2020 IASA - FIAT/IFTA Joint Conference

The University of North Texas 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. Revenues collected from licensing are applied directly to collection digitization costs. 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. It will also provide an overview of the challenges faced by an academic institution acting as licencing agent.  Although dismissed by some funding agencies as only having "regional significance," the demand for archival content from local television news stations has proven the uniqueness of the content and importance of preserving and making it discoverable.