January 27, 2016 WGBH, Library of Congress, and WETA to Digitize PBS NewsHour Collection
32 Years of PBS NewsHour Programs To Be Made available online through American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Contact: Sheryl Cannady, Library of Congress (202) 707-6456 | Emily Balk, WGBH (617) 300-5317 | Nick Massella, PBS NewsHour, nmassella@newshour.org
Website: American Archive of Public Broadcasting External
More than three decades of PBS NewsHour broadcasts from 1975 to 2007 will be preserved and available online as part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). Public media producer WGBH, the Library of Congress and WETA, Washington, DC will digitize, preserve and allow the public online access to PBS NewsHour’s predecessor programs from 1975 to 2007, made possible with funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The project will digitize nearly 10,000 programs comprising more than 8,000 recorded hours that chronicle American and foreign affairs, providing access to original source material, including interviews with presidents and other world leaders and reports on major issues and events. The content will be presented as a part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration between WGBH and the Library of Congress.
Noting the value of preserving the PBS NewsHour material, Steven Roberts, renowned journalist and the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, said “No other broadcast on television has upheld the highest standards of the profession with such consistent devotion.”
The digitized PBS NewsHour collection will provide valuable primary-source material not available elsewhere for historians to consider in their explorations into the recent past, especially in the areas of politics, policymaking and international affairs. It will give scholars a previously unavailable source from which to study ideas and rhetoric to illuminate what intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers recently characterized as “a multi-sided contest of arguments and social visions that ranged across the late 20th century.”
The programs feature interviews with leading newsmakers including presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, every secretary of state since 1976 and with world leaders including the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, Muammar Khadafy, Yasser Arafat, Menachem Begin, Boris Yeltsin, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher. The collection includes extensive coverage of election campaigns, African-American history, global and domestic health care, poverty, technology, immigration debates, the end of the Cold War, terrorism, the economy, climate change, energy issues, religion, education issues, rural life, scientific exploration, poetry and the media.
The PBS NewsHour collection will be made available on the AAPB website, growing the online collection to more than 20,000 programs. The AAPB will ensure that this rich source for American political, social, and cultural history and creativity will be saved and made available once again to future generations.
About the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaborative effort by the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston to preserve for posterity the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years. The American Archive will ensure that this rich source for American political, social, and cultural history and creativity will be saved and made available once again to future generations. Major funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Council on Library and Information Resources. More information is available at americanarchive.org External.
About The Library of Congress
The Library of Congress, the nation’s first-established federal cultural institution, is the world’s reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled collections and integrated resources to Congress and the American people. The Library holds the largest collection of audio-visual recordings in the world and has been collecting and preserving historically, culturally and aesthetically significant recordings in all genres for nearly 120 years. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may also be accessed through the Library’s website, loc.gov.
About WGBH
WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster and the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the web, including “Masterpiece,” “Antiques Roadshow,” “Frontline,” “Nova,” “American Experience,” “Arthur,” “Curious George,” and more than a dozen other prime-time, lifestyle, and children’s series. WGBH also is a leader in educational multimedia, including PBS LearningMedia, and a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to the 36 million Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards … even two Oscars. Find more information at wgbh.org External.
About WETA
WETA Washington, DC, is one of the largest-producing stations of new content for public television in the United States and serves Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia with educational initiatives and with high-quality programming on four digital television channels. Other WETA productions and co-productions include “Washington Week with Gwen Ifill,” “The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize” and documentaries by filmmaker Ken Burns, including “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History” and a forthcoming film on Jackie Robinson. Sharon Percy Rockefeller is president and CEO of WETA. More information on WETA and its programs and services is available at weta.org External.
About PBS NewsHour
PBS NewsHour is seen by over four million weekly viewers and is also available online, via public radio in select markets, and via podcast. PBS NewsHour is a production of NewsHour Productions LLC, a wholly-owned non-profit subsidiary of WETA Washington, D.C., in association with WNET in New York. Major funding for PBS NewsHour is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and public television viewers. Major corporate funding is provided by BNSF and Lincoln Financial Group, with additional support from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Lemelson Foundation, National Science Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Friends of the NewsHour and others. More information on PBS NewsHour is available at pbs.org/newshour/ External. On social media, visit NewsHour on Facebook or follow @NewsHour on Twitter.
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PR 16-024
2016-01-28
ISSN 0731-3527