Preserving the Television Archive
Hear from the people behind the scenes at the BBC Archive
Preserving the Television Archive
Preserving the Television Archive
An interview with Adrian Williams, BBC Preservation Manager
Adrian Williams, the BBC's Preservation Manager, explains how the BBC keeps its archive safe for future generations to enjoy.
- Click on a heading below to jump to that section of the film
- Why do we need to preserve the Television Archive?
- The Challenges of Preserving the Television Archive
- What does preservation involve?
- Film
- The Earliest Type of Film: Silver Nitrate
- The Oldest BBC Television Film Clip
- What are the limitations of film?
- Why was videotape invented?
- Computers
- Film Conservation
- Vinegar Syndrome
- Storage
- The Legal and Royal Vault
- The Value of Preservation
Transcript
Why do we need to preserve the Television Archive?
Within these tapes and films you have a whole history of the BBC's cultural heritage and the nation's cultural heritage. If we left these programmes sitting on the shelf they would eventually degrade or fall apart. The BBC cannot allow that to happen.
I run the BBC's preservation department. The preservation department looks after the BBC's TV and radio collections. We make sure that they are fit for reuse in new TV programmes or for retransmission.
This is not a museum, it's a working archive. There's a very big demand for this material. Around 4,000 items a day leave the shelves here and go off to our customers. So, as you can see, it's quite important that we maintain the collections to the best of our abilities.
