The Television News Archive collection at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was created by Nashville insurance executive and Vanderbilt alumnus Paul C. Simpson in
1968. Simpson was inspired to create the archive after a visit
to television newsrooms during a business trip to New York
revealed that the networks at the time did not preserve their
news broadcasts because of the expense of videotapes and the
immense storage space that would have been required. Most
of the first twenty years of television history in the United
States has disappeared because of this early attitude.
The Television News Archive collection consists of videotapes of more than thirty thousand network evening news
broadcasts produced by ABC, CBS, and NBC from August
5, 1968, to the present and various CNN daily news programs from October 2, 1995, to the present. The archive
also includes more than nine thousand hours of newsrelated programming such as special reports, coverage of
presidential press conferences and political campaigns,
and national and international events such as the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and the terrorist attacks on the United
States on September 11, 2001. The archive is a non-profit
organization maintained by grants and contributions from
individuals, foundations and scholarly institutions.
The editorial staff of the archive creates the listings,
summaries and descriptions of the broadcasts in the collection. Archive staff members summarize each evening news
segment with the names of anchors and reporters, names
of persons involved in the event reported, and a summary
of the event. Each news item in a broadcast is separately
described with a beginning and end time noted. Staff members also summarize and describe special news broadcasts
such as political conventions, presidential press conferences
and breaking news events, although not to the level of detail
as the evening news broadcasts.
Prior to 1994, the summaries were published in a
monthly printed reference tool titled Television News Index
and Abstracts. Now, all of the descriptive information is
entered into the TV-NewsSearch database, which includes
more than 705,000 records describing individual items of
content. The database, which has been available since 1994,
can be searched by keywords of titles and descriptions,
by dates, by broadcast type, by reporter and even by the
advertisements that ran during the broadcast. Access to the
collection’s TV-NewsSearch database is through subscription; additionally, users pay fees for videotape loans from
the collection if they wish to have access to the actual tapes
of broadcasts.
Description of the Collection
Regular evening news programs in the collection include:
ABC Evening News: August 5, 1968–present
CBS Evening News: August 5, 1968–present
NBC Evening News: August 5, 1968–present
CNN WorldView: October 2, 1995–November 3, 2000
CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports: February 1, 2001–December
21, 2001
CNN NewsNight: November 5, 2001–present
Some of the major special reports included in the collection include:
Each Republican and Democratic political convention since
1968 and corresponding election coverage
Each televised presidential State of the Union Address
since 1968
Most major speeches delivered by U.S. presidents since
1968
Presidential news conferences
Coverage of international crises, wars and world events
involving the United States
The late-night news program Nightline from ABC is
also included:
ABC Nightline: March 24, 1980–September 12, 1988,
occasional coverage
ABC Nightline: September 12, 1988–present, comprehensive coverage
The collection does not include local news coverage from
any broadcast market. Also, the collection does not include
news segments from broadcast magazine programs such as
60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline NBC and similar shows unless
the segment is on a topic directly related to the U.S. presidency or major world events.
Copyright Issues
Historically, early television producers did not seek to voluntarily register their programs with the Library of Congress
for copyright deposit purposes. Prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, broadcasting a program did not per se constitute publication, nor were network television programs sold or
leased in copies. Therefore, there were serious questions
about what constituted “publication” for a broadcast program within the meaning of copyright law. The passage
of the revised law and advances in affordable home videocassette recording technology led television networks to
become more aggressive about registering their materials
for copyright protection. ABC and CBS began depositing
copies of their evening news programs with the Library of
Congress starting in the late 1970s, as did PBS for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.
The television networks have periodically challenged
the archive’s right to duplicate and loan copies of broadcasts for which the networks claim copyright ownership.
CBS filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Vanderbilt University in 1976, but dropped the suit in 1978 after
the revised Copyright Act included a fair-use clause which
allowed for noncommercial duplication of news broadcasts.
When the archive moved their descriptions online in 1994,
the networks again complained because they feared that
wider Internet access would greatly increase public use of
copyrighted material that the networks wanted to control
and for which they wanted to receive revenues.
The networks objected to the archive’s production of
compilation tapes. If an archive user requests the staff to
produce a tape with relevant news segments edited together
from a series of broadcasts (a common request from researchers who are studying news coverage of an event over time),
the staff will comply with the request. Users sign an agreement that they will not duplicate, rebroadcast or publicly
show the compilation tapes. Once a researcher makes a
request for such a compilation, the tape becomes part of the
archive collection when it is returned and becomes available to others with a similar interest. The networks object
because they consider compilation tapes to be new content
which competes with network productions.
The achive home page on the Internet (tvnews.vanderbilt.edu) includes a statement that indicates “all material
of the Television News Archive must be used within the
restrictions of the United States copyright legislation. Specifically, Copyright Public Law 94-553 includes provisions
regarding copyright of audiovisual works and archiving of
television news broadcasts.” The archive relies on the agreements signed by individual users to ensure compliance with
the law.
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound
Division of the Library of Congress began acquiring master
copies of evening news broadcasts from the archive in the
early 1990s when ABC and CBS stopped depositing their
broadcasts (NBC had never deposited their Evening News
broadcasts with the Library of Congress). However, master
videos acquired from the archive are not available for viewing at the Library of Congress due to copyright concerns.
Scholarly Use of the Archive
With the exception of the networks’ own archives, the Vanderbilt collection is the most comprehensive record of television news in the United States. Scholars and students in
many academic disciplines use the archive to locate stories,
track coverage of specific topics and evaluate the tone of
news. The archive’s own web site includes citations and
summaries for more than eighty scholarly articles that make
reference to the archive as a source for the researchers’
study. Scholars from such disciplines as communications,
political science, sociology, history, public health, economics, international relations and criminology have relied on
the archive to provide information for content analysis of
television coverage.
Researchers Scott Althaus, Jill Edy, and Patricia Phalen
found that the abstracts prepared by archive staff members
reflect important elements of news when compared to the
verbatim transcripts of the programs, but may be unreliable as substitutes for the actual news stories themselves.
Staff at the archive do not intend for the abstracts to serve
as a surrogate for the verbatim transcripts of the content.
Hence, serious researchers may be best served by identifying the appropriate broadcast segments through the TVNewsSearch database and then ordering full transcripts or
seeking videotape loans to be confident that their content
analyses reflect the actual content that was broadcast.
Technology Changes and the
Future of the Archive
Several Internet search engine firms have developed a computerized system for transcribing and abstracting television
broadcasts and assigning keywords that can be searched
electronically. The television broadcasts need to be converted into digital format, but once they are, they can be
easily stored and made accessible via the Internet. This has
the potential to provide much more accurate search results
than the systems based on human-generated abstracts.
These search engine companies are working with the television networks to develop a fee-based system that could
offer users access to an unlimited, fully searchable digital
video library of network content.
This has implications for the Vanderbilt Archives, obviously, but it is not clear how such systems might affect the
future. Even if the television networks strike a deal with the
Internet search firms to make their content available digitally for a fee, it would not preclude the archive staff from
continuing to tape the news broadcasts and abstracting
them for use by researchers. But users might find it much
more efficient, convenient, and accurate—and therefore
be willing to pay—to use the Internet-based systems that
might become available. It remains to be seen how these
technological developments will influence the Vanderbilt
Television News Archive.
Further Reading
Althaus, Scott L., Jill A. Edy, and Patricia F. Phalen. “Using the
Vanderbilt Television Abstracts to Track Broadcast News
Content: Possibilities and Pitfalls.” Journal of Broadcasting
& Electronic Media, 46(3) (September 2002): 473–492.
Dillon, John F. The Vanderbilt Television News Archive: Its History, Operations, and an Outline for its Use. Murray, KY:
Murray State University, 1987.
Rawley-Saldich, Anne. “Access to Television’s Past.” Columbia
Journalism Review, (November/December 1976): 46–48.
Simpson, Paul C., with Patricia G. Lane, and F. Lynne Bachleda.
Network Television News: Conviction, Controversy, and a
Point of View. [A history of the Vanderbilt Television News
Archive] Franklin, TN: Legacy Communications, 1995.
Kathleen A. Hansen