Television affects and Addtition

Television affects our lives from birth to death. Most people inform and entertain themselves through it, and we use it to distract our children by providing (to paraphrase a famous quote) þchewing gum for their eyes.

Sadly, we have not yet sought to preserve this powerful medium in anything like a serious or systematic manner. At present, chance determines what television programs survive. Future scholars will have to reply on incomplete evidence when they assess the achievements and failures of our culture.

The 1992 National Film Preservation Act directed me, with advice from the National Film Preservation Board, 1) to prepare a study on the state of American film preservation and 2) then to design an effective program to improve current practices and to coordinate the preservation efforts of studios, archives and others. With cooperation from the film community, the Library of Congress completed the study and plan, and is now implementing the planþs recommendations. The plan called for a similar initiative involving television and video.

The 1976 Copyright Act established the American Television and Radio Archive in the Library of Congress. Since then we have acquired a treasure house of television programs in the form of copyright deposits or gifts. We have the entire output of National Educational Television and its successor, the Public Broadcasting System; all of NBCþs extant entertainment programs; the main network evening news transmissions-- through an arrangement with Vanderbilt University; tapes of floor proceedings from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and much more. The Act also gave us a modest annual budget to enhance, preserve, document and make available the archive of American television.

The Library has prepared this report in just a little over a yearþs time under the leadership of William Murphy of the National Archives and Records Administration. Hearings in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. enabled a wide variety of interested parties to testify in person. Nearly 100 individuals and institutions submitted written statements. The academic community stressed both the importance of television as a source material for the study of history, and the difficulties in gaining access for educational use to programs which have survived. Production companies and network executives suggested innovative ways to make news programming available to the academic community. Television artists are rightly sensitive about living life in the shadow of cinema. Their achievements should be honored in their own forum, and individual donors should be able to direct their generosity toward safeguarding the television and video heritage just as they do for cinema.

Lack of resources is a major problem identified in this report: and the plan presents some innovative fund-raising proposals to help protect our television and video heritage.

I thank the members of the National Film Preservation Board for their help, counsel and testimony. I also commend the Association of Moving Image Archivists, an organization that has succeeded shown over the last few years in uniting under a single banner preservationists in the industry and nonprofit archives, in order to help us implement the recommendations in this report. The Library of Congress has invested considerable resources in preparation of this report. We are therefore encouraged to know that the community that will benefit from the planþs ambitious ideas has volunteered to help bring them into reality.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The American television and video heritage is at risk. Early television was broadcast live, kinescope or film copies were made selectively, other programs were deliberately destroyed, and videotapes were erased and recycled, still an unfortunate practice in the production of local television news. Television film and videotape vulnerability to deterioration further imperils this rich heritage, and additional videotape recordings may be lost to posterity if archival programs do not address format obsolescence.

That this heritage is worth preserving is a major theme of this report. Archival holdings of television and video materials have enormous educational and cultural value, as recognized in the American Television and Radio Archives Act (1976) and expressed in the testimony of educators who participated in Library of Congress's public hearings. Public archives are obliged to preserve television materials because of the popularity of television in American society and because of educational interests that focus on television's interactive role in numerous social and political processes. Our heritage would be diminished if this vast record of our culture is allowed to vanish. Inaction will eventually take its toll.

The scope of the report includes television and video materials in all their major dimensions: entertainment, nonfiction, news and public affairs, public television, local television news, video art, and independent video. Motion picture film made for television is included because film along with videotape has played a fundamental role in television production since its earliest days. Just as the Library of Congress spearheaded the initiative to assess the general state of American film preservation in 1993, it is appropriate that the Library, the home of the Congressionally- authorized American Television and Radio Archive (ATRA), assume a similar leadership role in assessing the state of American television and video preservation. Two key objectives of the report are to lay down a factual foundation for understanding the issues confronting the preservation of American television and video, and to recommend a national plan of action based upon a broad consensus of the archival community.

Major Findings

Educational access remains largely unattainable for a variety of reasons, including underfunding in public archives, lack of descriptive cataloging and reference copies, copyright interests and very restrictive usage policies.

Scholars best qualified to judge the long-term research value of television and video materials are generally not given ample opportunity to participate in decision making in public and corporate archives on what will be saved and made available. Consequently scholars do not believe archives can always act in their best interests. The academic community, however, is not prepared to put funding into film preservation to ensure the availability of the programs it needs for teaching and research purposes.

Few television programs held by the major studios and networks are destroyed as a result of deliberate decisions or policies. The growth of the cable industry, video cassettes, multimedia, and overseas sales has encouraged the preservation of television and video materials. Each of the eight major studios that have produced extensive prime time programming has an assets protection program that includes film and television inventories. Past programs are protected rather than destroyed since they represent the real asset value of the corporations. Studios have been able to implement strategies for the preservation of videotape as part of managed programs.

The network news divisions have the greatest preservation difficulty because of the sheer quantity of film footage and videotapes they produce. The network archives are focused on the daily production needs of broadcasters, constantly posing a danger that precious images so important to the collective memory of the American people will be lost, altered, or destroyed. Every group that has studied the selection of television for preservation has concluded that all news programs should be retained and preserved as aired. The major networks have recently sought to improve storage conditions and set up programs for the conversion of obsolete or deteriorating videotapes.

Public television has always faced financial uncertainty, relegating preservation to a low priority. Yet, in the aggregate, public television programming has recorded the rich cultural history of the United States, especially in the performing arts. The preservation provision of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 has not been carried out, and it is only with the signing of the 1993 PBS- Library of Congress Agreement that there is a systematic means for assuring that these programs will be preserved.

The most devastating losses have already occurred among news film and videotape files of local television stations across the United States. These losses were prompted by the switch from 16mm film to 3/4-inch U-matic for Electronic News Gathering in the mid-1970's. Some 25 years (covering approximately 1950-75) of American state and local history were destroyed. Less than 10% of the news film libraries survive in public archives. Even today local news tapes are rarely kept more than a week before they are recycled. About 20 states have no local television news collections in public archives, and very few libraries or archives take advantage of the right to make and retain off-air copies of daily newscasts. The Vanderbilt University Television News Archive is the only archive to do so at the network level.

The works of video artists and of independent video producers also face a precarious existence. Few productions have found their way into traditional archives. Researchers find it difficult to understand what was produced and what still exists. Many of the earliest open reel tapes made on the consumer format EIAJ have already decayed. No comprehensive effort has been made to list, catalog, or document, let alone preserve this remarkable record of American history and culture.

Funding of television and video preservation has been, in a word, inadequate. Foundations have rejected video preservation grant applications because of a perceived inadequacy of videotape as a preservation medium. However inadequate funding for motion picture preservation may appear, television and video archivists look with envy at the programs that have been set up to preserve American cinema. Advocates of television and video materials feel that their second-class status is no longer justified.


Recommendations

The final part of the report constitutes a national plan of action in four critical areas: preservation, access, funding, and public awareness.

Preservation:

Promotes the concept of a shared responsibility for the American television and video heritage, and calls for public and corporate archives to rationalize and coordinate their preservation programs to avoid unnecessary duplication and ensure that no significant portion of this heritage (held in collections throughout the nation) is endangered. Provides a working definition of video preservation as part of a total management system and proposes appropriate considerations and strategies with respect to technological obsolescence of video formats, restoration, and storage. Reiterates the importance of the 1993 motion picture study as guidance for safeguarding and preserving film and addresses specific technical issues relating to television film. Defines the role of film and videotape in preservation copying. Recommends the establishment of a Video Preservation Study Center to collect bibliographic materials, manufacturersþ literature, and obsolete equipment.


Ref:
www.loc.gov/film/tvstudy