Television/Video Preservation Study:
Los Angeles Public Hearing, March 1996
TELEVISION AND VIDEO PRESERVATION 1997
A Study of the Current State of
American Television and Video Preservation
Volume 2: Hearing Before the Panel of the
Library of Congress
Hotel Sofitel Ma Maison
Los Angeles, California
March 6, 1996
Report of the Librarian of Congress
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Opening remarks by Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for Library
Services, Library of Congress
Introductory Remarks by Dr. James Billington, Librarian of
Congress
Statements by:
Edie Adams
James Loper, Executive Director, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
Ken Wlaschin, Vice Chair, National Center for Film and Video Preservation,
American Film Institute
Helene Whitson, Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
Curator, San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive
San Francisco State University
Steven Davidson, Director
Louis Wolfson II Media History Center - Miami, Florida
Grace Lan, Director of Preservation and Special Projects
Bay Area Video Coalition/National Alliance of Media
Arts and Culture
Robert Rosen, Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Gregory Lukow, Director, Administration, National Center for Film and Video Preservation,
American Film Institute
Roger Bell, Executive Director of Library Services
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Gray Ainsworth, Director of Technical Operations
Metro Goldwyn Mayer and United Artists
Philip Murphy, Vice President of Operations
Television Group, Paramount Pictures
William Humphrey, Senior Vice President of Operations
and Administration, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Roger Mayer, President and Chief Operating Officer
Turner Entertainment Co
Peter Shade, Director of Video & Technical Services
Turner Entertainment Co
Edward Zeier, Vice President of Post Production
Universal City Studios, Inc.
Harrison Ellenshaw, Vice President, Buena Vista Visual Effects,
Walt Disney Company
Grover Crisp, Director of Asset Management
Sony Pictures Entertainment
James Wheeler, President, Tape Archival and Restoration Services
Fred Layn, Director of Audio Marketing, Quantegy
Dan Sullivan, Manager of Videotape Technical Operations
CBS Television City
Michael Friend, Director of Academy Film Archive
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Lynn Spigel, Associate Professor, School of Cinema and
Television, University of Southern California
John Caldwell, Professor, Film and Electronic Arts
Department, California State University, Long Beach
Janet Bergstrom, Associate Professor, Department of
Film and Television, UCLA, and representing
Society for Cinema Studies
P R O C E E D I N G S
(1:07 p.m.)
The Library of Congress panel met, pursuant to notice, at
1:07 p.m., at the Hotel Sofitel Ma Maison, Opus Ball Room, 8555
Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA to conduct its first public
hearing on the current state of American television and video
preservation. Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for Library
Services, Library of Congress, presiding as Panel Moderator.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PANEL
James Billington Librarian of Congress
Fay Kanin Chair, National Film Preservation Board
Raymond Fielding Dean, School of Film and Television,
Florida State University
David Francis Chief, Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded
Sound Division, Library of Congress
Robert Heiber President, Chace Productions, Inc.
Betsy McLane Executive Director, International
Documentary Association
Edward Richmond Curator, UCLA Film and Television
Archive
Panel Moderator:
Winston Tabb Associate Librarian for Library
Services, Library of Congress
Proceedings
MR. TABB: I would appreciate it if the first panelists
would come to the table. Thank you very much. And would the
other members of the audience please come as far forward as
possible, so that we don't feel like we are lost in this large
room.
Good afternoon. I am Winston Tabb, the Associate
Librarian of Congress, and I am very pleased to welcome all of
you to the Library of Congress's Hearing on "The Current State of
American Television and Video Preservation."
I want to remind everyone to please sign the guest
register, which is just outside the back of the room, so that we
have a record not only of those who are speaking today but of
those who are attending, as well.
The purpose of this hearing is to get specific
suggestions for the Library of Congress to consider in preparing
a comprehensive national program on American television and video
preservation for the United States Congress.
Important issues include: What should be saved? Who
is doing it? And who should do it? What are the technical
preservation standards and problems? How do we ensure that they
are addressed? And most important, perhaps, how do we fund all
of the above? What funding models seem most promising?
This hearing is held in accordance with the law which
directed the Librarian of Congress to establish and maintain in
the Library of Congress a library to be known as "The American
Television and Radio Archives." The purpose of the archives
shall be to preserve a permanent record of the television and
radio programs which are the heritage of the people of the United
States and to provide access to such programs to historians and
scholars, without encouraging or causing copyright infringement.
We are pleased to have on our panel today the person
responsible by law for accomplishing this objective, the
Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington, whom I now invite to
make an introductory statement.
DR. BILLINGTON: Thank you. We appreciate everyone coming today for this hearing on
"The Current State of American Television and Video Preservation."
I gave testimony just yesterday before the
Congressional Appropriations Committee, and I am very happy to be
on the other side of the room, facing the witnesses and the
audience this time.
Today's hearing may not carry the same legal and fiscal
implications of a Congressional appropriations hearing, but it is
an important event, we feel, for the Library of Congress, for the
archival and educational communities, for the television and
cable industries, and really for everyone who shares our concern
about the preservation of our television and video legacy.
This is the first of three public hearings the Library
of Congress will conduct this month in response to this act of
Congress which Mr. Tabb has just mentioned.
These hearings are intended to help develop a report on
the current state of American television and video preservation
and a plan with specific recommendations. Both the report and
the plan will be published later this year as a single document.
This activity is authorized, as I have indicated, by
the American Television and Radio Act of 1976 and is being
pursued in response to a recommendation from the National Film
Preservation Board, whose distinguished chairperson is sitting at
the end of the table, Fay Kanin, known to us all and much
appreciated for the work which that board does and for the
special leadership she gives to it. So, it is being pursued in
response to their recommendation and from the many groups and
individuals who helped draft "Redefining Film Preservation," a
national plan which the Library published in 1994.
These hearings and the report parallel our earlier film
preservation study in several important ways:
First, we seek the same goals. That is, to preserve
the American television and video heritage and make it more
accessible for educational use.
Second, we wish to obtain a wide range of views and
opinions, representative of the diverse interests that exist in
the creation, preservation and research use of moving images in
all of its aspects, including arts and entertainment, news and
documentary, public affairs, video art, community video, just to
name a few.
Third, we wish to encourage other archives and
libraries to work with the Library of Congress to accomplish the
very difficult task of preserving television and video and making
them available.
Fourth, we wish to address the problem of funding
moving image preservation programs, both in public archives and
in industry. It is no easy task at a time when resources are
scarce relative to the preservation workload that is ahead. Some
kind of public/private partnership will be essential; perhaps
some variety of such arrangements. But during the course of
these hearings, we hope to receive your recommendations on how
this work can be advanced, how these kinds of partnerships can be
established.
The Library of Congress, I should say, through the
Copyright Office and through a fairly active program of taping,
as well as gifts, has accumulated a very large archive in this
area, and we need to have a clear rationale for what we collect
in the future, how we preserve and make accessible existing
collections.
This is the same process through which the Library of
Congress has gone for 200 years, in essence. A new media or a
new form of preserving the American creative record tends to
appear and to proliferate and to develop before a clear pattern
of preservation is made.
We are a kind of a "throw-away" society in many
respects. We are enormously creative, but much of the
creativity--and most of it, in fact--is on fragile or perishable
base and tends to vanish for a variety of reasons because of the
relentless onrush of our society to ever new things. And we have
a special designated responsibility to preserve, but you can't
preserve everything, so the rationale for what it is you do
usually comes only after we have accumulated a very large amount
of what we are going to then determine policy for. And as it was
in movies earlier, so it is the case with television.
There are other parallels with the Film Preservation
Report worth mentioning. Like American film, much of the early
history of television, as I am sure most people here know, has
already been lost. Broadcasts were live and kinescope or film
recordings were used selectively. Ampex introduced videotape
recording technology in 1956, and since then, the industry has
manufactured or adopted numerous incompatible video formats,
making technological obsolescence a major archival issue. Like
nitro-cellulose, the tape staple of the film industry until 1951,
videotape has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. We have
entrusted our historical and cultural images to videotape, and
yet, it is vulnerable to degradation and destruction.
Like film, everything associated with video
preservation is expensive, including specialized storage
facilities, electronic equipment, a skilled technical staff and
reformatting costs. The very notion of reformatting large
collections of videotape is a daunting one because their volume
already exceeds the means of most organizations. Yet the reward
for safeguarding and preserving our television and video heritage
are immeasurable and, like most such rewards, you could only
anticipate a few of the eventual benefits at the time you begin
to embark on it.
No one can fully understand, I think, who we are as a
people and what we have become as a society without having access
to the recordings created by television and video production
during the last 50 years. Historians, sociologists and other
scholars, even politicians and parents, debate the causal
relationship of television to society at large, and in the
future, such debates will be fruitless if the historical evidence
isn't there on which to base and advance the argument and the
discussion.
So, there is a moral necessity to preserve our memory
and to share it. We have a program creating a national digital
library at the Library of Congress, cooperatively with 15 other
major repositories, to get the core of our five million digitized
items from our Americana Collection out through the Internet. We
are already processing a million electronic transactions a day.
So, we feel we have a responsibility to share, as well as to
accumulate and to gather in, but in this area, so much of the
memory of the last half century is in this media, so it is a
moral necessity to preserve it.
It is a political necessity for understanding our
system. We are particularly conscious of that because the
constituency to which we report, the Congress of the United
States, is largely--or, to a very considerable extent--dependent
on television for their election or their de-election and
extraordinarily interested in it as a medium with which they
practically all have rather intimate familiarity and a growing
familiarity.
And of course, beyond the moral and political
necessities and the intellectual necessity of preserving this
record, there is the practical need to find some pattern of
funding and support, which is something we haven't altogether
solved for film, and now we have to deal with it in television.
I should say just one final word about the Library of
Congress. We are not going to be intruding on our institutional
concerns. By and large the Library of Congress doesn't get into
anything if anybody else can do it better. We tend to be the
place which does things which only the Library of Congress can
do. But one of the things that we have to do is to preserve the
record which the Congress, in particular, and the Government of
the United States, in general, may need in the future.
So, we have a special responsibility in that regard,
because as the National Library of the United States, we must
preserve the things which the government may ultimately need and
that, to a large extent, we think is what scholars also are going
to want to have. But at the same time, it is going to have to be
a cooperative effort, as we have recognized in the film case.
So, all of this we want to sort out.
And in conclusion, let me just say that the Library of
Congress encourages all of you in the audience to send us your
opinions and recommendations, which we will collect through April
29th. There won't be time to hear everything that everyone has
to say, so we would welcome written comments and opinions.
This afternoon we will hear from a number of
distinguished individuals, some professionals in the field,
others representing important organizations that share our goal
of preserving American television and video, and finally, those
who use this material to educate, in the broadest sense of the
word, because education is not simply in schools, but social
awareness is part of the business that we are all concerned
about.
So, it is a great pleasure to welcome you here, and I
turn things back to Mr. Tabb.
MR. TABB: Thank you, Dr. Billington.
Before we begin, I want to thank David Francis and
Steve Leggett, of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and
Recorded Sound Division, for their work on this project, and
especially to recognize Bill Murphy, who is sitting in the front
row here, who is on loan to us from the National Archives and
Records Administration and serving as the project coordinator.
I will also now introduce the distinguished group of
panelists. First, Fay Kanin, referred to already as the Chair of
our National Film Preservation Board, since its inception in
1988. Next to her, Raymond Fielding, who is Dean of the School
of Film and Television, at Florida State University. Dr.
Billington, of course, and David Francis.
Then, on my right, Betsy McLane, the Executive Director
of the International Documentary Association, and an alternate
member of the Film Board, representing the University Film and
Video Association. Next to her, Edward Richmond, Curator at the
UCLA Film and Television Archive, who did an excellent job
testifying on film preservation at the Congressional hearing last
June in Pasadena. Finally, at the end, Robert Heiber, President
of Chace Productions, Incorporated.
Now, for some of the ground rules. We are very pleased
that 27 people asked to testify today. But given our time
constraints, we must ask that everyone making remarks do so in 10
minutes or less, and I will focus on the less. Particularly, we
would like you, if possible, to focus on suggestions and specific
recommendations. We will add into the statement of the hearing
any other kind of descriptive and narrative material that you
would like to have added. But it would be especially helpful to
us if we could have more time and focus on the suggestions.
I will have to be ruthless in wielding the gavel, to be
sure that panelists who are scheduled for the end of the day are
not short-changed.
We have organized the speakers into panels relating to
different focuses of our study. I will ask each panel to come to
the speaker's table together, as our first has already done, and
then ask each speaker to present testimony in the order listed in
the program that we distributed in the lobby.
We at this table will hold questions until the end of
each panel, unless there is an urgent need for clarification of
some point that is being made as we go along. After all the
speakers on the panel have given their prepared statements, I
will invite colleagues here on the dais to ask follow-up
questions during the balance of time allotted to the group.
All written comments and the transcript of the
proceedings today will be printed and available to the public, as
an appendix, when we publish the report and submit it to Congress
later this year.
We invite the speakers, observers and anyone else who
has a strong interest in this matter to submit written comments
to Steve Leggett, of the Library of Congress's Motion Picture,
Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, by April 29th. The
hearing record will remain open until that time.
More information about how to submit comments is in the
Federal Register Notice, of which we have copies on the table at
the back of the room.
So, now let us begin. We have our first panelists
here. We are very happy to see Edie Adams and James Loper. If
Mr. Stevens joins us, we will ask him to come up to the table, as
well. If he comes later, we will try to fit him in.
So, the table is yours now, Ms. Adams. Thank you.
Presentation by Edie Adams
MS. ADAMS: The first time I was made aware of the
willful destruction of videotapes was in 1962, after the sudden
death of my husband, Ernie Kovacs. He had been working on two
shows for ABC here in Hollywood.
The first was a quiz show called Take a Good Look,
which Ernie decided to make a peg for comedy. He used comedic
blackouts as "clues." And God help you as a panelist if you
inadvertently guessed the right answer, and he had some funny
blackouts left.
The second was a series of oddball specials, including
the remake of the Silent Show. I have a short three-minute clip
here. I will keep the seven minutes. It will be up to 10.
(A three-minute video was shown.)
MS. ADAMS: Thank you.
Ernie liked to take his time. You couldn't force him
into doing those quick sound-byte kind of humor and things that
were in Laugh-In later on. However, I can't get off on those
things.
None of these shows would exist today if it hadn't been
for the caring and foresight of his co-workers on both of these
wacky shows.
Ernie's bravura genius for putting unusual images on
the small screen did not carry over to the mundane daily
management of money. When he died, he owed a lot of it, to a lot
of people. Mainly, the IRS--we were in the 91% bracket; nine
cents of every dollar belonged to us; but that's another story--a
few gambling buddies and the ABC Television Network.
Three months after his death, several members of his
ABC crew came to see me at home and asked if I couldn't do
something about the fact that ABC was using the wall of Kovacs's
master tapes as used tape to tape over the news, the weather,
public service blurbs, or anything, to recoup some of the moneys
owed to them by Ernie.
So, I called up my lawyer and told him to use the
modest insurance policy to pay them off and buy back the 12-foot
wall of Kovacs's tapes they were "saving money" by using. In
all, about 40 hours was there, and by the time it was transferred
to my storage facility, only 15 hours of it showed up.
When I first started to work on daily TV in the early
'50's, there was no tape and kinescopes were expensive. They
were only made once or twice a month by advertising agencies to
sell commercial spots on the shows. At first, on the daily show
in Philadelphia, I had only my songs recorded by Radio Recorders,
a professional recording studio who would put songs on acetate.
We called them "air checks."
By the time we moved up to CBS, in New York, for our
daily show--that's in 1952-53--I had Radio Recorders record the
whole show. I knew even then that what Ernie was doing was
special, and I wanted a permanent record of it kept for
posterity. Maybe it was my Juilliard training, with its endless
discussions of "What is art?" I just knew I had never seen
anyone on TV or live who did the things that Ernie did.
The next network we were on was Dumont, Channel 5.
That was in 1954 and 1955. I ordered daily "air checks" of the
hour long late night show.
We never had a regular hour on any network for any
length of time, as did Milton Berle or Ed Sullivan, at 8 p.m.
Tuesday and Sunday, but if you were a fan, you could find us
daily on all three networks throughout the '50's. He would
comment on everything that was going on in New York on those
daily shows.
By the time we got to NBC, we graduated to a big time
daily show, full network, with the early NBC staff, Tonight Show
Band. So, this one, I ordered on daily kinescope, something
unheard of in those days. Finally, a daily visual record.
A network spokesman says that it is the only record of
the early '50's TV that remains anywhere, and it is on mostly
audio. About four years of audio only and 18 months of
intermittent kinescopes.
After I bought and put away, in a controlled
temperature facility, the ABC shows in the early '60's, I started
to search out anything I could find from the other networks. I
bought back whatever was available from NBC and put them in
storage in the late '60's. I also tried to track down the CBS
shows and the Dumont shows. I was told that they were
unavailable.
I don't know what happened to the CBS shows, but have
recently learned what happened to the Dumont shows. That's the
early Jackie Gleason Shows, including the original Honeymooners,
Captain Midnight, and the Kovacs Specials. Well, they were
taken care of in a most unique and swift fashion.
In the earlier '70's, the Dumont network was being
bought by another company, and the lawyers were in heavy
negotiation as to who would be responsible for the library of the
Dumont shows currently being stored at the facility, who would
bear the expense of storing them in a temperature controlled
facility, take care of the copyright renewal, et cetera.
One of the lawyers doing the bargaining said that he
could "take care of it" in a "fair manner," and he did take care
of it. At 2 a.m., the next morning, he had three huge semis back
up to the loading dock at ABC, filled them all with stored
kinescopes and 2" videotapes, drove them to a waiting barge in
New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the
Statue of Liberty and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay.
Very neat. No problem.
The audio discs, many hundreds of them, I did manage to
save, and they have been housed at the UCLA Film and TV Archive,
on Cahuenga, along with some 800 daily TV scripts that match
them, on campus at UCLA's Special Collections Department. A few
were damaged. A few of these--they were 16" radio
transcriptions, very, very fragile--were damaged in the '94
earthquake. However, we would like to have these fragile 16"
transcriptions digitized before the next one, even if it is not
the big one.
After listening to the audiotapes of the earlier TV
shows and seeing the movie Toy Story, I believe that in addition
to using the "V" chip on our TV, we might think about using the
"K" chip, some of the space age, bachelor pad, cocktail music and
odes to silliness that defined the mellow fifties and the Kovacs
mystique. I think of them as representing a kinder, gentler
time, with a new life of their own, done for computer animated
series, with the music and voiceovers already done by Ernie
himself.
I have always heard that if we don't spend time on our
own history, we tend to repeat it.
Was that 10 minutes?
MR. TABB: That was exactly on time. Thank you very
much. We appreciate that. Mr. Loper.
Presentation by James Loper, Executive Director
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
MR. LOPER: Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, Dr. Billington and members of the panel,
my name is Jim Loper. I am the Executive Director of the Academy
of Television Arts and Sciences.
The Academy is the largest professional association for
those individuals involved in national television production and
distribution. There are some 8300 members representing 25
different peer groups within the industry. And while the Academy
is best known for producing the prime time Emmy Awards, it has a
great many other activities, primarily for the good and education
of its members. Among these are seminars, workshops, any
magazine and anti-substance abuse programs, including Cartoon All
Stars to the Rescue, which aired simultaneously on four major
networks and reached the largest children's audience in the
history of television.
The Academy also has an extensive educational program,
including student internships, which has been named one of the 10
best internships in the United States. And this weekend we will
honor the winners of our College Television Awards--fortunately,
Mr. Fielding's students have won two of those--from institutions
throughout the United States.
We consider the Academy to be one of the most vital
organizations in the television medium. Two years ago we staged
the "Information Superhighway Summit," and this fall we will
gather major forces and individuals in a top level meeting on
television violence, which is being underwritten by the Pew
Charitable Trusts.
The Academy strongly supports current and future
efforts to preserve television programming. This year we
celebrate our 50th anniversary. And for over 25 of those years,
we have had a partnership with the Film and Television Archives
at UCLA. In fact, the Academy has a designated collection within
the larger context of the archives. It helps to support the
activity with a yearly $30,000 grant, under contract with the UC
Regents.
We have tried to leave no stone unturned in finding
collections of early television shows and seeing them placed
within the safe confines of the archive.
To this end, we believe there is a major difference
between an archive and a museum or library. To us, an archive is
an exhaustive repository of everything connected with a program
or series of programs. Rather than collecting a sample of one or
two programs as representative of a series, the archive should
contain the complete series, if possible, together with the
ancillary visual materials.
Because it is a professional society, the Academy tries
to keep the needs of its members uppermost in its objectives. It
is far more useful for the professionals to have access to the
totality of a series, rather than a few programs. The serious
scholar needs as much as possible to judge the evolution of a
program from beginning to end, to note the subtle changes in
story line and character development, as well as other artistic
elements.
For these reasons, the Academy wholeheartedly supports
the funding of archival activities for television. Aside from
studying television as an art form, watching old programs can be
good fun.
Last year, the Academy, in cooperation with the UCLA
Archives, began a series of historical viewing evenings for
members and the general public. Our first offering, the
television work of Gene Kelly, was fortuitous because of his
untimely passing. We had well over our theater capacity of 600
people show up. So many, in fact, that we added a second
evening. And we have done the same with other programs, from the
United States Steel Hour, to the work of George Burns, and timely
holiday programming. All have been exceptionally well attended.
As a complement to the cooperation with UCLA, the
Academy has maintained a library of printed materials,
photographs and manuscripts with the Film and Television Library
of the University of Southern California.
The ultimate research tools would not be to have only
the original programs available for viewing, but to have the
original scripts, shooting notes, casting sheets and publicity
materials also available. We much do as much as possible to
preserve and maintain our history.
Finally, let me briefly describe a new Academy project
which is just being formulated. This has its inspiration in the
preservation of Holocaust survivor memories, as underwritten by
Steven Spielberg. The President of Walt Disney Network
Television and Animation, Dean Valentine, who is also a member of
our Foundation Board, has had the concept of interviewing on tape
living survivors of early television about the medium's
development.
Because television is 50 years old, it is important
that the project begin as soon as possible. The Academy is
funding a pilot to interview five television pioneers in the hope
of finding funding to extend the recorded record of these people
into the thousands. There then, hopefully, would be cross-
referencing of these interviews, so that complete stories of
individual programs and series can be told through the actual
participants.
I thank you for allowing me to testify today. It has
been a pleasure.
MR. TABB: Thank you very much, Mr. Loper. Now, a time
for questions.
MS. McLANE: I have a question. Mr. Loper, what is the
relationship of the Television Academy to, say, local television
stations and local Emmys in terms of preserving their materials?
MR. LOPER: We have a separate branch within our
Academy, called the "Los Angeles Area Television Group," and we
do, in fact, stage the local area Emmy Awards for the stations in
town. All of the entries into the Emmy Awards, whether they be
national, daytime, local and so forth, are turned over, after
they have been viewed and judged, to the Television Archives at
UCLA.
MS. McLANE: But is there a relationship of the
Television Academy to other local stations?
MR. LOPER: Yes. Oh, yes.
MS. McLANE: They all come here, then?
MR. LOPER: Yes, that's correct.
MS. McLANE: Thank you.
MR. RICHMOND: I have a couple of questions.
Jim, I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but you
know, it is a friendly group. We are very appreciative of the
relationship that ATAS has had with UCLA. I think it works very
well, and we have done a lot of good work together.
One of the things that has always occurred to me is
that in terms of the Emmy collection that is at UCLA, it is an
excellent collection for research and study purposes because the
tapes that are submitted for consideration in the nominating
process are usually 3/4". Now, sometimes 1/2". And I was
wondering whether you saw any possibility of ATAS working with
UCLA, or even a group of archives working together, to start to
try to go back to develop a program within ATAS that could be
used for ensuring the preservation of those Emmy winners on more
than just the reference cassettes that you now get.
I realize that ATAS doesn't own the programming, but
being the Academy of the industry, is there any way that such an
activity could start to take shape?
MR. LOPER: Well, we certainly would be interested in
doing this, because I think the preservation of the materials
really lies ultimately in transferring them to some digitalized
process, rather than leaving them on videotape or even, in the
early programs, on kinescope. So, yes, we would be most
interested in this kind of activity.
MR. RICHMOND: I guess the other question I had is for
both of you. I think what will come out of this hearing, because
it is kind of self-evident, is that any kind of a national
preservation program or plan involves a whole range of
constituents working together, the archives, the industry,
educators and the talent, the artists and the crafts people
within the industry.
Speaking maybe--since I think you both can--as involved
with being the talent people in the industry and representing an
academy of those people, is there anything we can do in this plan
to appeal more directly to the people, the individuals, that make
up the television industry to help preserve their own programs,
to work with archives to ensure that those programs are
preserved? Is there something we are not doing now to reach out
to that important part of the constituency that will make up this
national program?
MS. ADAMS: Well, everything that I have ever done for
UCLA has been just wonderful. I haven't had that same experience
in other places, which shall be nameless. Everything that is
there is preserved, and it is there. I have no complaints. And
I am always telling people to save them.
I am trying to get people--in order to transfer those
great big transcriptions, you know, they start from the inside
out. It was hard to even take them out to find a place that had
a 78 to play them, and every time you play them, they are reduced
in quality just a little bit. They should be done and digitized
at the same time. I pulled a few out just to see what the
quality was. And I am trying to talk the fellow up in the Valley
into--he is sort of getting out of the 78's--into donating this
little studio to UCLA, so at least you can pull those off. But
that shouldn't go off onto anything except digital, because every
time it loses a generation.
MR. LOPER: I think that we need to continue a program
which we have carried on for a number of years of cleaning out
people's garages in the industry. There are, I am convinced,
still many, many programs that are filed away under probably the
worst circumstances possible.
And I think that one of the things we can promise is
that the Academy, through its contacts with its members, would
try to continue to enlist support in finding those private
collections, because I just have the feeling that there are
jewels out there that are deteriorating slowly at this point and
that we need to find.
And we would be very happy to work with you, Edie, on
that.
MS. KANIN: In terms of public and industry awareness,
have you ever, on the Emmy Awards Show, given the preservation
message? I mean, these are messages that could be carried to
both the public and the industry of the need for the recognition
of preservation for television. That linkage is very important.
And maybe even--and it is a dramatic thing--a plea for looking in
garages and things like that. But have you ever done it?
Perhaps you have. I don't know.
MR. LOPER: We have mentioned on the Emmy Program the
relationship that we have with UCLA, but there is no reason why
we can't continue to do this on a more regular basis.
MS. KANIN: I think it would be a wonderful spot on the
TV award show to have the preservation message.
MR. LOPER: Thank you.
MS. ADAMS: Is there some way to do something about the
pirating and the copyright stealing? That's a terrible problem.
People just take things and put them on and sell them; then you
track them down. If something could be done with that, you could
rake in a lot of things that are out there that don't belong out
there.
MR. FRANCIS: Mr. Loper, mine is really a follow-up on
what was just said. It seems that the Emmy Awards are so
prestigious that it would be reasonable to ask a winner to
deposit a preservation copy. I would have thought that that
would have been accepted by a winner. It would mean there would
be the submitted copy, which could be an access copy, and
afterwards, the winner could present a preservation copy. Do you
think that sounds reasonable?
MR. LOPER: Yes. And I think that we can go further
than that and ask the production companies and the networks to
donate a complete copy of the series of the program. That's what
really needs to be done, and that was kind of the thrust of my
remarks, that rather than one or two programs, we need the
complete sets if we are really going to study television in an
objective and positive manner.
MR. TABB: Are there any other questions?
DR. BILLINGTON: How about actually giving an award for
preservation? Have you ever considered that?
MR. LOPER: We are up to about 90 Emmy awards now. I
am not sure that the industry or ourselves can stand any more
awards, but we certainly have certificates and can honor people
for this kind of thing. And, Jim, that's a very good idea.
DR. BILLINGTON: And maybe past award winners, as well,
in terms of getting their things.
MR. LOPER: Yes.
DR. BILLINGTON: Could you expand a little bit on what
lessons you might have learned with your relationship with the
UCLA Film and Television Archives, for other organizations that
might possibly consider similar models with various archives?
MR. LOPER: My comments are very much the same as
Edie's. I have no negatives, really. They have been enormously
cooperative.
DR. BILLINGTON: No. I wasn't suggesting there were
negatives. I was wondering if there were some keys to making
such a relationship work or getting it started and so forth, that
could be generalized.
MR. LOPER: I think each organization that is involved
in such a partnership should do what it does well, and that is
that the Academy has the contacts with the people who star in and
produce the programs, and that should be our responsibility to
try and put the leverage on them to get the programs.
On the other hand, I think that the archive has the
responsibility of somehow preserving the material in a form that
can be used by scholars in the long term and an even longer term
of preserving it for posterity in some way.
So, I would say finding the material is our job, and
preserving it and having it there for use is the job of an
archive.
MR. RICHMOND: Just one other quick comment. I think
the Academy has to be a major player in this whole plan. The
work that you have done to date is outstanding, and you need to
be a major part of the plan.
I think one of the things that has been really
encouraging to me--you mentioned the TV screenings that we have
initiated together. It has been really thrilling to see packed
houses for those, just much more of a response than I ever would
have anticipated. And it shows that there is a constituency out
there. People in the television industry do have an interest in
the history of their industry, and that's something we need to
find a way to tap into.
MR. LOPER: We have also, as you know, instituted 11
years ago the Television Academy Hall of Fame, to honor people.
And Mr. Kovacs was one of the very early inductees into the Hall
of Fame. And I think by recognizing these pioneers in the
industry, we can continue to develop that kind of bridge with
those people to continue to extract the material wherever we can.
From the garage is another place.
MR. HEIBER: I have a question for Ms. Adams. Do you
think the better awareness now of artists' rights will prevent
similar situations happening as with your late husband's
programming material?
MS. ADAMS: I don't know what you mean. Artists'
rights?
MR. HEIBER: Well, the rights of artists to protect
their material, to have a say in the disposition of their
material.
MS. ADAMS: On TV in the early 50's, there was no
agenda for artists' rights. We were given a radio studio, 4
walls, a camera and a microphone. We were interested in killing
2 hours every morning. Those of us who cared about content
bought back and copyrighted it later. So, somehow--the material
is protected, but the physical product somehow gets out of your
hands, and it goes somewhere else, and somebody else uses it
uncopyrighted. And I find that I don't know what to do about it.
MR. HEIBER: I guess my question is not with the
ownership of the material so much as--you called it--the
"ruthless destruction" of the material.
MS. ADAMS: Yes.
MR. HEIBER: What is your take on whether or not people
are educated at this point where that would be prevented from
happening today?
MS. ADAMS: Well, I don't know. At that time, I just
had no idea when they told me. Because I thought that they were
just there, and I just didn't know that they would be destroyed
and willfully destroyed. And everybody was doing it in the
'70's, throwing it away, burning it, throwing it in the water,
and just doing it as a money saving measure. And you didn't hear
about it until years later. And if it hadn't been for the crew
coming over, I would have had no idea that they were going to
erase everything.
MR. TABB: I thank you both very much. We will end
this panel at this point.
Especially thank you for bringing such great footage.
It was a very appropriate way to begin the hearing.
MS. ADAMS: Got to lighten it all up. In life, too.
MR. TABB: We will invite the next group to come
forward, please. (Pause.)
All right. We will begin with the National Center for Film and
Video Preservation, AFI. Will both of you be speaking during the
time or...
MR. WLASCHIN: I will be speaking.
MR. TABB: Mr. Wlaschin. Okay. Thank you.
Presentation by Ken Wlaschin, Vice Chair
National Center for Film and Video Preservation
American Film Institute & Gregory Lukow
MR. WLASCHIN: My name is Ken Wlaschin. I am the Vice
Chair of the archive arm of the American Film Institute.
The AFI is pleased to testify at these important
hearings and to contribute to the Library of Congress's work to
bring television and video materials into a comprehensive plan to
preserve America's moving image heritage.
For over two decades, especially the work of AFI's
National Center for Film and Video Preservation's effort has been
one of the Institute's primary mandates. During this time, the
National Center has taken a leadership role in coordinating this
effort and has been privileged to work with hundreds of committed
archivists across the country.
Today, at the Library's suggestion, we would like to
share a bit of the AFI's long history in television and video
preservation, describe how the National Center's current
activities are contributing to this course, and offer five basic
recommendations for a national plan to safeguard these materials.
These recommendations were first articulated by the
National Center as part of a nationwide needs assessment that it
carried out in 1990. The report that emerged from this
assessment still stands as one of the most comprehensive
statements on the needs of television preservation, and we are
pleased that the Library has indicated it will be consulting this
document in preparing its study.
AFI's history in television preservation dates back to
1974, when it convened a conference of interested parties, with
follow-up support from the Ford Foundation, to discuss the
coordination of television archival activities.
In 1978, AFI began coordinating the annual meeting of
what was then known as "The Television Archives Advisory
Committee." This group and its film counterpart evolved into
what is now the "Association of Moving Image Archivists," a North
American professional association for which the National Center
continues to serve as institutional secretariat.
In 1983, AFI's television preservation mandate
intensified when it established the National Center for Film and
Video Preservation, in collaboration with the National Endowment
for the Arts.
Throughout the 1980's, the Center completed a number of
projects that placed television on the national preservation
agenda. In 1986, the Center published the "National Film and
Video Storage Survey," containing information on the film,
television and video holdings of over 30 public archives.
Also in 1986, the Center called a two-year national
moratorium on the disposal of television programming, an
initiative that conveyed to the television industry the urgent
need to save our national television heritage. As an outgrowth
of the moratorium, the Center prepared national guidelines for
the selection of television programs for retention and
preservation. The guidelines were distributed in 1988 to the
nation's television networks, producers and broadcast groups.
One of the Center's major accomplishments came in 1989,
when it coordinated the negotiation of an agreement between--
Capital Cities/ABC, the UCLA Film and Television Archives, and
the Museum of Television and Radio, to bring the history of ABC's
entertainment programming into the national collection. The
agreement covered hundreds of ABC aired series, from the 1950's
to the 1970's, an estimated 24,000 kinescopes and film prints.
This national level work was complemented by the
Center's extensive efforts on behalf of regional television
archives across the country. The ground breaking event for this
field came in 1987 when the National Center organized its first
national conference of local television news archives.
These institutions are a rich resource in documenting
our nation's history, and we are pleased to share the table today
with colleagues from two of the nation's leading local television
archives, those in Miami and in San Francisco.
Today, the National Center has a range of programs with
which they address the needs of television preservation. The AFI
collection is known for having brought over 25,000 classic
American feature films and short subjects into the national
collection at the Library of Congress and other archives. But
this national clearinghouse collection has also acquired
thousands of television programs and classic commercials, dating
from 1939 to the 1980's.
The Center's national moving image database has
provided significant support for the television and video
archival communities. Since 1988, the NAMID Data Entry and
Conversion Program has allocated over one million dollars for
data acquisition projects of archives across the country,
including over 20 television and video collections.
In doing so, NAMID provides extensive direct support
for the cataloging and automation work of these archives and
fosters the use of national level standards. Each archive's data
is in turn acquired by NAMID and made available, through a series
of open access agreements negotiated with the archives, to
preservationists, catalogers, researchers and the public.
Using this approach, NAMID has become the largest
collective moving image database in North America. Over 30,000
of its records document the nation's television and video
holdings, including broadcast television collections at the
Library of Congress, UCLA, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research, American Archive of Factual Film, and Museum of
Broadcast Communication, as well as independent video artwork and
documentaries held by the Pacific Film Archive and others.
This year, NAMID will provide additional television
data through new conversion projects involving the Peabody Awards
Archive, at the University of Georgia, the Bay Area Video
Coalition, the Experimental Television Center and the University
of Southern California Cinema and Television Archive.
In addition to physical holdings, NAMID includes all
filmographic data published by the AFI Catalog Project. While
the catalog will continue to focus in the coming years on
researching American theatrical films released between 1893 and
1970, we look forward to the day when AFI will be able to expand
this national filmography into the realm of historical
television. A feasibility study on such a television catalog was
completed by the National Center in 1988.
One of the Institute's priorities this year is to bring
NAMID and AFI catalog data and AFI collection data online through
AFI's new World Wide Web site. NAMID was available online for
the first time in 1995, through a dedicated BBS line, and our
goal now is to provide full Internet access to this valuable
information.
The National Center continues the coordination and
outreach efforts that have helped bring new archives and special
collections into the television archival community. As a
contribution to this effort, the Center will publish shortly The
Administration of Television News Film and Videotape Collections:
A Curatorial Manual, co-edited by Steve Davidson from the Wolfson
Center and Greg Lukow of the AFI. This guidebook is illustrated
with over 200 photographs and designed to assist local and
national archives responsible for safeguarding television news.
Finally, we would like to note that AFI is currently in
the middle of a three-year initiative to raise over one million
dollars in new funds for archival preservation projects through
the AFI Preservation Challenge Grant. Television projects are
eligible for funding, and we encourage their submission.
In 1995, $350,000 was awarded to 13 archives through
the first year of the project, and the Institute hopes to
announce the availability of funds for the second cycle of grants
in the near future.
We would like to conclude our testimony today by
offering five fundamental recommendations for a National
Television and Video Preservation Plan. These suggestions have,
of course, a bottom line: Increased resources to help archivists
preserve and make accessible our nation's television and video
heritage. Indeed, one of the most compelling goals of the
national television study should be to provide potential funding
agencies with the information they will need.
First, determine the scope of the program. There is an
urgent need to measure the size of the staggering volume of
broadcast, cable and video material to be saved. Our experiences
with funding agencies have shown that a statistical assessment of
existing material is essential in developing a comprehensive
approach to television preservation. The material grows
significantly with every passing year.
Second, define "television and video preservation."
The study should provide potential funders with a clear, working
definition of the principles of television and video
preservation. It should determine where consensus exists on
current practices and promote the development of new standards
where needed. It should differentiate between motion picture
preservation and the unique needs of television and video preservation.
Third, strengthen public/private partnerships. If our
nation is to save its television and video heritage, the need for
cooperation between public archives and private sector producers
and broadcasters can not be overemphasized. The study should
promote the crucial concept of the national collection, held in a
diverse range of institutions who collectively share the
responsibility of preserving the heritage. The study should
provide realistic selection guidelines to help evaluate what we
can reasonably expect to save and foster consensus regarding who
will save what.
Fourth, secure the necessary new funding. The study
should bring television and video to the forefront of the
national preservation agenda. It should articulate long-term
funding needs and help develop necessary resources. This is the
bottom line for all of the nation's archives. The techniques to
preserve the heritage are at hand, but the pace must be
accelerated.
Preservation support should be broadened beyond
laboratory transfer work, to include storage, cataloging and
access. The need is compounded by the absence of a tradition of
support like that for film preservation. As a matter of public
policy, we must overcome the impasse of conventional wisdom,
which for too long has maintained that the mountain of television
programs is too enormous to contemplate, or videotape is not a
long-term preservation medium.
Fifth, increase access. As more television and video
materials are preserved, the responsibility of providing access
becomes paramount. The study should encourage rights holders to
support shared open access for a diverse community of users, even
as it provides assurances that legal interests will be protected.
The study should also encourage new agreements between
archives and broadcasters that would enable archival off-air
taping not only of news materials, as allowed under the current
copyright law, but also a broader range programming for education
and research purposes.
Indeed, looking to the future of online digital
research, the study could explore the possibility of extending
the very concept of off-air taping into the realm of online image
capture.
Before I conclude, I would like to say simply that I
have a personal interest in this. Thirty years ago, the BBC
television made a documentary about my wife and my then five-year
old son, and when I went back to look at it a few years ago, it
was gone. They had wiped it, along with a number of my brother-
in-law's television plays, which were among the most important of
their time. So, I think preservation affects all of us in
direct ways, as well as indirect.
The National Center would like to thank the Library of
Congress for the opportunity to share these reflections. We look
forward to doing whatever we can to assist the preservation
community in this vital effort. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you, Mr. Wlaschin. Ms. Whitson, from
the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive.
Presentation by Helene Whitson
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist
Curator, San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive
San Francisco State University
MS. WHITSON: My name is Helene Whitson, and I am the
Special Collections Librarian and Archivist at San Francisco
State University Library.
I am here today to ask your help in providing funding
for the preservation of local television productions. I come
with 15 years of experience working to organize and preserve
local television materials and at least 10 years of performing
educational outreach to the public, the field and to related
organizations.
Steve Davidson and I have jointly spoken before such
organizations, and I am going to give you acronyms, as BEA,
RTNDA, SAA, ALA, AHA, AASLH, AEJMC, plus local and regional
organizations. This year alone, we will speak jointly at the--
Conference, in Miami, BEA, and the annual NATAS President's
Meeting, in San Francisco, as well as speaking separately.
Our presentation here today is part of the continuing
effort that we have undertaken on behalf of collections such as
ours and for the understanding and preservation of locally
produced materials.
And, Steve, would you like to--if we may speak sort of
jointly.
MR. DAVIDSON: Sure.
MR. TABB: Make a joint presentation.
MR. DAVIDSON: Well, Helene and I normally do these
kinds of presentations around the country.
MR. TABB: Great.
Presentation by Steven Davidson, Director
Louis Wolfson II Media History Center - Miami, Florida
MR. DAVIDSON: What I thought we might do is just give
you a sense of really what we are talking about on the local
level. With the theory that one picture is worth a thousand
words, we have got a couple million words to show you now of what
these collections actually look like and what we are talking
about, and to put it in perspective for small institutions such
as ours. (Mr. Davidson gives slide presentation as he speaks.)
MR. DAVIDSON: Most of us began with very empty
shelving like that, and within one day of getting the
collection--a collection such as this in rusting film cans and so
on--we can move these into our facilities very quickly. It takes
years to get it to that point, clean, preserved and so on.
And what these next slides will show you is just some
of that process of what is involved and what we are dealing with.
Again, just perspective. This happens to be from one of the
stations in Miami, but it is representative of what can be found
at local TV stations around the country.
Here is a look inside some of those cans. The reels of
film unraveling and so on, masking tape inside, if things are on
cores. Most of the time they are coming off the cores. Again
you see masking tape splices throughout. Or you will see this
version. Each one of those cans represent a jigsaw puzzle.
Those are individual news stories, probably not unwound since
they were first shown by the station themselves. And oftentimes,
too, this comes with no documentation at all, and if it does, it
is not very accurate. So, these all have to be sorted out and so
on. Again, this has masking tape and information written on the
masking tape.
In this case, there were some inventory records which a
technician is sorting out. Each one of those reels of films,
each one of those individual stories, has to be cleaned,
repaired, the perforations repaired, so it can be ultimately
transferred to videotape. Each piece of film--each individual
story has to be identified and numbered and so on.
The system and the tools of the trade--obviously, there
is no quick ways of doing it. Everything is manual.
Preservation for the local news archives is really
cleaning and repairing the film to the best ability possible and
then making a video transfer copy. In our case, we are able to
make a VHS reference copy and 3/4" master copy. Although now we
have just gotten some Betacam equipment, so we are moving to
that.
Again, each of those cans we have to log in, story by
story, segment by segment, noting physical characteristics,
whether it was negative or positive, magnetic sound or optical
sound, and the duration. And eventually those log records are
then used by the technician to make the transfer, and then we end
up with the final product like that. Again, all on cores in
archival plastic containers.
Now, just the video process. Again, all the news film
needs to be transferred to videotape, but there are many news
archives that also have video equipment, and those present
similar challenges, as well. Again, the videotape--this is a
storeroom at one of the TV stations in Miami, and that was their
video library, just to give it some scale. It could come in
boxes.
But again, all of these materials need to be put on the
shelves. If we are going to be collecting videotape, it comes in
all formats, every permutation of videotape. And again, unlike
film, you need the individual video formats to go with all of
that material.
At the Wolfson Center, we probably have around 300 2"
videotapes, and unfortunately, we don't have the funding right
now to transfer all those to a more usable format.
These are cut story tapes, and they contain the
equivalent of those little rolls of film. Each one of those 3/4"
videotapes probably has upwards of 30 or 40 individual stories.
And again, these date from the mid-1970's onward. And of course,
the tape quality back then wasn't what it is today, and chances
are, those were originally recycled many times before they
committed the final information onto those videotapes.
That's some of our equipment. But again, we need to
remaster the older formats and even the older 3/4" tapes to more
usable formats.
We also have an off-air recording program, and that's
just some of that in our collection. And then, all of that must
be done, of course, until access is able to be provided.
I will turn it back over to Helene now.
MR. TABB: Okay.
MS. WHITSON: I would like to show you several samples
of what we have in our collection.
I would say that once preserved and made accessible,
local television material can be used in a variety of ways. My
first clip shows what happened at San Francisco State in 1969.
(Video was shown by Ms. Whitson.)
MS. WHITSON: What you see was used as raw footage by
the station, by a researcher working on a Ph.D., and by me in a
scholarly presentation in Miami.
This next piece is a descriptive piece which I created
in 1987, working with a San Francisco State film student, to show
my colleagues in the archival field what one has to do when
working with moving images. I paid for this myself and created
it and do not have a film background, so it is an amateur piece.
(Video was shown by Ms. Whitson.)
MS. WHITSON: That is just a sample. It goes on for a
while.
The third piece is a piece which demonstrates local
television as capturing an era that will not occur again. This
is a local Emmy Award winner. (Video was shown by Ms. Whitson.)
MS. WHITSON: Preservation of local television
collections is a labor intensive, careful, hand-done process.
I just received a $55,000 LSCA Grant for preserving the
KPIX Film Library. That's our San Francisco CBS affiliate. But
I also must provide matching funds. Money pays for staff,
supplies and equipment, but it can not change the initial
laborious process. And that initial process is the most
important. All the new technology does not help that process.
In fact, we will need even more money to transfer our film and
video to other media.
My entire archive is estimated to be approximately 10
million feet of film and video, and includes the following
collection: KQED, which is our PBS affiliate, news film from
1968 to 1980; KPIX, our CBS affiliate, 1955 to 1980; local Emmy
Award winners from the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter,
from 1974 to date; Over Easy, a KQED program on aging; VideoWest,
a pre-MTV rock video; several other locally produced programs.
Plus we are now getting into programs that are not totally news.
As you can see, our programs are not just news anymore.
To preserve this national heritage, the industry must
show the same level of responsibility and commitment to the
preservation of their material that I and my colleagues have
done. I need at least a million dollars to preserve my
collection.
And if you can see this headline which came out in the
paper the other day, I will not get it from KQED, because KQED is
on the rocks.
For future local television archives and archivists, we
warn you that this is not a passive activity.
MR. DAVIDSON: Thanks. First, I want to thank the
panel for allowing us the opportunity to speak and also say that
a lot has happened since the Wolfson Center was founded 10 years
ago, in terms of where we have gone with our collection and with
modest funds.
I would also like to acknowledge some people in this
room that were instrumental in the beginning in helping us set
the pace, set the tone, of what we were doing:
Greg Lukow, from the National Center for Film and Video
Preservation, was an early advisor to us, as was Bill Murphy,
from the National Archives, and of course, Helene Whitson. And
we modeled much of what we were doing learning from Helene's
example, in Miami.
I would like to show a video profile of our
institution, and if there is time, there is another video piece,
as well, which shows some of the issues that we face specifically
at the Wolfson Center, but generally for news film and video
collections around the country. (Video was shown by Dr.
Davidson.)
(VIDEO: "From the everyday to the extraordinary, the
Louis Wolfson II Media History Center holds a treasury of images.
The Center, designated by the State of Florida as an official
moving image center and archive, documents Florida's history. It
provides the unique opportunity to relive, or see and hear for
the first time, the issues and events that have impacted our
lives and shaped the culture of our region. Also of interest is
how film and television documents these changes.
"The Center's mission, important to the state and local
community, and part of a broader effort, is to collect, preserve
and make accessible film and video materials produced in or about
Florida.
"The Center's growing collection began with the
archival footage of WTVJ, Channel 4, South Florida's first TV
station, that now includes millions of feet of film and thousands
of hours of videotape, ranging from home movies dating from the
early 1900's to yesterday's newscasts, spanning over eight
decades.
"The collection has been donated by a variety of
sources, including television stations, production companies and
individuals. Together, these materials combine to provide a
visual mosaic of our history and cultural.
"Films arriving at the Center in aged or damaged
condition are painstakingly cleaned, repaired and restored.
Ultimately, all the film will be transferred, the videotape to be
used by the general public for education and research. Older
videotape productions on various formats are remastered and
reference copies made for accessibility.
"The Wolfson Center was established in 1986 and is
sponsored by Miami-Dade Community College, the University of
Miami, and the Miami-Dade Public Library. It is one of the
largest archives of its kind in the United States.
"Public access takes many forms, and each year the
Center increases its accessibility to the general public,
researchers, and film and video makers.
"The Center provides a year-round screening and seminar
program, featuring materials from its collection and those of
other archives throughout the nation and abroad. The Wolfson
Center provides footage for use in new productions of all genres.
Significant documentary productions which utilized archival
footage from the collection include: PBS's Eyes on the Prize and
The American Experience Series.
"Locally, the Wolfson Center has worked with Metro-Dade
Television to produce the video series REWIND. Each episode
features actual broadcasts from the early years of television,
restored and brought to video to be seen by new and former
audiences.
"REWIND and a growing screening, exhibition and seminar
program make the Wolfson Center unique among moving image
archives around the country.
"While the Center is partially funded by local, state
and federal grants, it can not survive without community support.
The next phase in the Center's mission includes preserving
footage from today's newscasts and programs which will be
tomorrow's historical artifacts. "For more information, write
to...")
MR. DAVIDSON: I don't know how much more time that we
have, but that gives a sense of the kind of activities that we
are engaged in. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you very much.
Ms. Lan, from the Bay Area Video Coalition.
Presentation by Grace Lan, Director
Preservation and Special Projects - Bay Area Video Coalition
and National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture
MS. LAN: This is the first time I am doing a
testimony.
My name is Grace Lan. I am here to represent the Bay
Area Video Coalition. Right now, I am the facility manager and,
also, I am in charge of the Preservation Program there. And I
just want to say that I am very honored to be here today.
What BAVAC is--Bay Area Video Coalition--we are a non-
profit organization funded by foundations to work with other non-
profit organizations. And our mission, as a media art center, is
to provide media makers, documentary makers, educators and
artists the best quality product for the lowest price. And as a
part of our service, BAVAC has been called upon to recognize that
these cultural documents on video exist and also to provide an
inexpensive remastering service for the non-profits.
This preservation work has a very important--it is very
important to me personally because I wasn't born here in the
States. I came to this country when I was 10, and I learned how
to speak English watching television. So, I know that it is very
important to preserve TV shows, like Sesame Street and I Love
Lucy.
But just a couple of years ago, when I joined the Bay
Area Video Coalition, I watched Vito Acconci playing with
his own saliva in Waterways. And I saw William Wegman teach
his dog how to spell, and watched Bruce Nauman bouncing around in
his studio for an hour, and I saw video art for the first time.
Without being a part of this preservation project, I would never
have seen these pieces.
Now that we have done the work, along with Video
Databank, in Chicago, these pieces are now accessible for anyone
to see.
Just another example of that--what we have done--we
have, through trial and error, started doing preservation work,
first with the Minnesota Historic Society. We transferred a
hundred open reel tapes. And then we transferred 250 reels for
the San Francisco Public Library, their Gay and Lesbian Archive.
And we have worked, like I said before, with the Databank, in
Chicago, and Electronic Arts Intermix. And we are now working
with the Walker Arts Center, and soon, we are hoping to work with
the National Latino Communication Center, here in L.A.
Through these works, we have tried to finesse the
process of preservation, but there are a lot of unanswered
questions, because we know that our process works, but there are
also other processes out there that also work. So, what we want
to know is--all of these processes work, but the conservators
have never had a chance to really test and create a system for
things to be one way, and we know that it works. So, that's a
dire need.
BAVAC's next step is to not only provide affordable
technical service to preserve video, but also, our interest is to
educate and advocate ways of advancing these preservation
efforts, advancing these technical efforts to preserve these
documentaries of our culture, because I think that's really
important.
Later on this month, at the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, with the support of the NEA Challenge Grant, the
Getty Grant Program, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, and in
association with the New York Media Alliance, Bay Area Video
Coalition will present an international symposium on trying to
develop techniques and practices of video preservation.
Unless these practices for videotape preservation begin
to be articulated with a realistic look at skill and resources,
we all know that tapes produced just only 15 years ago will soon
be lost forever. And this urgency exists not just for art on
video but also for future art using all new technologies.
I would just like to thank the Library of Congress for
allowing me to testify today. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you. Next, we have a charter member
of the National Film Preservation Board. Welcome, Bob.
Presentation by Robert Rosen, Director
UCLA Film and Television Archive
MR. ROSEN: Yes. I would like to thank you very much
for the opportunity to testify in this area.
Before beginning, I would like to say that it seems to
me that if anybody embodied in a real sense both the value of
saving television and the tragedy of what was lost, it was one of
the greatest, if not the greatest, innovators in the evolution of
a language specific to television--Ernie Kovacs. So, I do want
to take the opportunity to thank Edie Adams for being such a
militant and for saving so much of Ernie's work.
First, let me make a few general comments--and very
few--about what we do at UCLA and then to move into six areas
that I think are distinctive to public archives, along with a few
modest proposals.
First, about what we do. The television part of the
UCLA Film and Television Archive began in 1965. It was in
partnership with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and
there has been a long standing relationship with that
organization.
We have in excess of 60,000 titles, half on various
tape formats, and half on film formats, 127,000 news programs,
and a quite large television technologies collection--including
the first television set in Los Angeles. The collection covers
all subject areas in the period from 1946 to the present.
There are thousands of documentaries including
specialized documentary related collections, such as the DeNove
Collection on the Kennedy campaign and the KTLA Local News
Collection.
There is particular strength on the entertainment side,
especially in the area of early television, including many one-
of-a-kind kinescopes from the 1950's. Some of the notable
collections include the Jack Benny Collection, the Dumont
Collection, and the Mark Goodson Collection. There are entire
runs of programs in virtually every genre, ranging from the
dramatic anthologies, such as the Hallmark Hall of Fame, to
sitcoms and the soaps.
We keep up to date with current production through the
deposit of the Emmy Awards from the Academy of Television Arts
and Sciences, and we continue an active acquisition program.
Now, what do we do with all this? It is not dead
storage. First, we do restoration, such as the "miraculous
rising from the dead" of seemingly unusable footage that went
into the Fred Astaire Specials. We do preservation, such as the
remastering of materials on obsolete 2" formats and onto
contemporary formats. We do conservation, which really means
good storage of the materials. And as we sit, the entire
collection is on route to new temperature and humidity controlled
vaults on the UCLA campus.
We do public programming, either at our own Festival of
Preservation or through the Academy. We provide access for study
and research. Last year, in our research facility, there were in
excess of 10,000 appointments made for individual viewings of
materials that are in our collection. Finally, much of our
material is used in productions, particularly in the documentary
area. Information on the collection is available through the
Internet.
Now, that said--in doing all these things, we share
certain concerns in common with all other archives, including
industry archives. There are, however, a number of things that
are specific to the problems confronted by archives that are
located in public institutions. And I would like to suggest,
very quickly, six of these.
The first is that we are inescapably in the middle of
things. You can call it one of the existential facts of life of
a television archive. On the one side, the vast amount of
materials that we hold are under the copyright protection of
someone else. The owners of those materials understandably want
to protect their copyright interests and want to minimize use of
those materials for that reason.
On the other side, we are a public institution that
serves an array of users, and these users want to maximize access
to the material in whatever way is possible.
Our position as a public archive is to make both happy,
to serve both of them, to harmonize, to mediate, and to make the
appropriate principled tradeoffs.
We propose, that as a national plan evolves, it is
essential to keep in mind the need to facilitate the ability of
public institutions to effect those trade-offs.
So, for example, one of the things that would be useful
is to look at archives across the country as, in fact, a network
of archives--a system of archives--so as to provide, on the one
hand, means for the exchange of materials through inter-archival
loan or via means of new telecommunications technology, for
access on a nationwide basis, and, on the other hand, to devise
guidelines and procedures that ensure that the interests of the
copyright proprietors are protected. So, it is essentially, a
two-pronged approach: to increase the ability to serve the
plurality of users on a national basis and at the same time to
protect the interests of those people and companies whose
materials we hold.
Two, the second reality. The second reality is that
public archives deal with television in all of the various ways
that Dr. Billington alluded to before. Television at its best is
a popular art form distinctive to this century. It is also a
document of our history. It is also a political force that
influences our attitudes towards politics in general and, more
specifically, gender politics and politics of ethnicity. It is a
cultural artifact that we pass on to the future. It is a
commodity on the marketplace. And on an individual level, it
provides the pegs on which we very often hang our own
autobiographical memories. People chart their own lives in
relationship, in part, to the television that they have consumed
over time.
An archive serving a plurality of users must respond in
different ways to all of those different users.
Now, this affects a number of areas, notably
acquisition. In light of the wide array of users, one has to
acquire a wide array of materials. The soap opera, of no
particular interest to the student of television as an art form,
to the social historian is of enormous import. One may be
tempted to say we only need a sample of a particular series. But
as was pointed out before, very often the heart and soul of what
that series is about for the culture lies in a formula that
evolved over time. Or in the case of, say, a show like The
Waltons, it is the evolution of the program that, in essence,
contains its most important information.
So, in a real sense, you should be saving lots of
things, if not everything. But the problem is there is so much
that no one institution can do it alone.
In the area of acquisition, the single most important
criteria for the archivist in the selection of material is
humility, not precluding the possibilities for future generations
to discover for themselves the value of these materials.
I would propose that we explore the possibility for a
more extended division of labor among the archives in the country
in the area of acquisition. The possibility, for example, that
the Library of Congress itself may have annex collections at a
number of institutions around the country, so that more of the
material can be saved, but in a way that is practical, given the
allocation of resources.
A third issue confronts public archives. We have in
our collections the equivalent of the orphan films that were
discussed in the area of motion pictures. That is to say,
television programming for which there is no clearcut commercial
body to defend the interest. This includes early television,
much of it in kinescope form, where the question of ownership is
very murky. There are many rights involved, including unclear
music rights and underlying literary rights, but ownership is
problematic.
It includes a vast amount of television that was
produced by companies that no longer exist. It includes
materials in the documentary area, such as the DeNove Collection
on the Kennedy elections, that is not under copyright and is
solely our responsibility.
And potentially, it includes the vast collections of
the master documentary film makers, who over time have collected
raw footage that is as important as the final productions that
were made. And where do they go? They have to go into public
institutions, and there is no obvious copyright owner to stand
behind preserving them.
So, again, a proposal I would make is that in a
national television preservation plan, special attention be given
to those television materials that are, as it were, in an orphan
status. And I think much of the material at more specialized
archives around the country fall into that category.
A fourth issue, in the area of television. We all want
to do preservation, but we are not terribly sure what
preservation means. We know that, minimally, preservation is
putting a program onto the stablest possible format, in as close
as possible to its original condition, for the best possible
storage for the longest period of time, and that involves
minimally the differentiation between a preservation master and a
use copy.
But what do you do in the area of television when you
are not even sure what the master is? If you have kinescopes of
early television on 16mm acetate film, is it possible that that
is the master, and that the making of a reference copy, a use
copy, so that kinescope can be put away for safekeeping, is what
preservation means?
What happens if you have programming that is shot on
film, very often the case in the industry, transferred to video
for editing, with a video master made? What is the master for
preservation? Is it the video master that exists or is it the
original film material? And what happens if that original film
material had never been constructed into a negative that conforms
to the final product?
What does preservation mean when you are confronting a
dizzying array of formats, 2" tape of various kinds, 1/2" reel to
reel, VHS, beta, and now an increasing number of digital formats?
These are areas that are open.
What I would propose are three elements in relationship
to this, for a national plan:
The first is that a differentiation be made between
retrospective and prospective preservation. Retrospective deals
with the first fifty years. It deals with obsolete formats, such
as 2" tape. It deals with the problem of kinescopes.
Prospective preservation ideally is done at the time of
production and involves a close working relationship between the
archives and the industry in the establishment of standards. But
it is important to differentiate the two or else some of the
issues of the older footage will slip between the cracks.
The second thing I would propose in the area of
defining preservation is that the archiving of television
technology be part of the overall archiving effort. When you
have materials in your vaults that may be in fine shape but can
no longer be seen because the technology no longer exists, you
are in big trouble. Those are the problems we confronted with
the Fred Astaire restoration.
Television technology is not just a sideline activity;
it is not just a complement to preservation; it is integral to
some of the preservation issues themselves.
The third thing I would propose is that we take up the
challenge of examining the implication of new digital
technologies in relationship to preservation. For public
archives, I would add that we take up also the problems of seeing
how those technologies can become applicable in the cash-strapped
context of public institutions.
Two more brief points.
One of the facts for public institutions, such as UCLA,
is we are not alone. We exist as part of community of
institutions involved in television preservation. Some, such as
UCLA, the Museum of Television and Radio, and the University of
Wisconsin are extensive in their collecting. Others are more
specialized, dealing with local television news, political
commercials, advertising or what have you.
What I am suggesting is that--and I am seconding the
comment that was made before in the AFI presentation--the
national collection is at a plurality of institutions,
philosophically diverse and geographically dispersed, who share a
common commitment. The key principle in planning on a national
level is recognizing this plurality of interests, making sure
that everyone has an appropriate place at the table and the
gaining of advantage from seeing the ways in which these various
activities can complement one another.
Finally, not only are we not alone, we can't do it
alone. We are dealing with public institutions that confront
decreasing budgets and where fund-raising is more difficult than
ever.
So, the final thing I would underline is that the
concept of the public/private partnership be at the core of the
development of a national plan. The media industry and the
archives really do need one another. The archives were
responsible for saving literally thousands of valuable programs
that would have been tossed away and would have disappeared, at a
time before all of the ancillary markets developed for that
programming.
The public institutions are a very economical way for
the industry to serve the public interest by providing risk-free
access to the history of television. And the public
institutions, by foregrounding what is most interesting in the
history of television, helped to sustain and maintain, in the
best sense, that history as part of the collective memory.
Conversely, without the industry, the archives wouldn't
have the holdings; nor would they have the ability to make these
materials accessible to that plurality of users we talked about
before.
Thus, a proposal. I would say that in implementing
this notion of a public/private partnership, that there be
created a National Television Foundation, comparable to the
proposal that came out in the film area; that it involve a
partnership between the private sector, on the one hand, and
government on the other; that it work on behalf of the entire
system of archives across the country; that the entities that
already exist at that interface between the public and private,
such as the Television Academy, be included in a very significant
way in its planning; and that it be under the aegis of the
Library of Congress, in the same way as the planning for the film
area.
This working partnership is essential because, bottom
line, all of the discussion before is abstract unless the
resources are there to carry it out.
In this brief summary, I hope I have outlined what I
think are core issues and a series of realizable proposals. I
look forward to the future discussion that will take place.
Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you very much, Bob, and all the other
panelists, as well.
Now, we will turn to colleagues on the dais for questions. We
would like to be first?
MR. FIELDING: A question for any or all of the
speakers. Of all of the devils we deal with in our lives,
compromise is the most demanding. Given the fact that an
astronomic amount of product has been generated on video until
now, and that this will probably increase geometrically in the
future, it follows that no archive, no matter how well endowed,
is going to preserve everything, it follows there will be
compromises. Some products will be selected for preservation and
some will suffer some form of triage.
Would any of you care to illuminate what kinds of
philosophies, methodologies, values, points of view you are
obliged to bring to bear already in making the decisions as to
what is going to be preserved and survived and what will probably
not?
MR. TABB: Go ahead, Bob.
MR. ROSEN: Well, let me say, first of all, there is a
disinclination on my part to answer the question, because that
already puts you into the business, you know, of determining what
will not survive. And I think, in the first instance, you try to
exhaust all the possibilities for maximizing what will survive.
And those ways seem to me to be, in part, this useful division of
labor among a number of institutions across the country in terms
of the acquisition and preservation of materials in a more
coordinated way than exists at the moment. There is great
cordiality that now exists among the institutions, but very
little formal cooperation.
So, I think, in the first instance, I would rather not
do it. Second, I would like to look to the longer haul, to the
advance of technologies, to assume that more materials can be
preserved--or, copied, at least--more quickly and stored in a
smaller space than in the past.
And third, even now, when we confront materials that we
can't handle, we contact other archives in the country. We will
call Greg. We will call up the National Center and say, "Can you
find someone else who will deal with this?"
I think, in the end, if you have to make decisions, you
do. First, you look at the rarity of the material. Is it the
only surviving material and what shape is it in? Then, later on,
after that, you may look at the historical importance; you may
look at its importance in relationship to all criteria--as
document, as artifact, as art form, what have you. And you do
the best you can within those criteria to make reasoned
decisions.
But I think we are onto a wrong path if bottom line we
start to formalize the basis for deaccessioning materials.
MR. DAVIDSON: I would like to answer that. Sometimes
the decision is made for us. The stations to this day, local
stations around the country, continue to recycle their videotape,
let alone the field tapes and the out-takes and so on.
The other side of it is--and this could be with film
collections or with videotape--you saw from those slides,
sometimes it will take years before we actually know what the
content, the physical images, are of that material. So, the
first for many archives on the local level is to take these
collections in and then see what is on them, because oftentimes,
again, they don't come with an inventory, and then some decisions
can be made as to what we have and what should we do.
MR. TABB: Greg, do you have some points?
MR. LUKOW: Yes. Just to address that question, I
concur with Bob's initial instinct to not have to answer the
question. But we dealt with the issue back in 1988, when we
produced the National Selection Guidelines that Ken referred to
in our remarks.
And we came up with categories--and I will be happy to
share this document with the Library as you proceed with your
study--we came up with several categories in which we found
excuses, rationale, however you want to term it, for basically
selecting everything. Aesthetic, historic and technological
importance to the history of television were the three categories
that we came up with. And you could pretty much put everything
in there.
At the same time, we came up with a formula for the
number of series, of certain kinds of shows, soap operas, prime
time things. We ran through the Society of Cinema Studies, which
at the time comprised a committee to help us with that, and they
upped the number of episodes per series, and the formula, they
tweaked it a little bit.
But the bottom line--the point I was trying to make was
we found a rationale to justify the selection and, therefore, the
preservation of everything, even though we knew that the people
would not be able to do that, institutions would not be able to
do that. And I think that is perhaps a bit helpful here in
coming up with selection guidelines, which are going to have to
be fundamental to anything that this study produces, to find that
rationale as a basis for moving forward, even though you know
that it won't happen.
MS. WHITSON: I would like to answer, please. I would
say that my major interest is in documenting the history of my
community, and in a way, the selection has already been made,
because I only have what is left. I don't have everything that
was produced.
MR. TABB: Yes.
MS. McLANE: This is a question for any of the
panelists. Both Ken and Bob mentioned the notion of a
nationally shared consciousness about television, the art of
television collection. And as public archives, each of you have,
as you said, a particular mission to reach the public.
I would like to know, for the study, what ways have
been most effective and what ways could be most effective--aside
from, say, the establishment of a national foundation--for
raising public awareness about the issues that you face?
MS. WHITSON: I very much would like to see a
production like Slow Fires, which showed the public about
deteriorating books.
MS. McLANE: The books, yes.
MS. WHITSON: And use the medium of television to teach
the public about the importance of television and what it has
done. So, I would like to see a national production.
MR. WLASCHIN: One of the most effective ways of
raising consciousness about preservation today, I think, has been
AMC's Preservation Festival, through which they have received
large amounts of money which has helped the archive. But it also
has made a lot of people aware of how important it is to preserve
film. I think that could be done on television, about
television, and would certainly get to the people who really
cared.
You know, if you love I Love Lucy and you find out
these things are gone forever--you know, we have our
consciousness raised about this. I think television itself
should be used in this way.
MR. DAVIDSON: For us in Miami, that video piece that
we saw is actually the end piece of our program that airs twice
daily in Miami. But it is really access for the public to see
what the results of preservation are.
You can explain what it is and behind the scenes what
goes on and so on, but unless people can actually see the
results, the images themselves, then they realize, "I remember
that. I had no idea where it was. Oftentimes, I just take for
granted and think somehow the TV stations might keep them or they
might be in some warehouse." But having seen the images
themselves really is the best way for that.
I should add to that. To really further that, we
established an awards program several years back, which discloses
the importance of preservation. And we actually did that because
our local NATAS Chapter--for years they destroyed all the
entries. They were celebrating the winners and so on, and then,
after that, the entries were just destroyed. We are not really
competing with that, but we just thought that to establish an
awards program for productions that incorporate our footage and
others, to highlight their interest, was another way of
underscoring the importance of work being produced.
MR. TABB: I think Bob wanted to follow up.
MR. ROSEN: Yes. I just want to second the notion of
looking at the AMC model. I think the notion of seeing on the
screen the tragedy of what might have been lost-- and then having
the pitch--probably is the most effective way of dealing with
preservation.
I would also point to, I think, the effectiveness of
the National Film Preservation Board with that process of the
naming of a small number of titles that are--and as the Librarian
always points out--not the Academy Awards of film production but
exemplary of all that needs to be preserved. I think on a PR
front, it has been miraculous. And I think the possibility of
extending that into the television area ought to be looked at.
MR. TABB: Does anyone else want to respond to Betsy's
question before we move on? Okay. David, I think was next.
MR. FRANCIS: Well, as one might expect in the public
archives field, funding is a central issue, and I would like to
try and come straight to that issue.
As people may know, the national lottery in the UK has
absolutely changed the art scene. We are hearing reports that
say the National Film and Television Archives have received huge
amounts of money for preservation out of it. I am not suggesting
that this might be the solution here, but some variation of it
might be a solution.
And this comes as a result of talking to Ray Fielding
at lunchtime and finding that in Florida, at least, a state
lottery is substantially supporting some kinds of film
activities. I think his own department and maybe also Steve
Davidson's operation receive such support.
Then, taking that a stage further, we should be talking
about de-centralizing funding, not centralizing it. There are
1400 television stations. We could go beyond a state lottery, to
local lotteries on local television stations, which would support
the saving of local news or local programs.
We want to have something in the report that actually
is a proposal. It doesn't seem a lottery is a method that upsets
anybody. It is not taking from one person particularly for
another.
So, does anybody feel that these ideas, either the
state lottery or even a local lottery at a local television level
makes any sense?
MS. WHITSON: If I could just talk about the use of
lottery funds. When California first started its lottery, I was
able to buy a 3/4" player for my department. Now, we are just
using whatever we get for basic library operations. So, it can't
go for extra necessities, at least in terms of my institution.
MR. TABB: Ken?
MR. WLASCHIN: One of the things that we found through
NAMID at the Center is how important the local archives are in
preserving early documentary film and newsreel material. I think
that this could certainly be expanded into television, not
necessarily with a lottery, but with an educational program that
every city that has a television should look into ways of
preserving material that has been shot locally. And maybe it is
a bake sale that raises the money, rather than a lottery. But
that there should be a kind of local pride that we are going to
save what the record is of our community.
MS. KANIN: May I just expand on that?
MR. TABB: Sure.
MS. KANIN: That was my major thrust. Is there some
hope, those of you who represent local community archives, of
awakening the pride in the local institution, the local station,
to say, "We should raise funds for preservation; that is part of
our mandate, our responsibility." Do you feel there is some hope
in doing that? Besides, a lottery would be wonderful. But in
other ways.
MR. DAVIDSON: What has been helpful for us is that
with our News Film and Video Collection, a copyright ownership is
certainly helpful for the local archive. We couldn't survive
unless we were able to generate licensing fees to help us
actually go right back into preserving the material. There are
other institutions that just the stations feel that turning over
their collection is enough, perhaps not realizing the cost
involved in just housing these materials, let alone cleaning,
repairing and making a video copy. Or at least, if copyright
ownership isn't there, at least permitting the right to license
the material is certainly a help.
DR. BILLINGTON: How did you succeed in getting people
to give you the copyright along with the materials? Do you have
some secret potion that you slip into the cocktails?
MR. DAVIDSON: It is no secret. I suppose that we were
just fortunate that with our first collection, that set
precedent. And we had an example to go by after that. You know,
once, obviously, you make an agreement, it is hard to
renegotiate.
DR. BILLINGTON: Were those agreements with individuals
or with corporate entities or both?
MR. DAVIDSON: It started out with our initial
collection from WTVJ, and that sort of set the tone for other
collections that we have gotten, and not just television, but
corporate entities, as well.
MR. ROSEN: Well, one of the ways that many film
collections were built and some of the donations--particularly of
news materials in the television area-- take place is that
fundamentally the people who have the materials don't want it or
find it too costly to maintain. And here is an example where an
act of philanthropy joins that of self-interest. They will give
you the stuff because they don't think they are going to make any
money off it and they don't want to maintain it themselves. And
you can then provide some services to them, in some contractually
specified way.
For the most part, I think that happens. It doesn't
tend to happen with entertainment programming.
MR. RICHMOND: Before I ask my question--on the local
TV news front, it is interesting, I think, that some local TV
archives have gotten copyright from the TV stations and are able
to generate income. Some have not gotten copyright but get some
other forms of support, cash support or any kind of support, that
help them sustain and maintain the collection. And other TV
archives get nothing, and often confront a big problem with the
collection that they have no way of dealing with.
And one of the things that might be interesting to do--
and Steve and Helene, I think you are both in the ideal position
to do that, being involved with AMIA, through the local
television documentary collections group--is for the Library and
for its plan to sort of go out and maybe survey that field and
try to get together some of the information on different
arrangements that have been done, different types of contracts
and agreements, different techniques that have been done.
And maybe one of the things we have to look at in the
local TV area is even some kind of a conference that could try to
bring together the curators of local television archives and the
managers of local TV stations, in order to see if something can
be worked out that is a little more equitable. Because getting a
collection like that, as you saw from the slides, without any
support to go with it, is almost impossible to deal with.
MS. WHITSON: If I could say, though, I think awakening
pride is a first step to come and educate the community. Our
local CBS affiliate did a story about me and coming to this
conference, on--I guess it was--Monday or Tuesday, and that was
the first instance that it has actually been mentioned in the
community. I got a call from a lady who wanted to find some
family member's records. So, making that awareness of what's
there and then starting to build. It is just a slow process.
MR. WLASCHIN: Just a slight follow-up on the awareness
thing. David Francis knows about this--making people aware that
what they have locally may be valuable nationally.
There is a very famous television series in England
called Z Cars. It was the first great police series. The early
episodes were all wiped. They did not exist. A few years ago,
somebody was looking in a warehouse in Cypress and found they had
taped them off the air at the time and kept them there, and they
now exist and you can buy them. But only because they were
stored on an island.
Lost programs still may be somewhere in the United
States. They are not lost forever necessarily. And the
awareness helps them to be found again.
MR. RICHMOND: I asked my colleagues to direct any hard
questions to Bob, so I wouldn't have to (Laughter.)
I am not sure this is a hard question, but I will do it
anyway. And also to Ken, because you both mentioned this, the
idea of developing a greater sense of public/ private partnership
in the television area. I think that has happened with great
effectiveness in the film area, and to the benefit of all the
parties involved. There are specific examples of it happening in
TV, but my sense is that we are still feeling our way along as to
how to do that, so that the partnership can work for both
parties.
I guess my question--and it is sort of an open-ended
one--is why hasn't it happened in the TV area? Or, if you want
to be positive about it, what specific things can we do to make
it happen? What mechanisms, if any, can you think of that might
help to bring the producers, the broadcasters, the owners of
television material and archives, that very often are holding
copies of these materials, together in a way that can benefit
both sides?
MS. WHITSON: If I could say--I am not sure; it is just
from my perspective, not being from the industry at all--that the
producers really look at the historical importance of their
material, So, other than making money, it may be an educational
process again of bringing people together, looking at all of this
material as American heritage, and then what can we do from
there.
MR. WLASCHIN: I mean, perhaps part of the answer is
that television preservation is in the state that film
preservation was like maybe in the 1920's. The producers never
felt it was valuable, worth preserving at the time. And those
who did, the MGM's of this world, were very rare indeed. And
that awareness of the value of these documents has risen, so that
the partnerships, I think, are probably a lot more likely now
than they were 10 or 15 years ago.
MR. ROSEN: Yes. Let me agree in an optimistic mode.
For those who are involved on the film side, remember, 10 or 15
years ago there were really two camps, and there was very little
interchange and very little communication that existed between
public archives, and the industry. It evolved dramatically, to
the point where there is truly a sense of partnership now, in
part because the economic changes made it move from being an
issue in the back alley of culture to becoming a front office
concern.
And many of the people within the industry who were
involved in the preservation area moved to the foreground. What
they had been dealing with now became very important. And I
would second Ken's notion that that is happening in the area of
television.
The second thing may also be that the holdings in
television, in many ways, are much more fragmented. In the film
area, you tended to be dealing, at least at the get go, with
major studios, who own vast amounts of material. Whereas, in the
television area, what the networks actually own is fairly
limited, so there is much greater fragmentation in terms of
effecting that kind of interchange.
But I think creating the right kind of format, and the
right kind of invite, and the right kind of networking
possibilities, would bring out, I think, the kind of cooperation
in the television area that has come to exist in film as well.
In terms of looking to how to do it, I think one of the
things we can look to are models of relationships that already
exist, relationships that exist with the Academy, where there is
that interface, the relationship with the Museum of Radio and
Television, where there is a relationship that exists with the
industry, the coming together that has been accomplished through
AMIA, where a number of areas in the television archive field are
now represented.
I think we can look to some of those existing models
and draw some lessons from them.
MR. LUKOW: I was just going to add that in terms of
the reason why it hasn't perhaps in the past, the relationship to
film, is that, as we all know, in the late '70's and early '80's,
the film community discovered a whole range of ancillary markets
in which basically all of their product could be recycled,
repurposed, in a number of venues.
The same is quite true for television, where there is
so much more volume, and the syndication markets, at least at
this point, are fairly limiting in how much of television's past
can be put out there today. But I think that has started to
change somewhat and will continue to change if we end up in the
500 cable channel universe, with more channels like Nick At
Night, which has probably come as close to having some kind of
historical emphasis on television programming as any cable
channel out there.
If an AMC comes along, as Ken was saying, with a
parallel kind of emphasis on television preservation, I think
that that kind of--the asset potential of a lot of television
programming that is not being syndicated right now, I think, may
have to develop a little bit more to bring this more to the
light.
But I actually--Bob was--had an inside tip that he was
actually going to raise an idea today that I didn't hear him
mention, but the idea of a cable channel devoted to television--
Bob, I am passing the ball back to you here, if you actually want
to bring that
up--but a cable channel devoted to the archive dimension of
television.
MR. ROSEN: I was going to bring it up, but for sake of
time, I moved on and was going to include it in the larger
report.
It seems to me that in looking at the public/private
partnership, where interests may complement one another, the
interest that public institutions have in television--in all of
its cultural, historical possibilities, on the one hand--and the
interest of the copyright
holders--that much of the material may not be getting the maximum
use it ought to be--could conceivably come together through the
creation of some kind of co-venture between the nation's archives
and a consortium in the industry to create an archival channel
devoted to historical television. It would respond in
complementary ways to the interests of both.
I realize it is a daunting challenge to put something
like that together, but I think it could be made to work.
MS. KANIN: May I just add--there was a suggestion to
have a corollary to the AMC program for film, an AMC type program
for television, or perhaps AMC itself.
As you all know, they ask for the public to send in
money, and this year they raised $300,000 just from people
sending in money. And I am just wondering, if you did that same
thing for television, and you showed some of the great Jack Benny
programs, some of the beloved programs of television in the past,
on all levels, the news programs, and you did that in a
television festival, as they do, I bet you would get a hell of a
lot of people sending in money. There is a great love for the
television they recognize or they honor. I think it would work
extremely well.
DR. BILLINGTON: I want to ask Ms. Lan: What are the
one or two most pressing problems in the field of media arts, and
is that community sufficiently aware of the archival
opportunities, needs and problems that branch of television
faces?
MS. LAN: Slowly--there is a lot more awareness now,
than just a couple of years ago. And I think a lot more
awareness is going to be brought up at the symposium later this
month.
DR. BILLINGTON: That community is helping with the
sorting out of what needs to be archived or what criteria should
be used? I mean, for instance, for the National Film Registry, I
am enjoined, by the act of Congress, to judge it on the basis of
historical, cultural and aesthetic significance.
Now, if we apply the same criteria to television, the
question of aesthetic significance immediately comes up, and I
wonder if your community has internally generated any definition
that would be useful or any kind of ways of sorting out their own
productivity in terms of what is essential to preserve.
MS. LAN: Well, we will take Video Databank, for
instance. We helped them preserve about 50 1/2" open reel works
of video art and also other programs of documentation. So, after
this preservation work was done, they figured out a way to create
a compilation, so the outcome was two volumes. Altogether, it is
17 hours. It is a collection filled with art, and what it is
called is A Survey of the First Decade, and it is Video Art and
Alternative Media in the U.S.
So, a lot of what--like Helene said earlier, it is what
can be preserved. They went through a lot more than the 50 reels
that were successful. I think it was a 50 percent chance for a
lot of this material. And we are just working with whatever we
can do to save whatever we can.
MR. HEIBER: If I could ask a question of all of you
here. And first, you should all be congratulated for the great
work that you do in the public sector.
But a recurring theme always is the access for funds,
and I want to create a little distinction between just the
archival or storage, being a repository for material, and then,
of course, the cost of preserving or restoring or creating the
new copy.
And actually, Bob, you mentioned this. Right here, you
said "we have to share the commitment as a diverse group of
institutions," and you talk always about a public/private sector.
Well, what about a public/public partnership?
Is there some kind of objection or problem that could
be surmounted so that there might be some kind of cooperative
center among all the public institutions to gain a better economy
of effort in the preservation and restoration areas? The thought
is, if you have a restaurant and you have a kitchen, you might as
well be open for breakfast.
Is there some kind of economy of scale here that could
be gained? We have some very large institutions that are better
funded and then some very small public groups. And there are
hundreds of small public groups that need to have better access
to resources. Could something be established?
MS. WHITSON: Are you thinking in terms of regional
centers where people might store, instead of in their own
institutions, for example?
MR. HEIBER: No. I think the collections should be
held locally, but that there should be regional centers where
they could be restored or gain better access to equipment and
technicians, a central pool. In other words, if you were working
on a 3/4" restoration one day and then it is 1/2" the next day--
but maybe there is one guy who takes care of the 3/4" restoration
and another guy who takes care of the 1/2".
And maybe you are doing this all somewhat already. In
fact, I have a sense that you are. But could it be better
coordinated and gain an economy where you could actually get more
done with less money?
MS. WHITSON: I think for those of us from little
institutions, I very much would like to see that sort of regional
effort made for preservation.
MR. TABB: Greg.
MR. LUKOW: If I may just come back in part to respond
to your question but also to bridge back to Dr. Billington's last
question.
One of the programs, as Ken mentioned in our remarks,
that we have is the National Moving Image Database. And NAMID
has worked extensively with the video art community, the media
arts center community around the country, BAVAC, Video Databank,
The Kitchen, in New York, Experimental Television Center,
Electronic Arts Intermix, Long Beach Museum of Art. These media
arts institutions which supported media arts production at
regional levels had over the years developed really outstanding
important collections, but they were, in many instances, in the
first case, distribution shops, rather than archival shops.
What NAMID, in working with all of them--and we have a
number of other projects in the works right now--has been able to
help do, I think, along the model of what you are talking about,
is provide the kind of support that would allow them to catalog
these materials, automate them, make each other, this community,
aware of what's out there for the first time. NAMID, in turn,
acquires that data, makes it publicly available. BAVAC has been
able to set up a preservation center for the first time, working
in that region.
That's just one model of how through a kind of
grassroots support, with national support through, in this case--
that I just happen to be mentioning--NAMID, you really do see
that kind of development of a constituency. It is regionally
based, but it becomes nationally based.
We are entering an era where at some level those
distinctions are irrelevant as online access develops. All of
this information is going to be out there, and sooner or later
the collections themselves will be exchangeable through some kind
of a virtual archive, not just the information about the
holdings.
So, I have sort of gone beyond what you asked, but I
hope I have addressed it a bit as well.
MR. ROSEN: Yes. I think it is a provocative question.
I would differentiate, though, the financial issue that you pose
from the other benefits to be gained from collaboration.
On the financial side, you take five underfunded
entities and you combine them, you get one underfunded entity.
If there was in fact a duplication of effort right now that was
uneconomical, there would be an advantage. But there is little
duplication of effort. The problem is really insufficient
resources at every level.
On the other hand, I think the notion of thinking about
ways in which we can work on a collaborative basis, from
acquiring on a more systematic basis, to conceivably establishing
certain kinds of specialized facilities that no one institution
would do on its own, to providing access in a way that protects
the materials at the same time.
I think that collaboration should be the key to our
thinking. But I just wouldn't want us to delude ourselves by
thinking that if we brought it together, the resources would
simply be there. The resources would still be lacking.
MR. TABB: David, we have time for one last question.
MR. FRANCIS: Well, I would like to try and pursue this
a bit further. I think--we discussed this before in the film
study--the idea of some sort of centralized facility is a good
one. How you can utilize a facility in a public organization
beyond the use that it gets with the resources available in that
institution.
So, let's say we have a laboratory, but we can only use
it for so much of the time, basically, because we don't have
resources to use it any longer. The interesting thing is to
think if there is any way of working together to utilize the same
basic investment in equipment. Obviously, I don't want to
compete with the commercial laboratories, because they are also
very, very important to us, but within particularly the
specialized areas--it seems to lend itself perhaps more in the
video area than elsewhere--if we could come up with some way
whereby we could utilize existing investments of equipment in
public institutions more efficiently.
And I really can't go beyond that because I am really
asking for suggestions that might benefit us, that we might
enable us to do more. I do agree with Bob that you can't cure
the problem, but certainly, there is a lot of investment tied up
in this equipment. If we could find a way of utilizing it for
longer hours, then it seems to me that must have some benefit.
MR. TABB: Does anyone wish to comment on that?
MR. DAVIDSON: For the specialized, like 2" and so on,
but the model for television news film collections has always
been that basic setup of hand rewind, a splicer and so on.
And there has only been one funder on a national level,
really, that has provided maybe eight to twelve grants, and
that's the NHPRC, the National Historic Publications and Records
Commission. And those grants, by and large, only--they are
probably in the $50,000 to $60,000 range--but it only covers
maybe a fraction of the size of our collections. That's always
been the issue. Just the scale and the amount of news film
materials--these are typically in the two and three million feet
range. But when that funding runs out, there is really no other
federal source to go to.
On the local level, interestingly enough, in Florida,
we have been able to get money from the Florida Humanities
Council and the State Division of Cultural Affairs, but those
have been for public programming and access, not really for
preservation, although some preservation work needs to be done to
make the materials accessible. We have gotten funds, as I say,
to do screenings and seminars, but really not directly for
preservation.
MR. TABB: We now need to draw this panel to a close.
Thank you very much for your specific suggestions.
We will take a 10-minute recess now and begin
immediately at 3:30. Thank you.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)
MR. TABB: Why don't we go ahead and get started. If
you will introduce yourselves. Whichever one of you wishes to go
first is fine, and we will have others join us if they come in.
Thank you.
Statement by Roger Bell, Director of Library Services
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
MR. BELL: My name is Roger Bell. I am Director of
Library Services for Twentieth Century Fox. Gary Ehrlich was
supposed to be here today; unfortunately, he couldn't make it,
and he has the statement. But I will be glad to answer any
questions you have.
MR. AINSWORTH: I am Gray Ainsworth, Director of
Technical Operations for Metro Goldwyn Mayer and United Artists.
MR. TABB: Would you like to make a statement?
MR. AINSWORTH: Yes.
MR. TABB: Thank you.
Presentation by Gray Ainsworth
Director of Technical Operations
Metro Goldwyn Mayer and United Artists
MR. AINSWORTH: Thank you. I feel that the previous
panel of archivists did an admirable job in ferreting out a lot
of the issues faced with archiving and preservation, so I think I
am going to limit my comments to basically outlining a little bit
about what we do to at Metro Goldwyn Mayer now, and then I think
we will just go to the Q&A.
I was surfing through the channels of my television set
the other evening, and I came across an older looking television
show, which looked horrible. It was faded, scratched, generally
very unappealing, and I must admit that my chest tightened up a
bit, and I became quite anxious. And I thought to myself, "Oh,
my God, is that one of ours?" Fortunately, though, it was not.
But I do feel that that serves as a good reminder that film
preservation does not stop with feature films. Television
programming and videotape material must also be included.
MGM currently holds over 2600 hours of television
programming, including such titles as The Outer Limits (both old
and new), The Patty Duke Show, Seahunt, In the Heat of the Night,
Fame, Thirty-Something, and The Pink Panther cartoons.
All the nitrate material has been transferred to safety
film and then the safety film has been duplicated. Approximately
80 percent of this has been transferred to videotape, and of that
amount, 30 percent is on digital videotape.
MGM currently is in the process of transferring all the
remainder of this product to component digital videotape. We
expect this to take another year-and-a-half.
It is MGM's policy to conform negative on all new TV
product that is finished on videotape, both episodic and feature
length. If titles and opticals were not created on film, we
evaluate each product on a case-by-case basis to determine if we
assemble negative without these for now and go ahead and create
film negative digitally for cutting into the original negative,
creating a complete film negative.
We have our eye on emerging technologies, as well, and
changing broadcast standards. As an example, for this product,
we output all materials squeezed on component digital videotape
so it can be formatted to four by three, as well as sixteen by
nine, if that should become an issue in the United States. It
already is in Europe.
Also, we hold several shows from between five and ten
years ago, where no negative was conformed. We have recently
approved of a plan for conforming this negative for these
episodes to be over the next two years. These will include
digitally output negative for titles and opticals for integration
into the original negative. These will be complete and ready for
component digital transfer soon after.
For product that was shot on videotape, we create a
component digital master for both NTSC and Powell, and make two
digital protection clones for each format. These are then
geographically se |
Library
of Congress >> A/V
Conservation >> National
Film Preservation Board
