Access to Historic Television Materials

An interesting essay in the latest edition of Cinema Journal looks at the availability of historic TV footage for scholars and what they can do to help assure that more is collected, preserved, and made accessible for research.

"The truth is that a great deal of television's history has been lost over the years," writes Margaret Compton of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, "but, despite this, more programs exist than you may know of...."

Archival TV collections in places outside the major centers of New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, says Compton, preserve "thousands of obscure, non-prime-time, or local shows [that are] vitally important in studying the full history of television."

Archivists, she says, "want to save as much television material as we can, whether 'low' culture (cable access) or 'high' culture (PBS, Bravo), public service spot or prime-time sitcom."

Their efforts, Compton writes, are hampered by the massive volume of television content, by the technical challenges of obsolete formats and equipment, digital conversion, file migration, and data storage, and by budget and staff cuts at libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies.

Scholars, for their own benefit and for that of television history, can help, she says:

"[I]n order for archives to succeed in their missions, they need the patronage and support of scholars. The number of annual research inquiries and visits can drive or enhance existing archival budgets. Scholars' interest in and demand for rare materials can spur partnerships (and justifications) for funding grants."

The alternative, adds Compton, may be to rely for TV scholarship on those programs that commercial interests and rights holders determine will be released on DVD.

"Yet if scholars write only about the programs that are available on DVD or currently being broadcast, then they miss out on most of television's history."

Compton's article, "The Archivist, the Scholar, and Access to Historic Television Materials" (BC login required) is part of a special "In Focus" section of Cinema Journal on "The Archive in the 21st Century."

(Thanks to my colleague Sharon Black at UPenn's Annenberg School for Communication Library for pointing out the essay)