The Archivability of Television

An in-depth look at the place of television in American society and its historical value

This anthology critically evaluates archives and archival processes that collect, order, and preserve elements of television as historically, culturally, socially, politically, and economically significant material.

This anthology critically evaluates archives and archival processes that collect, order, and preserve elements of television as historically, culturally, socially, politically, and economically significant material.

What do we know about how television moved from ephemeral broadcasts and mounds of paperwork documenting bureaucratic and creative processes to become historical material housed in archives? This book’s guiding principles are to interrogate where television as historical material “lives” and to collect the stories of some ways television preservation has been and continues to be deeply circumstantial and idiosyncratic.

Bringing together work by academics, archivists, and practitioners, the book offers insights into the archival processes that confer television programs with historical value. With a focus on television’s archival spaces, the book contributes more broadly to theories, histories, and practices of archiving. Likewise, the theories and questions about archives provide insights into the specificities of the medium, the relations between technologies and culture, the political economy of the culture industries, and the minutiae of television’s “place” in American society.