Preserving and Enriching Access to Oral Histories of the American Television Industry

FAIN: PW-285053-22

Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation (North Hollywood, CA 91601-3109)
Jennifer Matz (Project Director: July 2021 to present)

The digitization and migration to long-term storage of 932 oral histories comprising over 3,000 hours of first-hand accounts that document the history of the television industry. 

The  Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation is home to The Interviews: An Oral History of Television. Formerly the Archive of American Television, The Interviews is a rare audiovisual collection of 932 recordings comprising over 3,000 hours of video-taped first-hand accounts of the evolving television industry from multiple perspectives. These oral histories, begun in 1996, face a crisis of obsolescence, as affirmed in a recent digital collection and preservation assessment. The Foundation requests NEH funding to support the implementation of a digital preservation and enhanced access strategy to ensure long-term stewardship and ongoing availability of a collection of immense importance to the history of the art and science of television, as well as to the understanding of the nation’s cultural history more broadly.