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A Cooperative Model for Preserving Historical Television News Content by Morgan Gieringer

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A Cooperative Model for Preserving Historical Television News Content by Morgan Gieringer A Cooperative Model for Preserving Historical Television News Content By Morgan Gieringer ABSTRACT: The University of North Texas (UNT) and the Dallas-Fort Worth (Tex- as) affiliate station of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC 5/KXAS-TV) have partnered to preserve the archival programming content of the oldest television news station in Texas. This article addresses the partnership of the archives and the news sta- tion to create a fully digitally accessible archive, as well as the challenges of large-scale preservation and digitization of audiovisual materials. Using a custodial partnership model, the archives and the news station have leveraged their own unique talents and abilities to make significant progress toward the goal of digitizing this historic collec- tion. This article highlights the progress made over the first five years of the partner- ship and the aspects of the partnership that have made the project successful. Introduction The archival profession must begin to confront the many challenges inherent in the large-scale preservation of twentieth-century audiovisual resources. A significant portion of our shared cultural heritage, including historical television news recordings, is at risk due to complicated copyright issues, degradation of the original media, the cost involved in digitizing audiovisual resources, and the difficulty of preserving high- resolution digital video files. The NBC 5/KXAS-TV project highlights the extreme difficulties inherent in preserving twentieth-century television news content, but also demonstrates the cultural significance and importance of preserving this content for future generations. Unfortunately, a large amount of twentieth-century broadcast news content has already been lost, as television news reporters and production staff focus on the here and now, and yesterday’s news was only intended to be recorded and preserved for a short period of time. In many cases, neglected news collections have reached a point of no return in their deterioration, and silent 16mm news film exists for which no accompanying scripts or indexes were preserved, making the content so opaque in its lack of descriptive metadata as to render it virtually useless. Other major television news collections may be found in the holdings of the University of California, Los Angeles Film and Television Archive; the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive at Miami Dade College; the WGBH Media Library and Archive in Boston, Massachusetts; and the University of Baltimore, among other institutions. While many of these institutions hold one or even multiple television news collections, access is limited due to factors such as minimal description of collections, limited reformatting efforts, and/or unclear copyright status or licensing rights. The overwhelming costs associated with processing, describing, and digitizing large audiovisual collections exacerbated these challenges. ARCHIVAL ISSUES 7 A Cooperative Model Cooperation between heritage institutions and content creators, facilitated by a long- term partnership agreement, is the key to overcoming these significant challenges. The University of North Texas (UNT) and the Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas) affiliate station of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC 5/KXAS-TV) have partnered to preserve the content of the oldest television news station in Texas. This unique partnership will not only preserve over 60 years of television news content through the digitization of original 16mm film and video, it will also result in free public access to the digitized content online. This article will explain this partnership from the perspective of both the library and the television news station, and it will provide possible solutions to the issues of copyright, funding, and access to audiovisual collections. Examples from the UNT-NBC 5/KXAS-TV-TV partnership will illustrate the crucial need to preserve audiovisual collections and the challenges facing institutions preserving large-scale au- diovisual collections. Finally, this article introduces the custodial partnership model—a new paradigm for potential partnerships between heritage institutions and content creators—as well as recommendations for future modes of cooperation. NBC 5/KXAS-TV (WBAP-TV) History The rise of broadcast television news in the 1940s was a natural extension of the capa- bilities built during the war years by the major radio broadcast networks. Surveys con- ducted at the end of World War II revealed that radio had surpassed print journalism to become the main source of news for many Americans, and the public well respected radio journalists such as Edward R. Murrow.1 Of the four major networks at the time, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) were best situated to aggressively seek out local radio stations around the country that were moving into the new field of television to join them as affiliates. In 1946, publisher Amon G. Carter filed permits with the Federal Communications Commission for construction of a television station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carter, already a legend in the publishing world, had been successfully operating the Fort Worth Star-Telegram news- paper since 1909 and a major NBC-affiliated radio station, WBAP, since 1922.2 His new television station, WBAP-TV, also an NBC affiliate, aired its first broadcast on September 27, 1948. WBAP-TV was the first television station in Texas and the only television station in the entire southwestern United States.3 For over 65 years, the station—renamed NBC 5/KXAS-TV in 1974 following its sale to LIN broadcasting—continued to broadcast from its original location in Fort Worth. In 2012, the station began construction of a new $16 million facility centrally located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, from which it began broadcasting in early 2014.4 News programming at NBC 5/KXAS-TV has grown over the years from a daily 15-minute newsreel in the 1950s to multiple daily news broadcasts by the 1970s. The station continued to be a leader in local television news by becoming the first station in Texas to feature all-color news film in 1966 and was the first station in the country to produce a monthly “news magazine” featuring in-depth, documentary-style reporting. ARCHIVAL ISSUES 8 Vol. 40, No. 2, 2020 The real innovation of WBAP-TV and later NBC 5/KXAS-TV was in the high-quality content of their news reporting. During the 1950s and 1960s, most local affiliate sta- tions focused on live entertainment programming featuring dancers or musical perform- ers that did not require an investment in costly film technology. Furthermore, many local affiliates believed that they would only be duplicating the efforts of radio and newspaper journalists by creating news programming, so they simply relied on summa- ries of wire reports to provide viewers with the news.5 In contrast, WBAP-TV featured news reporting from across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area ranging from crime, politics, and current events to public interest and even novelty reporting. News film from WBAP-TV was broadcast nightly as early as 1951 (and perhaps earlier, although no footage from the years 1948 to 1950 was retained) in a 15-minute program called The Texas News. This early news format featured five to eight short news segments with live, in-studio narration read from a prepared script. Most of the footage itself was silent, as sound was only recorded on film during brief interviews. It is estimated that by 1952, 32 percent of American households had a television set.6 This means that in a metroplex of over 1.1 million people at that time, as many as 350,000 people could have been tuning in to watch the nightly local news. Evidence also suggests that news film produced by KXAS-TV was selectively compiled and distributed as newsreels throughout the state. An example of a KXAS-TV newsreel located in the J. Fred MacDonald Newsreel Col- lection at the Library of Congress features several stories from November 1954 with narration and music added to the film that do not appear in the regular news broadcast.7 A typical 15-minute newsreel from the earliest existing footage in the WBAP-TV col- lection contains coverage reminiscent of what today might be called “hyperlocal” news. College and high school sports, meetings of fraternal and service organizations, and city council meetings were frequently covered. These broadcasts also included public interest stories, such as a memorable segment from 1951 featuring dramatic footage of a horse being lifted from an abandoned well. The horse, named Major, was returned to pasture unharmed.8 Although news coverage may have focused on local news events, it would be a mistake to assume that this coverage has no broader significance. In the decade following World War II, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex experienced tremen- dous population growth fueled by the availability of thousands of jobs in the area. This growth, however, also placed a strain on many of the residents of the Dallas-Fort Worth area who suddenly felt the encroachment of “big-city problems” into their small-town lives. Second, as one of the largest metropolitan areas in the county, the experiences of people living there reflected the issues that faced the nation at large, including the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. NBC 5/KXAS-TV (WBAP-TV) Partnership with University of North Texas In 2014, UNT entered into an agreement with local television station NBC 5/KXAS- TV (formerly WBAP-TV) to permanently house over 50 years of historical television news footage along with accompanying broadcast scripts, photographs, reference files, ARCHIVAL ISSUES 9 A Cooperative Model and log books, in the Special Collections department of UNT Libraries. This massive collection is the single largest physical collection held by the libraries and contains a variety of film and video formats that reflect the evolution of recording technology em- ployed by the station over the years.
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