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[–]shrine 15 points16 points17 points 20 hours ago* (0 children)
“Do TV stations not have archives?”
Valid question. A general answer, not specific to this collection:
Of course (some) do, but 1) due to licensing reasons they may not be able to retain all of it, 2) due to costs they may have possibly deleted some of it—this has happened throughout the 20th century, even for moon landing footage, 3) records can be lost during bankruptcies, eras of censorship, and mishaps, even if the data has been stored in the cloud, 4) it’s not publicly known if all stations have kept their footage, and if they have it may not be digitized, 5) if it has been kept, then it’s not publicly and freely available, which is not materially different from being lost. The Vanderbilt collection is not fully and freely publicly available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_television_broadcast
With that said, Vanderbilt digitally archives a great deal of nationally aired US news coverage. Local news is not included. There are severe limitations on how you can access it, however, and the collection will omit commercials. The LOC funds this project so it is of definite significance to historians.
