The Cormorant Alpha explosion inquiry looms large in this Grampian TV news compilation.

This selection of Grampian Television news items from 1992 and 1993 mainly relates to the Cormorant Alpha inquiry, alongside items on childcare reform, Princess Anne and Aberdeen Football Club.

This compilation tape is one of almost 2,000 such tapes preserved at the National Library of Scotland. Grampian Television transferred content from mostly news and arts output onto a single videotape. These tapes record audiovisuals in the form of interior shots, interviews, exterior shots, and occasionally, material from external source such as ITN or advertisers.

For example, a tape can jump from colour bars to a scenic view, from an interview with a prominent figure to a live performance - usually without context or guidance on what you're seeing and when it was recorded (although Grampian did keep detailed logs of timecoded content on each tape with recording (?) dates attached. Due to their age and format, some of these recordings may now have visible video dropout, splashes, tape wrinkles, and visual distortion, among other technical issues.

Tapes digitised for preservation and viewable on BFI Replay are mostly Betacam SP. These compilation tapes provide a rare, informative, and fascinating look at how complete news stories were archived by a regional broadcaster, and they are still likely to contain a little untransmitted material.