Morgan Gieringer
Head, Special Collections
University of North Texas
Local television news played a critical role in recording the social and cultural history of America for much of the 20th century, however, archival news film and video has not been widely preserved due to a myriad of factors including the cost to digitize analog content and the difficulty in managing large and poorly organized news archive collections. The University of North Texas (UNT) collaborated with the oldest television news station in Texas to preserve over 60 years of film, video, broadcast scripts and other related materials. Through this unique custodial partnership model, all digitized materials are freely available to view or stream on-line. Additionally, UNT also serves as the licensing agent for the news archive. Working with producers for a variety of outlets including PBS, ESPN, HBO and Netflix, the news archive generated over $100,000 in revenue in the past year, with revenues expected to increase as more content is digitized. This briefing will provide an overview of the partnership between the university library and the news station, and will describe the growing marketplace for archival media content fueled by demand for original programming from streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
Check out our project sizzle reel: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1334166
More information may also be found here:
https://library.unt.edu/special-collections/collections/kxasnbc-5/
https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/KXAS/
https://exhibits.library.unt.edu/nbc5