Vanderbilt Television News Archive

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classroom instruction, and research. Borrowers pay fees for the items loaned to cover the costs of providing this service. The requested items are loaned as DVDs or VHS tapes, which must be returned to the archive by the end of the loan period. Due to copyright considerations, access to streaming video is available only to a limited audience, and only for certain portions of the collection (currently CNN and NBC). Only individuals associated with sponsoring colleges and universities can view streaming video content. Visitors to the archive can view all content from the archive's collection.

366:. Leary's comment shocked and appalled Simpson. After watching the program, Simpson wanted to watch the program again to confirm what he had heard. It was through his attempts to locate a recording of the news program that he discovered that news programs were not being preserved anywhere for future generations to access. At the time, news programs were only preserved for two weeks, after which tapes were erased and then reused. 288: 382:

magazines. Simpson selected Vanderbilt, because he graduated from the university's law school and resided in Nashville. He approached Frank P. Grisham, the new director of the Joint University Libraries, with the idea. This led to conversations with Vanderbilt chancellor G. Alexander Heard (1917-2009). On July 29, 1968, Chancellor Heard appointed an

402:(ATRA) legislation authorized the Library of Congress to record off-air regularly scheduled newscasts and on-the-spot coverage of news events. The Television News Archive of Vanderbilt University has worked cooperatively with the Library to help fulfill ATRA’s mandate.” This relationship continues to the present. 498:

On several occasions, malfunctions of either the television set or the Ampex recorder caused a tape to have serious video or audio problems. In some cases, no recording could be made, explaining some of the weeknight date gaps in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the oldest tapes in the collection, mainly

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The Vanderbilt Television News Archive was founded by Paul Simpson, a Nashville businessman. The mission of the archive is to equip students and scholars with the tools necessary to both engage with and critique news coverage by making actual copies widely available. According to the official history

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In a number of cases, because of the convergence of preemptions on all three (historic) local network affiliates, some dates on weekends, again mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, have no newscasts at all available in the Archive. Prior to the 1980s, affiliate pre-emption of weekend network newscasts was

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These events culminated in Simpson's decision to begin coordinating efforts to preserve news programs. Initially, he sought out funding to begin a nonprofit organization; however, he ultimately decided that a college library would be more ideal because of its expertise in preserving newspapers and

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Not every newscast since 1968 is available in the archive, however, due mostly to circumstances beyond control of the curators. Until the 1980s or so, the recordings were made off-air from Nashville's network television affiliates. Because of this, some weekend newscasts from 1968 until that time

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In January 1994, the Archive was given a special award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Nashville/MidSouth Chapter on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. In 2013, the archive was awarded the Governors’ Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Academy of Television

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was quoted as having said, “for the most part we were . . . just a bunch of old radio hands learning the hard way that cameras need something more than emulsion and light valves to create electronic journalism. The missing ingredients were conviction, controversy and a point of view”. Simpson's

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An online version of the archive includes abstracts and catalog records for most of the programs in the collection, which can be browsed or searched by subject, date and network. Individuals may request loans of broadcasts or selected items from the archive's collection for reference, study,

479:) did not begin airing newscasts on Sunday evenings until January 1979 and Saturday evenings until January 1985. Other than those occurrences, most of the weekend pre-emptions were (and still are) due to coverage of sporting events such as college and professional 519:

because they typically are not concerned with immediate issues and events, and because of network policies where transcripts and video of those programs are already sold by the network news organizations for a fee by an outside provider (along with

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experience watching Leary, together with Friendly's comments, prompted him to think more seriously about the influence of the news on the television audience, particularly within the context of what he perceived to be one-sided news coverage of the

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shows in the 5:30 p.m. Central Time slot on that day of the week. NBC did not in fact begin a Saturday newscast until January 1969, and the Sunday bulletin started in August 1970; WSM did clear the Sunday broadcast, though. Also,

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to provide copies of tapes for permanent preservation by the Library of Congress. As stated in chapter six of a report of the Librarian of Congress: Television and Video Preservation 1997: “As part of the Copyright Act, the

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All archive recordings have a network/time/date line added near the top of the picture to facilitate retrieval of specific news items. Broadcasts prior to May 1979 were recorded in black & white on Ampex

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were not broadcast on the local stations due to station programming practices and network sports pre-emptions. For example, NBC affiliate WSM-TV, now

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The networks’ televised coverage of live presidential election-related events, including debates, political conventions and election night coverage

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between 1968 and 1973, suffered varying degrees of loss of picture quality due to natural deterioration before they were digitized in the 2000s.

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between 5 and 6 p.m. Central. Except for a one-year experiment on Saturdays between July 1975 and June 1976, ABC (local affiliate WNGE, now

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On the network level, between September 1971 and January 1976, CBS did not air a Sunday newscast because that hour was reserved for

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The networks’ televised coverage of live presidential speeches, press conferences, summit meetings, and other events

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Arts & Sciences Nashville/MidSouth Chapter, the regional academy's highest honor, and received an Emmy.

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With a few exceptions, the archive does not include recordings of documentaries and magazine shows such as

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stories). They are thus considered not to fall under the category of newscasts included in the archive.

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a syndicated country music program that was produced at the WLAC/WTVF studios, between 5:30 and 7 p.m.

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committee to develop a feasibility proposal . Recordings began on August 5, 1968 to coincide with the

107:, founded in August 1968, maintains a library of televised network news programs. It is a unit of the 1011: 961: 875: 243: 116: 394: 201: 976: 748: 1062: 981: 480: 362:

recommended that young Americans find themselves by freeing their mind and experimenting with

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quite common in many other medium-to-small-sized U.S. media markets, not just Nashville.

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recorders. Beginning in May 1979, news programs were recorded in color on 3/4 inch

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The archive's collection consists of more than 40,000 hours of video content, including:

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Televised coverage of major news events preserved in the archive's collection includes:

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after 1975), from September 1971 until December 1978, did not carry the Saturday

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Simpson was also motivated by a 1967 book in which former president of CBS News

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that was fueling protest against the war both in the United States and abroad.

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Breeding, Marshall. "Building a Digital Library of Television News."

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