New Preview Clips from The University of North Texas, Custodian of the Complete News Archive of NBC 5/KXAS, are Now Available for Screening on Footage.net.

Over 50,000 preview clips from the University of North Texas’s archive of local news are now available for viewing through Footage.net. 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,” said 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 innovative 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,” said 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) 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 1/6 of the total collection has been digitized to date, and the goal is to digitize the complete archive—every single tape and film reel.

“We are happy to help researchers find content that has not been digitized,” said Gieringer. “If someone is looking for content that was likely on the news in Dallas/Fort Worth, we can help them find it.  We also have a large backlog of content that has been digitized but is awaiting metadata. So just because a clip is not in the database does not mean that a digitization fee is required in all cases.”

Although the NBC 5/KXAS Collection is a “local news” archive, the content spans much further than the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area.

“Reporters were active across the state of Texas, and even participated in national events like presidential elections,” said Gieringer. “We are constantly surprised by the exciting footage uncovered in this collection, including a candid interview with Harvey Milk in 1978, a press conference with Muhammad Ali in 1969, sit-in protests at the Piccadilly Lunch Counter in 1964, and celebrity interviews ranging from Joan Crawford to John Belushi.”

Footage.net works with a wide variety of stock footage companies to enhance their visibility across the global production community. UNT clips will be available for screening through Footage.net alongside motion content from other leading footage companies.

About UNT Libraries - NBC 5/KXAS

In 2014, UNT and local television station NBC 5/KXAS-TV (formerly WBAP-TV) entered into an agreement to permanently house over 50 years of historical television news footage along with accompanying broadcast scripts, photographs, reference files, and log books, in the Special Collections department of UNT Libraries. The most important concern for both UNT and NBC 5/KXAS-TV was that the collection be preserved and made publicly accessible through large-scale digitization. Since the project launch in 2015 significant progress has been made to digitize and make the news archive accessible. U-Matic tape was prioritized for digitization and over 2,000 tapes were digitized and segmented into over 50,000 individual news segments.