PTV Digital Archive

From The Daily Yomiuri:

The entire NHK archive of more than 550,000 television programs should be made available on the Internet, an advisory panel for Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Heizo Takenaka agreed last week, prior to a final report to be announced later this month.

To achieve this goal, the ministry should lift the ceiling currently imposed on NHK, limiting income from Internet distribution to 1 billion yen a year, the panel said.

The panel also agreed the Broadcast Law should be revised to permit NHK to charge a viewing fee for the programs in addition to the standing viewing fee, sources close to the panel said.

Of the 550,000-plus programs owned by NHK, only about 5,700 are currently available on the Internet or to visitors to the NHK Archives in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, because of the regulation.

More at http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20060507TDY02007.htm

Catalog of nearly 1 million BBC programs online:

Cory Doctorow:

The BBC has posted an online interface into catalog of 946,614 BBC radio & TV programmes, dating back 75 years — searchable by category, cast and crew. This is a treasure-trove of data.

Link to catalog, Link to Tom Loosemore’s commentary

(via Ben Hammersley)

We Make Money Not Art links to two collections of clips from television sci-fi series made in the 1960s. The collection of clips from UFO has a discussion of futuristic fashions is particularly good. The collection of Ultraman clips is marred by YouTube’s giant logo.

These images of the future provide a fantastic view into the hopes, fears, and expectations of the 1960s. The collections illustrate (again) the importance of amateurs and fan communities to moving image archiving. Looking at these collections, it seems rather remarkable that it is typically so hard for fan communities to earn the trust and cooperation of program owners.

Cinema Minima is pointing to UbuWeb, an archive of high end avant-garde arts and culture sound and video recordings maintained by volunteers that has been going since 1996. Their index of artists is quite impressive.

Haven’t had time to watch much yet, but their approach to orphan works really caught my eye: “If it’s out of print, we feel it’s fair game. If it’s in print, we won’t touch it.”

This archive of civil rights-related television news is the most interesting and disturbing television news collection online that I’ve seen so far. William Thomas, who put the collection together, writes:

The footage is the only remaining footage from stations in Virginia from the 50s and 60s. Thankfully, we do have some great footage from the earliest days of television in Virginia. At the moment we are just beginning this effort and have been trying to make this archival footage accessible to scholars and teachers.

There are lessons in this footage that should never be forgotten, and with Eyes on the Prize unavailable, it’s great to see it made so easily available. It’s also a fine example of the kind of history instruction that might be done if more news footage were easily available.