First Broadcast 20th Anniversary

We are very pleased to present First Broadcast 20th Anniversary, a commentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dan Magee and Adam Mondon’s classic British video First Broadcast, which was released in 2001 and featured riders from UK brands Blueprint, Unabomber and Organic. Featuring Dan, Adam, Colin Kennedy, Paul Shier, Nick Jensen and Vaughan Baker as well as some surprise easter egg guests.

Some words from Tom Pickard, who approached us with the idea, organised the project, came up with questions, hosted and filmed the commentary and edited the film:

“Blueprint Skateboard’s full-length video Lost & Found was released in 2005 on DVD and was a huge success and solidified Blueprint’s place on the worldwide map of skateboarding.

Four years before this, the video First Broadcast was released on VHS, a Blueprint video that featured Unabomber and Organic (which became Landscape) riders as well as countless skaters across Great Britain at the time. The tone was dark, gritty and very, very British. It seemed to me that this video was overshadowed by the success of L&F, so I have always wanted to highlight how important this video was to British skateboarding twenty years ago. Lots of things were changing at the time, skaters leaving, new skaters getting on, some moving stateside, some not, new companies starting and the filming of skate videos was rapidly developing.

Watching American skate videos was always inspiring to me, but to see guys skating a Currys car park or some stacked wooden crates lit up by generator and lights was the real catalyst to get out there and skate and film our local spots and to venture into the capital. This is a real homegrown classic with lots of stories behind it, enjoy!”

Special thanks to Tom for all his work. Thanks also to Hattie Castelberg and Mark Jackson for letting us use their track ‘Yesterday’ throughout and to Dan Magee for the titles. Apologies to anyone we did not manage to speak to – there are so many people in the video, this wasn’t possible.

Watch First Broadcast in full, without the commentary, via Free.