down in the process. So yes....happy independence for some day. A triumph for firework manufacturers.
Errr......a excavator? Great for digging big holes on land you don't care about. Not so good on somebody's lawn when you need to remove earth carefully.
Time Team usually hires a back-hoe operator that's an absolute whiz at spotting clues in the soil. But there's no beating hand work with your spade/trowel - you can feel when there's something at the end of it.
There's no BBC Ch4. Channel 4 was, quite literally the 4th *Nationwide* television channel and began in the 80s. Prior to that, There were the 2 BBC channels (BBC1 and BBC2) and ITV (Independent Television) which had smaller, regional channels as the third channel. It thus *slightly* predates Sky and other satellite channels but not by very much. There's been a few more terrestrial TV channels since - Channel 5 and BBC3 being the obvious. BBC (the British Broadcasting Company) is the state sponsored national channel. It is funded by the license fees, where everyone must have a TV license, and it operates under a pretty strict charter regarding operation, funding, etc. ITV and Channel 4 are independent commercial enterprises funded by advertising. Ch4 also has a highly respected film company that has been involved with some huge internationally successful movies, similar to France's Canal+ Ultimately, an independent TV station needs to make more money from showing ads alongside a programme than all the many different costs of producing and airing the show in order to make a profit. It isn't government backed and if a programme fails to be profitable, there's no fallback to make up the losses. If the audience is too small, or of a niche demographic that companies aren't willing to pay large amounts to advertise to, then basically the show is going to get canned. But even a profitable show may get cancelled if it is taking up a time slot in the programming schedule that a more profitable show could have. We're lucky that, today, we have a lot more independent platforms with alternative funding, such as Patreon, that allow projects that simply aren't profitable enough for traditional publishing or broadcasting to have alternate means of funding and distribution.
Mick Aston resigned in 2012 after Channel 4 wanted to revamp the format due to its decline in viewing figures - they lost about 40% of the audience in the previous four years. Channel 4 is a commercial station (mainly) so Time Team wouldn't be paying for itself. Blame capitalism!
