NEW YORK CITY — Footage.net, the stock, archival and news footage search engine, has announced that over 50,000 preview clips from the University of North Texas's archive of local news are now available for screening.
Photo: NBC5/KXAS (WBAP) Television News Archive, University of North Texas Libraries
UNT Libraries houses the complete news archive of NBC 5/KXAS (formerly WBAP), the oldest television news station in Texas. The archive contains historic broadcast footage, scripts, advertisements, still photography and research files dating from 1950 through 2012. Currently, 51,393 clips from the NBC 5/KXAS archive are available for screening on Footage.net, with more expected soon.
"We're delighted to be making the NBC 5/KXAS collection searchable through Footage.net," says Morgan Gieringer, head of special collections at the University of North Texas. "We're working hard to expand access to the archive and generate additional licensing revenue that can be reinvested into further digitization of the collection. Making the archive accessible through Footage.net will help us achieve both priorities."
In 2014, UNT Libraries and NBC 5/KXAS formed an custodial partnership, wherein UNT would take physical possession of the archive and manage its digitization, preservation, public access and licensing, and NBC 5/KXAS would maintain ownership of the intellectual property and help publicize the project.
"This is a unique relationship for us as we have not previously worked with a university archive," says David Seevers, Footage.net chief marketing officer. "UNT and NBC 5/KXAS have come up with a very innovative approach to the stewardship and preservation of this rich collection of local news, and we want to help support and promote their efforts as much as possible."
Since launching the project in 2015, Over 20,000 original broadcast news segments, and over 45,000 news scripts have been digitized and made available online for viewing by the public through the Portal to Texas History. All content stored on U-Matic (3/4-inch tape) was digitized first due to the instability of the media, and UNT is now working to complete years in which three or more months have been digitized, as well as the oldest content in the archive. Approximately 1/6th of the total collection has been digitized to date, and the goal is to digitize the complete archive - every single tape and film reel.
Although the NBC 5/KXAS Collection is a "local news" archive, the content spans much further than the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area.