Air Today_Gone Tomorrow

Running head: Air Today, Gone Tomorrow 1

Air Today, Gone Tomorrow:

Long-term Preservation of Broadcast Television at Archival Standards:

A Content Analysis of Television Production Textbooks

Capstone research project submitted to:

Dr. Mary K. Chelton

Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

CUNY Queens College

by

Ian Bloomfield

[email protected]

Flushing, Queens

Fall 2014

Air Today, Gone Tomorrow 2

Abstract

This paper reports on a research study undertaken to explore potential resources available

for introducing basic principles of digital preservation to undergraduate television production

students. Seven concepts were identified as basic principles of digital preservation. A

quantitative content analysis was conducted on a convenience sample of television production

textbooks published after the 2009 digital television transition to determine the presence of these

principles. Analysis of the sample found the presence of only one principle, metadata, which

appeared in two of the eight books. The data are not significant enough to draw a conclusion

regarding the larger population of television production textbooks.


Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Table of Contents 3

List of Tables 5

Chapter 1. The Problem 6

Preserving Digital Television 7

Preservation Research 9

The Research Project 10

Research Value 10

Chapter 2. Literature Review 12

Terminology 12

A Brief History of Television Preservation 13

Commercial Pressures 15

Cultural Assumptions 17

Professionalization Moving Image Archivists 18

Television Research 19

Use of Video in Research 22

Research and the Broadcast Archive 23

Chapter 3. Methodology 26

Phase One: Identifying the Resource 27

Phase Two: Sampling 28

Searching by Subject Heading 30

Selecting the Sample 33


Phase Three: Defining Basic Principles of Digital Preservation 35

Phase Four: Designing the Research Instrument 37

Phase Five: Steps for Content Analysis 38

Chapter 4. Findings & Analysis 40

Findings 40

Nominal Presence 41

Frequency 41

Distribution 42

Analysis of Findings 44

Research Question #1 44

Research Question #2 44

Chapter 5. Conclusion 46

Achievements 46

Limitations 47

Future Research 47

References 49

Appendix A. Producers Define Producers 55

Appendix B. CUNY production programs 56

Appendix C. National production programs 59

Appendix D. Complete bibliographic information for sample 61

Appendix E. Complete list of digital preservation terminology 63


List of Tables

Table 1. CUNY Search Results 31

Table 2. CUNY vs. Worldcat 32

Table 3. CUNY Search Results 2010-2014 32

Table 4. CUNY vs. Worldcat, 2010-2014 33

Table 5. Sample: Eight Selected Books 34

Table 6. Digital Terminology Principles by Source 36

Table 7. Basic Principles and Assigned Coding 37

Table 8. Template for Research Instrument 37-38

Table 9. Nominal Presence by Search Location 41

Table 10. Frequency by Search Location 42

Table 11. Distribution by Year of Publication 43

Table 12. Distribution by Series Edition 43

Table 13. Distribution by Subject Heading 43


Chapter 1. The Problem

The 2009 Digital Television transition signaled the completion of the all-digital television

chain, from program producer to viewer (Rubin, 2009). The history of television archiving

shows that an item’s existence does not guarantee long term survival in high quality condition

(Bryant, 2010). The practices for archiving analog television are unsuitable for the long-term

preservation of digitally produced broadcast programs at archival standards, yet television

producers have been reluctant and slow to incorporate principles of digital preservation into their

workflow (Rubin, 2009).

The development of the Internet has connected programs with interactive websites which

may be updated hundreds of times a day (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010). The broadcasting archive

needs no longer to stand alone at the end of the creative chain, as it can be connected to a

multitude of organizational information streams and workflows (Noordegraaf, 2010).

Seen by many as a panacea, digital production is an imperfect process and the absence of

preservation standards make digitally produced television susceptible to obsolescence and the

loss of metadata (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010). Whether media is born-digital or transferred from

analogue, future access depends on the nature of the original version, methods of storage used

and the availability of software capable of emulating older systems (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010).

Standardization increases interoperability and content exchange, and embedded metadata is key

to managing, using and sustaining assets (Fleischauer, 2010).

Many European public broadcasters have undertaken ambitious projects to make their

archives accessible to the general public (Knapskog, 2010) and from them we gain a

representative example of the ideal digital workflow: the technology used for the production of

digital broadcasting files automatically generates metadata. Production personnel then add


administrative, legal, technical and content-related metadata as the assets move through the

entire process of production, distribution and re-use. The archive then determines when the

objects and metadata are added to the repository (Noordegraaf, 2010).

This final part of the process highlights a major difference between the European and

American television industries. Television broadcasters in the United States belong to

commercial enterprises rather than heritage institutions, and their archives lack business or

funding models designed to support archival preservation (Wright, 2004). From an archival

view, preserving fragile content necessitates making the highest possible quality copies, as there

may be only one opportunity to replay the content before it completely deteriorates; additionally

many playback machines are no longer manufactured (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010) and require

trained personnel to operate them (Greene, 2007), making preservation work at this level

prohibitively expensive.

As the preservation of broadcast television according to such archival standards does not

generally affect viewing quality, long-term archival preservation of broadcast television is often

considered beyond the mission and scope of the institutions responsible for its production

(Schuller, 2009).

Preserving Digital Television

Preservation of broadcast television begins with collection development. European

countries tend to follow a model of public service broadcasting that provides for archives held in

national institutions or by individual broadcasters such as the BBC. The commercial nature of

the television industry in the United States does not mandate collection and preservation for

public interest. The American model for public broadcasting is also unique, and collection

depends on individual stations or even program producers (Wright, 2009).


In the spring of 2009, television broadcasters in the United States turned off their analog

transmitters and began broadcasting exclusively on digital channels. That year also saw the

completion of Preserving Digital Public Television, a partnership between PBS, New York

University and public television stations WNET-TV in New York and WGBH-TV in Boston,

developed to explore issues related to building and operating a model repository for digital

video. Funded by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

(NDIIP), the project effectively managed to raise awareness of digital preservation and the need

for technical and metadata standards in the television industry. One of the projects goals was to

incorporate digital preservation practices within established television production workflows, to

safeguard born-digital media from issues such as dissociation, migration and obsolescence. Such

an adaptation proved quite difficult to implement with established shows, although success was

reported with the launch of the daily news program WORLDFOCUS, as born-digital source

footage and completed programs were submitted to the repository for long-term preservation

(Rubin, 2009). WORLDFOCUS ceased programming on April 2, 2010 (TV Newser, 2010) and

the degree to which its preservation-minded digital production workflow has been adopted is

unknown at this time.

Preserving Digital Public Television came on the heels of another effort to engage

television producers in a dialogue over long-term preservation that began a decade earlier. In

1999, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) launched the Local Television

Project to raise national awareness for the value of preserving television as cultural heritage.

One of the project goals was to hold a symposium on the subject with industry leaders, which

ultimately morphed in to two summits at which the attendees politely expressed their general

interest and requested more information. The challenges and compromises of assembling such


an event brought to light the incredible pressure and responsibility of meeting the general

requirements of daily programming and the consequence it has on allocating time and funding

for considerations of preservation (Cariani, 2011).

The difficulties that such television preservation projects have faced are very much

rooted in television’s analogue history, throughout which technical limitations, financial and

legal constraints, cultural assumptions and the relatively recent professionalization of moving

image archivists led to the loss, erasure and discarding of hundreds of thousands of programs

from the dawn of broadcast television (Gries, 2010).

Preservation Research

Despite these constraints, broadcasters have amassed vast collections, the majority of

which exist for internal use, providing older footage for recycling or licensing (Noordegraaf,

2010). Access is rarely granted for outside research requests (Prelinger, 2007) and television

scholars often base their research on written source material in lieu of archival broadcast material

(Nordegraaf, 2010). Producers themselves are the focus of an emerging branch of Media Studies

known as Production Studies, which explores the cultural practices of media production (Mayer,

Banks and Caldwell, 2009). The mandate to incorporate digital preservation into production

workflows would not ultimately come from producers but the executives and organizations that

employ them, yet “it is much easier to study labor and to gain access to media production than it

is to study management and gain entrée into corporate suites” (Caldwell, cited in Perren, 2013).

A growing trend across several fields of higher education is the engagement of

undergraduate students with the holdings of special collections and archives (Mitchell, 2012).

Becker (2009) uses meta-assignments to introduce undergraduate film students to the medium’s


history and preservation; it does not appear that anything been done in this regard with

undergraduate television students.

The Research Project

This paper reports on a research project that explored available resources of potential use

for introducing basic principles of digital preservation within undergraduate television

production curricula. The findings presented are the result of a quantitative content analysis of a

particular resource, television production textbooks produced after the digital television

transition. The study was designed to answer two distinct research questions:

1) Do television production textbooks published since 2010 include basic principles of digital

preservation?

2) Would these texts be useful for introducing basic principles of digital preservation within

undergraduate television production curricula?

This study was undertaken as a capstone project for a graduate course on research in

Library and Information Studies at CUNY-Queens College in Flushing, New York. The

research was conducted from September-December, 2014.

Research Value

The value of this research project has several applications related to the various

disciplines it engages. It can raise overall awareness of the need for digital preservation of born-

digital media, as well as the need to integrate digital preservation into workflows for broadcast

television and digital video. Studies of media production programs, faculty, students and

instructional texts are rare. While “in the digital age, everyone is potentially a media producer”

(Mayer, 2011, p.1), “media studies majors have usually taken an even deeper interest in film and

television texts, both for entertainment and for intellectual edification” (Becker, 2009, p.90).


These students are putting themselves on a path to becoming the television industry’s future

producers and leaders and, as such, they may represent the archival community’s best and last

option for demonstrating the value of long-term preservation programs.

Insight into incorporating digital preservation into curricula can be valuable to the fields

of information and media literacy, as video and film production, “when considered as something

more than the transmission of basic technical skills or conventions, can be a valuable way of

getting students to think critically about media in general” (Hershfield, & McCarthy, 1997). It

could also encourage the use of archival moving images in the classroom in various capacities.

Through all these applications, this project can be seen as an example of preservation

research that crosses disciplines and communities to analyze specific media and the various

frameworks in which that media is situated (Gilliland, 2014) and provides archivists “insight into

how contemporary media makers work on all levels of production” (Frick, 2014, p.24). The

study identifies a potential audience and opportunity for greater integration of preservation into

core curricula (Nimer & Daines, 2012).


Chapter 2. The Literature Review

This section presents a review of available literature on topics relevant to the study of archival

preservation of broadcast television. The majority of journal articles and other sources consulted

stem from the fields of Library and Information Studies and Media Studies, and the related fields

of Preservation Studies and Television Studies. The literature review has three sections. The

first section is dedicated to Terminology and will provide definitions of potentially unfamiliar

terms used herein. The second section will provide an historic overview of television

preservation and the development of broadcast archives. Section three will focus on the general

nature of television research and the work that has been done in the areas of and related to library

studies and archival preservation.

Terminology

This paper reports on a research study that is grounded in Library and Information

Studies, specifically the area of Preservation Research. The specific focus of the study, the

television production textbook and its situation in the larger world of television production at the

academic and professional levels have rarely been explored in preservation literature and some

terminology may be unclear. This section will define these terms and attempt to clarify their use

for the purpose of this paper and study.

The often unrecognized job of the producer is difficult to define (Pardo, 2010). The

generally accepted role of television producers is “that of the medium’s chief managers and

artists, with unique understandings of economics and creativity” (Mayer, 2011). Even within the

television industry, this title can have multiple meanings, depending on simple descriptors

attached to it, like Executive Producer or Line Producer, which mark the distinction between one

who is responsible for obtaining financing and concerned with related business (executive


producer), and one who deals directly with production logistics (Cones, cited in Pardo, 2010).

(See Appendix A for definitions of the role as described by actual producers).

The producer plays a vital role in production. The producer is also a vital part of the

preservation process, although the role is defined somewhat differently from the archival

perspective. In the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model, a producer is defined as

“the role played by those persons or client systems that provide the information to be preserved.

This can include other OAISes or internal OAIS persons or systems (CCSDS, 2012, p.24).

This paper also frequently mentions the production worfklow. Within the context of

media production, workflow refers to “the technique a production uses for harvesting, logging,

editing and finishing material” (Singleton-Turner, year, p.288).

A Brief History of Broadcast Television Preservation in the United States

Modern broadcasters struggle to provide sufficient justification for supporting or

sustaining long-term preservation efforts within their archives. This practice is very much rooted

in television’s analogue history, throughout which technical limitations, financial and legal

constraints, cultural assumptions and the relatively recent professionalization of moving image

archivists led networks and producers to systematically destroy “at least half of programming

produced well into the 1960s” (Einstein and Vianello, cited in Collins, 2010)

The mechanical capture of sound and moving images has posed preservation problems

since the inception of the technology at the end of the 19th century, beginning with the

combustible nature of early film (Greene, 2007). The early history of television archiving very

much duplicated that of cinema through loss, neglect and casual destruction (Noordegraaf,

2010). The primary factor in the loss of early television broadcasts is that television is a medium

across which content can be transmitted but is not itself a carrier of content. Early television was


broadcast live and could not be recorded until 1947, when kinescope recordings were made by

placing a film camera in front of a television screen and capturing the broadcast (Noordegraaf,

2010).

In April, 1956, the first prototype professional videotape recorders, using two-inch

magnetic tape, were demonstrated at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention

(Greene, 2007). On July 24, 1959, the Kitchen Debate between Vice President Nixon and Nikita

Khrushchev became the first videotape received by the Library of Congress (Spehr, 2013). The

use of professional videotape in the early 1960s was a double-edged sword for the preservation

of broadcast television. While on one hand providing the technology to keep records of

broadcasts at a better quality than film, videotape was not seen as a long term format; at the

same time the potential re-use of tapes was an appealing measure of efficiency and cost-

effectiveness, and so, many tapes were erased and re-used (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010).

In 1975, Ampex introduced commercial videotape, followed by Electronic Industries

Association of Japan’s open reels and U-matic cassettes (Murphy, 2011). While this lowered the

cost of recording and making duplicate copies of broadcasts, it also created storage issues. The

Library of Congress reported that acquisition almost doubled in the first year post-release

(Schreibman, 1991). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, local television stations and network

affiliates viewed discarding entire collections of local news film, tape, and VTRs as a low-cost

storage solution (Compton, 2007). In this period, stations also excised film equipment and

developing labs (Schreibman, 1991); the sheer volume of materials was overwhelming, and

“from the stations’ point of view, tossing it was often easier than saving it” (Cariani, 2011,

p.139).


The variety and inevitable obsolescence of recording formats and playback equipment

has brought considerable technical difficulties to the preservation of television (Noordegraaf,

2010). The economic, portable and fragile U-Matic cassette has become a highly endangered

format chiefly because it was never designed to be stored long term (Compton, 2007). These

losses are considered acceptable, as the industry relies on planned obsolescence to drive the

profits of selling new technologies (Davies, 2010).

When digital file formats were introduced in the 1990s, commercial pressures, most

notably the cost of digital storage space, led producers of professional and home video

recordings to adopt the widespread use of compressed, proprietary production formats over open,

uncompressed options optimal for long-term preservation. From a broadcast perspective, the

choice was not difficult, as compressed formats do not greatly affect viewing quality (Schuller,

2009). Despite the recent development of MJPEG 2000 as an archival target format and

reductions in storage costs, television archives have not significantly altered their practices

(Schuller, 2009).

Commercial Pressures

Beyond the challenges of technology, broadcast archives face a distinct economic

imperative. Unlike textual records, the preservation of broadcast media “requires an investment

of millions of dollars in equipment and trained personnel” (Greene, 2007), and the archives

themselves require both institutional settings and architectural sites and space (Spigel, 2010).

Media mergers, changes in corporate ownership and corporate identities can severely hamper the

consistent maintenance of television archives as well (Davies, 2010).

Producers must also account for important legal considerations that also affect

preservation efforts. An early argument against the recording of broadcasts was “union concerns


about repeats displacing new output and therefore reducing work for cast and crew” (Perry and

Coward, 2010, p.49). Producing television programming involves contracts and licensing

agreements with a variety of individual and organizations throughout the creative chain; in their

early years, a primary use of broadcast archives was to aid in the response of subpoenas

(Schreibman, 1991).

The issue of copyright has arguably had the most dramatic impact on broadcasters’

inclination to preserve materials. In 1968, the CBS network sued Vanderbilt University for

breach of copyright, based on a Vanderbilt project that recorded news broadcasts aired during the

year’s presidential election campaign. The eventual resolution of this case in the next decade

would have a radical effect on moving image preservation, though at the time the conflict was

somewhat ironic considering that the Department of Defense was doing virtually the same thing

with its own kinescoping of network news stories concerning the Vietnam War (Schreibman,

1991).

The 1976 Copyright Act resolved the Vanderbilt case by establishing a major revision in

U.S. copyright law that “encouraged taping off-air taping of hard news broadcasts” (Murphy,

2011, p.105). The Library of Congress also now had the power to require deposits of works,

making significant productions available for scholarly access (Schreibman, 1991).

Modern program broadcast rights often last five years or less, with rights associated for

uses after broadcast often absent (Rubin, 2009), specifically regarding repeats or extended

distribution (Nelson & Cooke, 2010). Third party rights regarding scriptwriters, music and

other contributing entities all require clearance (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010). Additionally, the

source material used in programs may have attached rights. This complex array attaches a


significant financial and legal investment just to make programs viewable more than once

(Rubin, 2009).

Cultural Assumptions

From their beginnings, television archives have been very much mired in an argument

over the cultural value of the medium, both as a record and an art form (Spigel, 2010) As early

television was broadcast live, it was considered an extension of the theatre and regarded as

ephemeral media (Kavanagh and Lee, 2010). Producers were not convinced that the value of

their property was worth the cost of storage (Collins, 2010), though they eventually saw fit to

make regular use of films held by the Library of Congress in popular productions such as

Victory at Sea when available (Spehr, 2013). Failure to appreciate the cultural significance of

television has led to a “gradualist and selective approach to documentation and preservation”

(Perry and Coward, 2010, p.49). An example of this has been the prioritization of preserving oft-

requested sports footage over quiz shows and soap operas (Noordegraaf, 2010).

Broadcasters have not been alone in failing to see the social value of their assets. Though

the Library of Congress received its first television program submitted for copyright in 1949

(Murphy, 2011), it did not actively seek to collect television until the mid-1960s, due simply to

low regard (Spigel, 2010). For many of these years, the Library of Congress deemed that a

single sample program was considered sufficiently representative for broadcasts in series (Spehr,

2013).

In 1966, the NEA administered a planning study that produced the Stanford Report,

which endorsed a national initiative “to foster the art and preserve the heritage of film and

television in America.” This laid the groundwork for establishing the American Film Institute in


1967 and the subsequent launch of its archival program in 1968, but a comparable television-

oriented institute did not follow (Murphy, 2011). In 1997, the Library of Congress published a

five-volume Study of the Current State of American Television and Video Preservation, based on

testimony from television pioneers, archivists, and scholars (Compton, 2007). In response to the

report, the Library abdicated all responsibility for television preservation at a national level,

decreeing that such a foundation should be strictly a separate and private sector entity (Horak,

2012). According to Horak (2012), a group of private individuals founded the National Film and

Video Preservation Foundation. Attempts to document this organization’s current activities

indicate that they have ceased operations.

Modern broadcast archives are not far removed from any of the challenges related to their

history. Television archivists are continually occupied with managing the volumes of material in

their care, held in varying and deteriorating formats while vying for funding for preservation

activities and staff resources in the face of legal, commercial, and technological flux (Collins,

2010).

Professionalization Moving Image Archivists

An additional historic challenge to the preservation of television is purely functional. In

early days, “entertainment production companies did not even think of anyone’s responsibilities

being archival” (Schreibman, 1991, p.90). Starting in the late 1960s and continuing throughout

the 1970s, the field of people charged with such responsibilities grew dramatically, spurred by

the use of videotape for education and documentation as well as entertainment, as the

standardized cassette was now the major distribution medium for industrial video, educational

programming and independent producers (Murphy, 2011). In 1977, the Motion Picture Section

and the Recorded Sound Collection of the Library of Congress were combined to form the


Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. This new division’s head, Erik

Barnouw, recognized the need for a forum to allow moving image archives and archivists to

work together and share information. When the growing number of working television archivists

was still deemed too small to be a committee in the Society of American Archivists, Barnouw

organized a television archives conference for North American television archivists from non-

profits and networks (Schreibman, 1991). The group was named the Television Archives

Advisory Committee (TAAC), in deference to its predecessor, the Film Archives Advisory

Committee (FAAC) (Murphy, 2011).

The number of individuals and institutions preserving moving image materials continued

to grow into the mid-80s (Shay, 2011), at which point FAAC and TAAC were “inextricably

intertwined” (Murphy, 201. p.106). In 1990, the two groups joined together to form the

Association for Moving Image archivists (Murphy, 2011).

The professional development of television archivists has further developed with the

establishment of degree-granting programs. The first moving image preservation program in the

United States was the Jeffrey L. Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman

House, established in 1996. Two more programs followed in the next decade at UCLA and

NYU (Schaefer, 2007).

Television Research

It was not that long after television was introduced that institutions outside the broadcast

archives began developing their own collections for research. In 1958, the Mass

Communications History Center of the Wisconsin Historical Society, at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison, began with the donation of NBC’s records for preservation (Hilmes, 2010).

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) followed suit, with plans for a never-


constructed “television library as early as 1959 to assure good industry wide public relations

through public service efforts” (Spigel, 2010, p.55). Today, the ATAS collection remains on

loan to UCLA (Spigel, 2010), which began to collect television programs in 1965 and is now the

nation’s second-largest collection (Schreibman, 1991)). In 1976, William Paley founded the

Museum of Broadcasting (known today as the Paley Center) in New York City; though not

technically an archive, as its holdings are for the most part copies received from other archives, it

was the first of these institutions to expand access to past television programs beyond scholars to

the general public (Schreibman, 1991).

In 1990, the National Public Broadcasting Archives, housed at the University of

Maryland (Cariani, 2011), began as a cooperative effort among several broadcasting

organizations and educational institutions including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the

Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio, Academy for Educational Development and

the University of Maryland to preserve the history of public broadcasting in America (King,

2008, p.59)

Scholars interested in researching television have faced many of the same challenges that

broadcasters have in preserving it. From a technological perspective, planned obsolescence is

“extremely inconvenient” for the researcher (Davies, 2010, p.36). Free and open access can

poses legal logistics for certain copyrighted material, and is insupportably expensive in archives

that are understaffed and lack the equipment to provide screenings or make service copies

available (Prelinger, 2007).

Researchers working with an institution for access to older TV material must be prepared

for compromise (Compton, 2007), as “even those who find creative ways to obtain access still


struggle to get past the public relations arms of major companies and to secure detailed, accurate

data” (Perren, 2013, p.168).

In attempting to reconstruct an audiovisual record of then-Vice President Dan Quayle’s

criticism of the fictional television character Murphy Brown, Ubois (2006) found that copyright

prevented access to both Quayle’s speech and the desired episode of the show. Collins (2010)

had equal difficulty locating both episodes and original scripts for a study of the sitcom, All in

the Family.

Cultural assumptions have also hindered research on television. Through the mid-60s,

the scholarly community generally held the same position as the Library of Congress regarding

television's social and historical significance (Spigel, 2010). Among the more well-known

condemnations of the alleged ‘boob tube’ slash ‘idiot box’ is Newton Minow’s refrain of ‘the

vast wasteland’ (Gray & Lotz, 2012). Today, television’s role in our personal and national

heritage is widely recognized (Jacobs, 2006) and, ironically, communications scholars are

fascinated with the way television shapes contemporary culture (Meyer, 2012).

None of these factors have been much of a bother to practitioners of Media Studies, the

branch of academia to which Television Studies generally belongs, as both fields share “a

penchant for the new and the now” (Bodroghkozy , 2011, p.188-189). An emergent subset of

both fields is the area of Production Studies, which broadens the traditional view of producers to

include undervalued and invisible below-the-line production workers whose work can be studied

in the context of the larger communities to which they belong (Mayer, 2011). Though Roberts

(2011) considers this a “rather traditional anthropological methodology” that “overstates the

importance of human agency and individuality in a process which is far more complex and in


fact rather faceless”, it is not a radical departure from some of the seminal works in the field,

such as Rosten’s (1941) study of the regulation and remuneration of individuals employed in the

film industry, Powdermaker’s (1950) anthropological study of the film industry and Gitlin’s

(1983) quasi-ethnography of the commercial television industry in the United States (Miller,

2002).

Rare instances have allowed for analyses of production provided by those actually

involved in the production process: Bird’s (2009) analysis of the restoration of The Cat and

the Canary and Plasketes (1988) case study of post-production on Paul Simon’s Graceland

in Africa offer tremendous insight into the interaction and decision-making process present

during and throughout the various stages of production.

Studies of production programs, faculty, students and texts have been less frequent.

Becker (2009) finds that media students’ enthusiasm for their chosen subject matter poses an

obstacle in the way of “preconceived and sometimes even problematic assumptions about how

media texts work”. Bodroghkozy (2011) asserts that a significant percentage of media textbooks

“seem to assume undergraduates would rather look at lots of pictures broken up by bite-sized

pieces of text” (Bodroghkozy , 2011 p.193).

Use of Video in Research

Meyer (2012) sees the future of critical television studies in its ability to cross methods

and boundaries and there is no shortage of such crossings. Video documents are used as research

documents ethnomusicology, anthropology, dance and ritual studies and linguistics (Schuller,

2009, p.6). Information literacy has a well-developed history of practice within librarianship

(Haras & Sterling, 2011) and media literacy, a corollary to information literacy (Haras &


Sterling, 2011) is a necessary and common practice for providing young people with the basic

tools to understand media’s impact (Domine, 2011). Otto (2014) found that video may be

superior to textual materials for learning complex skills with faculty in a variety of disciplines

considering it a crucial component of their coursework.

Research and the Broadcast Archive

In the past decade, it was commonplace to pronounce the death of television in the wake

of new media (Gray & Lotz, 2012). Though “no major communications medium has ever been

completely supplanted by a later one” (Davies, 2010, p46), television certainly now finds itself

situated as “the newest of the ‘old media’ in Media Studies” (Bodroghkozy, 2011 p.189).

This repositioning of television along the historical spectrum has led to increased interest

in archival television material from scholars in disciplines outside Media Studies (Davies, 2010).

Broadcast materials have added value as historical sources because they both document historical

events and the history of broadcasting itself (Noordegraaf, 2010). Beyond program content,

broadcast archives possess a wide variety of material of potential interest to a broad spectrum of

scholars, including scripts, sets, costumes, equipment, production photographs, and program

schedules (Noordegraaf, 2010), as well as “advertisements, continuity material and program

captions” (Perry and Coward, 2010,p.48). Additionally, “the BBC conducted its own audience

research from the late 1930s onwards” (Kavanagh & Lee, 2010, p.69).

While in some academic circles “Television Studies still carries markers of ‘the bad

object’” (Bodroghkozy, 2011 p.189), archivists generally do not suffer from this syndrome

(Compton, 2007). Many archival scholars approach these materials with an attitude that in some

ways parallels the context-driven mission of production studies. Kavanagh & Lee (2010) stress

the importance of understanding the social, political and cultural context as well as the working


environment of program makers at any given time. Sutherland (2010) expands the concept

beyond producers as a means of understanding the identities of the parent institutions and

organizations themselves.

Some scholars have eschewed the contents of broadcast archives in favor of studying the

archives themselves. Connors (2000) studied how an institutional archive handled content

produced for a national broadcasting schedule, citing the following evaluation criteria as part of

an interpretive process: provenance, cost of retention, consideration of copyright and intellectual

property, reference potential and critical values such as production value, popularity, information

content and completeness. Ide & Weisse’s (2003) case-study of Boston’s WGBH showcased the

development of an appraisal and selection process at the level of local content and station-

specific care that “focuses on identifying the "added value" components inherent in broadcast

masters and supporting production elements,” as “these components both qualify and quantify

the selection process” (p.156). Spigel (2010) explored the dichotomy between the futuristic

architecture of the buildings that house audiovisual archives and the nostalgic bent of their

collections.

Broadcast archives themselves have also been the source of scholarly research. WGBH

built a prototype catalog to study the needs of academic researchers and found that scholars do

indeed form a special needs group (Michael, Todorovic & Beer, 2009).

In 1997, Librarian of Congress James Billington lamented that the lack of systematic

television preservation ensures that “future scholars will have to rely on incomplete evidence

when they assess the achievements and failures of our culture” (Compton, 2007).


Gracy & Kahn’s (2012) content analysis of research and professional literature on

preservation-related topics published in 2009 and 2010, found that the audiovisual literature

tends to focus on case studies of preservation and restoration.

Certainly, all is not lost; the major networks have employed proprietary systems for

dealing with their archives and digital assets (Carter, 2006) and the chances of anything

significant failing to survive are slim (Bryant, 2010). Cheaper digital storage has allowed

archives to collect more content than ever before, and broadcasters like NBC and PBS provide

online access to popular assets (Noordegraaf, 2010). Web services such as YouTube, where

most uploads are blithely unconcerned by questions of ownership and standards, provide access

to a plethora of material while linking contributors and users in increasingly complex social

networks (Prelinger, 2007). However, as such sources inevitably offer poor video quality,

incomplete episodes and series and potential risk, they are not optimal solutions for gaining

access to historical video for scholarly purposes (Collins, 2010).

The release of full television series on DVD allows for detailed, lengthy single-series

monographs on programs such as I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Miami Vice and The

Sopranos (Thorburn, 2011), but DVD release decisions are based on market demand, not

scholarly interest or research value (Collins, 2010); “there are still many television shows that

are difficult or impossible to find” (Collins, 2010, p.125) and, if scholars write only about the

programs that are available on DVD or currently being broadcast, they miss out on most of

television's history (Compton, 2007).

The various inflexible ways early digital video has been preserved (Schuller, 2009), the

loss of metadata needed to determine an object’s meaning (Noordegraaf, 2010), and the

perpetual lack of resources for processing and cataloguing will ensure that certain at-risk and rare


materials “become further buried -- either in archives or in media companies' non-priority, non-

lucrative backlog” (Collins, 2010, 122-123), as echoes of Billington’s lament are heard in future

attempts to use these materials for research purposes.

Chapter 3. Methodology

Recent studies in preservation research have explored ways of integrating archives and

special collections into undergraduate education, with a key focus on student learning, as part of

the broader mission of expanding the value proposition of libraries (Yakel & Daniels, 2013).

Nimer & Daines (2012) detailed how current models of archival instruction were applied to

create content in an undergraduate course designed to develop archival literacy skills. Bastian,

Cloonan and Harvey (2011) describe a course in the Digital Curriculum Laboratory at Simmons

College in which students are challenged with formulating a preservation plan for a variety of

obsolete media. Daniels & Yakel (2013) explored learning impacts that occur via exposure to

the archive to evaluate preservation programs and activities at the undergraduate and graduate

level.

This paper reports on the findings of a study aimed to explore available resources of

potential use for introducing basic principles of digital preservation within undergraduate

television production curricula. A quantitative content analysis of a particular resource -

television production textbooks - was conducted to gather the study’s data. The sample included

texts published after the 2009 Digital Television transition, from the years between and inclusive

of 2010 and 2014.

The project was designed as an extensive study to discover common properties or

patterns that hold within a population. Two distinct research questions were identified:



preservation?



In designing the study, five distinct phases were deemed necessary to answer these

research questions. Phase One identified the particular type of resource to be measured for

analysis. Phase Two specified rules and operations for selecting and acquiring the sample.

Phase Three defined basic principles of digital preservation. In Phase Four, the research

instrument was designed. Phase Five determined the number and order of steps needed for

measuring and recording the data gathered from the sample.

Phase One: Identifying the Resource

This project was undertaken as a capstone project for a graduate course on research in

Library and Information Studies at CUNY-Queens College in Flushing, NY from September-

December, 2014. As a requirement of the course was to complete the project in one semester, it

was necessary to select a resource that could be acquired and analyzed in a timely manner. In

their analysis of introductory archives courses, Bastian & Yakel (2006) made use of directories

published by the Society of American Archivists, the National Council on Public History, and

the American Historical Association, to compile a list of schools and departments that offered

some degree of archival education, and then studied these programs based on groupings, course

groupings, syllabi and course readings. There are no such comprehensive directories for

undergraduate television production programs. Without such a list, it would not have been

possible to both research and select programs and request or search for syllabi and course

groupings in the time allotted for the project. The process of reviewing research literature for the


project led to the discovery of Connor & Rice’s (2012, in Mitchell, et al.) work in developing the

American History Textbook Project. This inspired the selection of television production

textbooks as the project’s resource for analysis.

Phase Two: Sampling

Having determined that television production textbooks were a suitable resource for

analysis within the scope of the project, a sample of textbooks needed to be identified. As it was

not possible to locate an authoritative source to define the sampling frame of all television

production textbooks produced since 2010, it was decided to use non-probability sampling. In

addition to covering television production as subject matter, it was desired that the texts be

known to be used for instruction in undergraduate production curricula. While a more extensive

study could have determined this with a greater degree of precision, it was reasoned that

placement within an academic library was acceptable in lieu of this knowledge.

The matter of time was still a consideration as well, and all of these factors led to the

decision to search exclusively in the City University of New York (CUNY) library catalog. Such

a limitation would allow for a manageable and representative sample in a single environment

(Otto, 2014). Other factors favored use of the CUNY catalog as well. CUNY is the third-largest

university system and the largest urban university in the United States (CUNY, 2014.) The

university’s television station, CUNY TV, is the largest of its kind in the country (CUNY TV,

2014) and has incorporated the archive and digital preservation into a degree of its production

workflow (D. Rice, personal communication, February, 2014). Thirteen institutions within the

CUNY system offer programs and degrees with some component of television and video


production programs, including twenty-four at the undergraduate level (see Appendix B for the

full list of CUNY production programs by schools, departments, and degrees offered).

According to the National Center for Education’s College Navigator, there are

approximately one hundred ninety undergraduate television production programs in the United

States (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.). Comparison of this figure to CUNY’s

offerings cannot be offered, as it is difficult to discuss television production as an undergraduate

major in such relative terms. Television programs find themselves situated in a myriad of

paradigms, as subsets of Communications, Media Studies or in hybrid programs, juxtaposed with

related disciplines such as Journalism or some combination Film and Video (see Appendix C for

a list of related programs and majors found using two online databases, the National Center for

Education’s College Navigator and Peterson’s College Bound). The evolution of the name for

the Paley Center mirrors this phenomenon. Upon its erection in 1975, it was known as the

Museum of Broadcasting. In 1991, it was renamed the Museum of Television and Radio. This

moniker lasted until 2008, when the onset of digital convergence became the Paley Center for

Media (Schreibman, 1991).

CUNY uses a diverse matrix of such combinations in naming production related

programs. One CUNY program, Lehman College, changed a program name during the course of

the study, splitting the defunct “Multi-media Studies major” into two new programs, Film and

TV Studies and Media Communications Studies (Lehman College, 2014). Though it is not

possible to accurately demonstrate what portion CUNY’s offerings represent of the total number

of programs nation-wide, without exploring individual program descriptions, the CUNY system

appears to offer a substantial degree of production curricula to justify analyzing textbooks held in

its catalog for the purposes of this study.


With these determinations made, it was possible to define a set of rules and operations for

the selection of a convenience sample for analysis. The rules and operations for inclusion in the

sample were as follows:

A) Belonging to a CUNY library

B) Listed under the Library of Congress subject headings Television, Production and Direction

and Video Recordings, Production and Direction

C) Judged eligible by their bibliographic authority records

D) Available through interlibrary loan

Searching by Subject Heading. A challenge in searching for television

production texts is the lack of a controlled vocabulary for the subject. When the field of

archivists working in both the film and television sectors collectively mobilized to form the

AMIA in 1991 (Murphy, 2011), the more-inclusive term Moving Images was introduced, yet

authority subject headings do not reflect this shift. The Library of Congress authority heading

for television production is Television -- Production and direction. One challenge this presents is

the combination of two discrete job functions. While producer slash directors do exist, and are

of great appeal to production companies for their willingness to work at a premium (Blumenthal

and Goodenough, 1998), it takes deliberate effort to search specifically for only one or the other

as a subject. The inclusive nature of this subject heading adds a second challenge, as it allows

for the inclusion of texts that may have some connection with television but have little to do with

either role. For example, while searching under this heading in Worldcat, with all Advanced

Search filters applied, the database still retrieved a record for the autobiography of a reality

television performer, likely because this figure is listed in-name as one of the show’s many

producers.


A third challenge in searching for television production texts lies in the semantic

difference between the medium through which content is broadcast, i.e. television, and the

media on which it is recorded, stored and preserved - video. It is expected that any television

production text is going to include some consideration of video. Video is used to record a wide

variety of content produced for distribution across a number of platforms, including television,

and as such, has its own Library of Congress authority heading, Video recordings -- Production

and direction. The intertwining of these two headings can lead to great cross-over in

bibliographic records, as many video texts cover aspects of television production. As many

modern “films” are actually shot on video, this phenomena is similarly perpetuated within the

third moving image related Library of Congress subject heading, Motion pictures -- Production

and direction. Early searches for a fourth related subject heading, Digital video -- Production

and direction, yielded a preponderance of results related to web applications and graphic design.

For these reasons, the last two subject headings, Motion pictures -- Production and direction and

Digital video -- Production and direction, were deemed beyond the scope of the study, as cross-

over would most likely disregard television production.

Table 1 shows the total number of results found in the CUNY catalog based on the two subject

headings, Television -- Production and direction and Video recordings -- Production and

direction.

Table 1

Subject Heading search results, CUNY catalog


Television, Production and

direction

Video recordings, Production and

direction

Total

203 136 339

Table 2 compares the total results yielded by the CUNY catalog in comparison to the

same subject heading search using Worldcat.

Table 2

Subject heading search results, CUNY and Worldcat catalogs.

Subject Heading CUNY Worldcat

Television, Production and Direction

203 1365

Video Recordings, Production and Direction

136 784

Total 339 2149

Table 3 shows the search results for the same subject headings in the CUNY catalog,

inclusive of the years 2010-2014.

Table 3

Subject Heading search results, CUNY catalog, 2010-2014

Year Television, Production and

direction

Video recordings,

Production and direction

Total

2014 0 2 2

2013 5 0 5


Year Television, Production and

direction

Video recordings,

Production and direction

Total

2012 2 4 6

2011 2 9 11

2010 2 4 6

Total 11 19 30

Table 4 depicts the subject heading search results for 2010-2014 in the CUNY catalog as

compared to the same search in Worldcat.

Table 4

Subject Heading search results, 2010-2014, CUNY and Worldcat catalogs.

Subject Heading CUNY Worldcat

Television, Production and direction

11 171

Video recordings, Production and direction

19 117

Total 30 288

Absent an authoritative list of television production textbooks published in the past five

years, comparing search results between the CUNY and Worldcat catalog does not provide a

definitive demonstration of CUNY’s relative representation of the overall population, but it does

provide a relative perspective on the holdings of the CUNY catalog with regards to the sample.

Selecting the Sample. After searching the CUNY catalog under the appropriate

subject headings and filtering the results by publication date, all bibliographic records were


inspected to ensure the texts covered relevant subject matter. Eight books were then identified as

suitable for inclusion in the sample, as listed in Table 5. The list is divided equally but subject

headings, with four representations of each included. Three of the textbooks were published in

the years 2013 and three in 2010, with one each from the years 2011 and 2012 (See Appendix D

for complete bibliographic information on the sample, including publisher, edition, lending

library and related production program).

Table 5

Textbooks selected for analysis.

Title Author(s) Year Subject Heading

Cue & Cut: A Practical Approach to Working in Multi-Camera Studios

Singleton-Turner 2011 Television Production and Direction

Mastering MultiCamera Techniques: From Preproduction to Editing and Deliverables

Jacobson 2010 Video Recordings, Production and Direction

Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video

Rea, Irving 2010 Video Recordings, Production and Direction

Television Production Owens, Millerson 2013 Television Production and Direction

Television Production & Broadcast Journalism

Harris 2012 Television Production and Direction

Video Basics 7 Zettl 2013 Television Production and Direction


Title Author(s) Year Subject Heading

Video Production Handbook Owens, Millerson 2013 Video Recordings, Production and Direction

Video Shooter: Storytelling with HD Cameras

Braverman 2010 Video Recordings, Production and Direction

Acquisition of the individual textbooks from their respective lending libraries via

interlibrary loan posed no issues or complications and the project proceeded on the design of the

research instrument.

Phase Three: Defining Basic Principles of Digital Preservation

The definition of digital preservation and associated conceptual terms is a subject of

debate within the preservation field (Cloonan, 2014). Bastian, Cloonan, & Harvey (2011)

analyzed online documentation of courses in digital preservation, curation, and stewardship to

characterize the nature of current preservation pedagogy and found that a core literature had not

yet been identified or developed. Costello (2010) mapped the syllabi contents of digital

preservation courses offered by twenty-six schools against terms from the matrix of digital

curation knowledge and competencies developed by the DigCCurr Project at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to determine the terms that appeared most frequently (cited in

Bastian et al., 2011). That study was related to the broader concepts of digital curation and

digital stewardship. For this project, a more basic list of principles related to digital preservation

was desired, and as no similar studies could be found, it was decided to build a proprietary list.


To develop this list, four online sources offering definitions of digital preservation

terminology were researched. The four sources are the Library of Congress’ National Digital

Stewardship Alliance, the Digital Preservation Coalition, the American Library Association and

the University of Michigan Libraries. These sources were analyzed to develop a comprehensive

list of discrete terms and definitions listed on all four sites, and then measured in comparison to

one another to determine the frequency of all terms across the sources (See Appendix E for the

complete list of definitions). This method is based on the assumption that a high degree of

frequency indicates that the term can be considered a basic principle of digital preservation, as

opposed to advanced concepts that would appear in archival-centric sources, especially those

committed to preserving television and other moving images.

Variations of terms, such as “migration” and “format migration” were counted as one

term. Terms with larger sub-headings, such as metadata and its’ variations technical metadata,

descriptive metadata, et al., were also counted as one term in the broader sense. In all, sixty-one

discrete terms were identified across the four sources, shown in Table 6.

Table 6

Number of terms per source.

Source # of Terms

National Digital Stewardship Alliance

42

Digital Preservation Coalition

17

American Library Association

23

University of Michigan Libraries

13


Four terms were found to appear in each source: digital preservation, emulation,

metadata, and migration. Three terms appeared on three sites: migration, provenance and

refreshing. Sixteen terms appeared twice, and thirty-eight appeared once. The seven terms

which appeared with the highest frequency were: digital preservation, emulation, metadata,

migration, provenance and refreshing.

Phase Four: Designing the Research Instrument

The study’s chosen method for data collection was to use existing documents as data. To

measure these documents, a research instrument was developed in the form of a checklist of

seven terms associated with digital preservation that were deemed as basic principles. These

principles were each assigned a code that would function as the recording units for content

analysis, shown in Table 7.

Table 7

Basic principles and assigned codes.

Principle Coding

Born digital BD

Digital preservation

DP

Emulation EM

Metadata MD

Migration MI

Provenance PR

Refreshing RF

To complete the design of the research instrument, the codes were then incorporated into

a template that would be used for the quantitative analysis of each individual element (Table 8).


Table 8

Research Instrument Template

TEXTBOOK(Title, Year)

Coding Glossary Index Table of Contents

Chapter Entry

BD

DP

EM

MD

MI

PR

RF

The recording units were Y for Yes and N for No. Positive mentions were indicated by a Y. If

the term was not mentioned, that was represented by an N.

Phase Five: Steps for Content Analysis

Completion of the first four phases of the project’s methodology resulted in the

identification a resource for analysis, selection of a sample for measurement, the definition of

basic principles of digital preservation and the design of a research instrument for measuring

such principles in the sample. The final phase in designing the study was to determine the

procedure for conducting the content analysis. It was decided that this would be carried out in

three steps:

1) Nominal measurement of coded terms.

2) Nominal measurement of frequency of coded terms.

3) Cross-reference with bibliographic information for nominal measurement of term distribution.


The first step classified the raw data by simply recording the presence of the terms in

each of four possible locations: tables of contents, individual chapters and/or chapter entries,

glossaries and indices. It was decided to identify the mentions in the broadest possible context

first, and then work towards more specific contexts. The locations and their context were ranked

as follows:

Glossary

Index

Table of Contents

Chapter Entry

In the second step of the content analysis, the terms were tallied to determine their

frequencies and relative distribution. For terms appearing in the index, the number of mentions

was counted.

Step three saw the frequencies and distributions of the mentions cross-referenced with

the bibliographic information recorded in the selection of the sample. Key factors of interest

were the publication date and level of edition (first, second, et al). If the term was included in

the glossary, the definition was recorded. Entries appearing in tables of content were described

in terms of the total number of sections and chapters that comprised the book. If the term was a

chapter entry, as opposed to the topic of the chapter, the placement of the entry relative to the

overall structure of the chapter was recorded.

After completing these three steps, a fourth step was added to the analysis involved to

account for contextual information regarding the use of these principles that was deemed

noteworthy. All findings were then validated and are presented in the following section.


Chapter 4. Findings and Analysis

This section reports on the findings of a study aimed to explore available resources of

potential use for introducing basic principles of digital preservation within undergraduate

television production curricula. A quantitative content analysis of a particular resource -

television production textbooks - was conducted to gather the study’s data. The project was

designed as an extensive study to discover common properties or patterns that hold within a

population. The goal of this study was to answer two distinct research questions:


preservation?



To answer these questions, the quantitative content analysis conducted on a convenience

sample of eight television production textbooks published since 2010. The research instrument

was designed to determine the presence of coded terms previously defined as basic principles of

digital preservation. The results are of this study now be presented and discussed.

Findings

A quantitative content analysis was performed on eight television production textbooks

using a research instrument designed to determine the presence of basic principles of digital

preservation. Complete analysis of the sample found that two of the textbooks mentioned any of

the seven basic principles. The two texts were Cue & Cut: A Practical Approach to

Working in Multi-Camera Studios (Singleton-Turner, 2011) and Video Shooter:

Storytelling with HD Cameras (Braverman, 2010). Both of these books contained


the same principle, metadata. The distribution of these appearances is now presented and

discussed. The six books that did not mention any of the principles are omitted.

Nominal Presence

The first step of the content analysis was to nominally determine the presence of these

terms in each of four possible locations within the texts, in this order: Glossary, Index, Table of

Contents, and Chapter Entry. Positive mentions are indicated by a “Y” for Yes, the absence of

the terms is noted by an “N” for No. Table 9 shows the nominal presence of the term in the

locations that were searched.

Table 9

Nominal Presence by Search Location

Book Glossary Index Table of Contents

Chapter Entry

Cue & Cut N Y Y Y

Video Shooter N Y Y Y

Three books in the sample did not contain glossaries, including the two that did include

the terms in some capacity. The third text that did not contain a glossary was Mastering

MultiCamera Techniques (Jacobson, 2010).

Frequency

The second step of the content analysis measured the frequency and distribution of the

positive mentions within the Index, Table of Contents and as Chapter Entries. The total numbers

of mentions in each section were tallied and are shown in Table 10.


Table 10

Frequency of Positive Mentions by Search Location

Book Index Table of Contents

Chapter Entry

Cue & Cut 4 3 1

Video Shooter 2 1 1

This data was then analyzed further to determine the frequency within each location.

Table of Contents was measured by the number of chapters covering the subject in relation to the

total number of chapters in the text. Chapter Entries were measured in terms of how the term

was used, at either the sentence or paragraph level, and in relation to the total entries in each

chapter where the term was used.

Cue & Cut used metadata in three out of eighteen total chapters, and once in one of

four section introductions. Three of the uses were at the sentence-level. One uses was as a

Chapter Entry, with four additional sentence-level uses in one paragraph, in a chapter containing

eighteen entries. The term was used a total of seven times at the sentence-level.

Video Shooter used the metadata in one out of eleven chapters. The one use was as a

Chapter Entry, and included three total uses, including definition, at the sentence-level. The

Chapter Entry was one of fifteen in the chapter and comprised two paragraphs.

Distribution

The third step of the content analysis involved cross-referencing the results with other

bibliographic information to determine the distribution of the term by publication year (Table

11), series edition (Table 12), and subject heading (Table 13).


Table 11

Distribution by Year of Publication

Year # of Books in which Metadata appears

Total # of Books in Sample

Published That Year

2013 0 3

2012 0 1

2011 1 1

2010 1 3

Table 12

Distribution by Series Edition

Title Edition


1st

Video Shooter: Storytelling with HD Cameras 2nd

Table 13

Distribution by Subject Heading

Title Subject Heading


Television Production and Direction

Video Shooter: Storytelling with HD Cameras

Video Recordings, Production and Direction

Analysis of Findings


The previous section reported the findings of a quantitative content analysis of a

convenience sample of eight television production textbooks published since 2010. The data

gathered in the study were intended to answer two distinct research questions:


preservation?



The data will now be analyzed in relation to these two research questions.

Research Question #1: Do television production textbooks published since

2010 include basic principles of digital preservation?

Of the eight books measured, only two mentioned any of the seven basic principles of

digital preservation, and both of those mentions were of the term metadata. Based on the

frequency and distribution of this single term, it cannot be said that the eight books of the sample

include basic principles of digital preservation. The total results cannot produce a conclusion

representative of the total population of television production textbooks produced since 2010.

Research Question #2: Would these texts be useful for introducing basic

principles of digital preservation within undergraduate television production

curricula?

Due to the minimal amount of raw data, a fourth step was added to record noteworthy

contextual information. A few of the books in the sample did attempt to address topics related to

digital preservation and archival standards, albeit with unique terminology. Braverman (2010)

included two chapter entries, ‘Archivable Deliverables’ and ‘The Archiving Challenge’. These

entries appeared respectively in chapters titled ‘Deliverables’ and ‘Going with the Flow’. Two


books accurately cited Linear Tape Open (LTO) as the best option for long-term preservation,

although for different reasons, neither one related to best archival practice. Braverman (2010)

pointed to the fragility and failure of hard drives, while Jacobson (2010) based his

recommendation on legal compliance for insurance. Braverman (2010) couched these concepts

in a somewhat dismissive attitude, claiming that “Nervous Nellies point to the inherent volatility

of data files (p.173) and “a standard’ is what everyone ignores. What everyone actually observes

is called industry practice” (p.178). Braverman also offers a description of the analogue

workflow that both mirrors the history of broadcast preservation -

“Shooting tape, we blissfully followed a simple workflow: roll of a bunch of cassettes,

hand them off to a production assistant, and submit an invoice. End of story. Nice”

- and deflates hope for the future of a workflow that incorporates digital preservation and

archival standards:

“Today, given the versatility of solid-state camera and the vagaries of computers and the

file-based environment, there is no longer one “industry-approved” workflow. In fact, there are

many possible workflows and you may well develop your own unique to your projects” (p.177).

The lack of frequency and distribution of basic digital principles in this sample is

disturbing, especially considering that the most recent mention was in 2011. Add to this the

problems associated with the contextual presentation of the one terms included, it can be said

that the texts in the sample would not be useful for incorporating basic principles of digital

preservation within undergraduate television production curricula. A representative conclusion

regarding all television production textbooks cannot be offered at this time.


Chapter 5. Conclusion

This paper reported on a research project that explored available resources of potential

use for introducing basic principles of digital preservation within undergraduate television

production curricula. The findings presented are the result of a quantitative content analysis of a

particular resource, television production textbooks produced after the digital television

transition. The study was designed to answer two distinct research questions:


preservation?



While it was possible to determine the answers to these questions within the sample, the

data collected are not significant enough to draw conclusions about the larger population. In

discussing the impact of research on orphan films, Streible (2007) references a colleague’s

observation that “research could not really be said to have broad impact until mainstreamed into

college-market textbooks” (p.128). Based on the analysis of the convenience sample selected for

measurement, it does not appear that research in the area of digital preservation has had much of

an impact on these particular texts.

Achievements

This study was undertaken as a capstone project for a graduate course on research in

Library and Information Studies at CUNY-Queens College in Flushing, New York. A research

problem was identified and two distinct research questions were posed. A relevant a literature

review was conducted. A research project was then designed to answer the research questions.

This included the selection of an appropriate methodology, identification and acquisition of a


sample, the development of a research instrument, and a quantitative content analysis to measure

the sample was executed. Data were collected and classified, and results were presented for

discussion.

Limitations

This origin of this project as a course assignment, and the caveat of completion of the

project in one semester, resulted in a project design with obvious limitations on time and scope.

Reliance on textbooks necessitated a degree of faith, both in that it was not known for certain

whether these texts are actually used in any specific courses and to maintain the “illusion that

students read all of the assigned texts or that professors actually refer to all of the readings.”

(Bastian and Yakel, 2006, p.137)

In addition to a larger sample of texts, greater amounts of data may have been available

through analysis of program offerings and syllabi. A larger scope may have included programs

in graphic design and interactive media, and alternative resources, particularly online or digital

learning tools might have been explored. The use of Library of Congress subject headings may

have itself been a limitation, as there is possibly a more appropriate subject authority for

television production. Methodologies such as surveying and interviewing may have yielded

different results. The list of basic principles of digital preservation may have been altered to

include terms that would perhaps be more relevant to television production.

Future Research

Future research in this area could be done using a wider range of resources and

methodologies. Throughout the study, several challenges brought to light other areas that need

exploration: the wide variety of names assigned to undergraduate media-related programs, the

lack of analysis of instructional texts used in these programs, the limitations of approved subject


headings for television production, and the question of what constitutes basic principles of digital

preservation.

With regards to preservation research and education, several LIS/IS programs are

experimenting with digital environments that complement classroom learning (Bastian, Cloonan

and Harvey, 2011). One of the challenges this poses is the acquisition of “large and

representative amounts of nonproprietary digital content for student use” (Bastian, Cloonan and

Harvey, 2011, p. 616). Undergraduate media production programs can alleviate this problem as

the nature of their coursework already creates such material. Becker (2009) describes ways in

which digital preservation has been integrated into an undergraduate film history course which

could easily be expanded to include actual interaction with such materials.

This would obviously involve engaging faculty, and more information regarding their

attitude towards digital preservation needs to be studied and understood.

A possible step after that would be to engage working archivists in the conversation.

Through some combined method of forum, survey and interviews, it may then be possible to

develop a model of instruction for a production workflow that incorporates digital preservation.


References

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Bastian, J., & Yakel, E. (2006). Towards a development of an archival core curriculum: The

United States and Canada. Archival Science, 6(2), 133-150.

Becker, C. (2009). Defamiliarizing and refamiliarizing film and television Texts. Cinema

Journal, 48(3), p90-94.

Blumenthal, H.J., & Goodenough, O.R. (1998). This Business of Television. New York:

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Appendix A. Producers Definitions of Producer

"Most people have absolutely no concept of what producers do, even people in the film

business…"-- Barbara Broccoli (co-producer of James Bond movies) (Pardo, 2010)

"Every producer is different -- it's been so different on every movie that I've worked on. For me,

there is no definition"-- Sydney Pollack (producer and director). (De Winter, cited in Pardo,

2010)

“Most people think a producer is the one who puts the money, which is wrong. If you're smart,

you will never put up the money yourself! (Seger & Whetmore, cited in Pardo 2010)

“In his hands lies the supervision of every element that goes to make up the finished product.

These elements are both tangible and intangible, the control of human beings and real properties

as well as the control of the artistic temperament, the shaping of creative forces and the

knowledge of the public needs for entertainment (Jesse Lasky, 1937: 1). (cited in Pardo, 2010)

John Yorke, Producer, EastEnders on being a Producer?: “I think the only thing you have to have

is the courage to a)make decision quickly and then b)stand by the consequences of doing that.”

(Gilbert, 2010, p.30)


Appendix B. CUNY Production programs

School Undergraduate Majors Advanced Majors

Borough of Manhattan Community College

AS Media Arts & Technology; AA Communications Studies

Bronx Community College AA Media Studies, AS Media and Digital Film Production, AS Media Technology

Brooklyn College BA Documentary Production BA Film ProductionBA Film StudiesBA Film Industry StudiesBA ScreenwritingBA Television and Radio

MFA Television Production; MS Media StudiesMFA: Producing, Post Production (2015)MA Cinema Studies (2015)

College of Staten Island BA Cinema StudiesBS Communications

MA Cinema and Media Studies

CCNY BFA Film and Video Production

MFA Media Arts Production

Hunter College BA FilmBA Media Studies

MFA Integrated Media Arts

Kingsborough Community College

AAS Media Arts

LaGuardia CC AA Media Studies

Lehman BA Film and TV StudiesBA Media Communications Studies

MFA with specialization in Digital Media

NYCCT New York City College of Technology

Video Production Certificate


School Undergraduate Majors Advanced Majors

Queens BA Media StudiesBA Film Studies

MA Media Studies

York BS Communications Technology

CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

MA, Journalism

School Majors Departments

Brooklyn College Film; Television and Radio School of Visual, Media and Performing Arts


Multimedia Art, Multimedia Programming, Video Arts & Technology

Media Arts & Technology


Communication Studies Speech, Communication & Theatre Arts

Bronx Community College Media Studies; Media and Digital Film Production;Media Technology

Communications Arts & Sciences

College of Staten Island Cinema StudiesCommunicationsCinema and Media Studies

Media Culture

CCNY Film and Video Production Media & Communication Arts

Hunter College Film; Media Studies Film and Media Studies

Kingsborough Community College

Media Arts Communication and Performing Arts

LaGuardia Community College

Media StudiesNew Media Technology

Media Technology

Lehman College Film and TV StudiesMedia Communications Studies

Journalism, Communications and Theatre

NYCCT Video Production Entertainment Technology


School Majors Departments

Queens College Media StudiesFilm Studies

Media Studies

York Performing and Fine Arts Communications/Technology


Appendix C. National Production Programs

National Center for Education’s College Navigator

Heading (Programs and Majors in Heading)

Non Advanced

Advanced

Total Programs and Majors

Heading Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs (23)

Subheading 1

Communication and Media Studies

Sub Heading 1.1

Communication and Media Studies, other 99 41 140

Sub sub heading 1.2

Communications, General 180 46 226

Sub sub heading 1.3

Mass Communication/Media Studies 270 70 340

Sub Heading 1.4

Speech Communication and Rhetoric n/a n/a n/a

Subheading 2

Communication, Journalism and Related Programs, others

Subsub 2.1

Communication, Journalism and Related Programs, others

104 32 136

Subheading 3

Journalism

sub sub 3.1

Broadcast Journalism 83 5 88

Subheading 4

PR, Advertising and Applied Communication

n/a

Subheading 5

Publishing n/a

Subheading 6

Radio, Television and Digital Communication


Subsub 6.1

Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia

191 32 223

Subsub 6.2

Radio and Television 192 21 213

Radio, Televisions ,and Digital Communication

33 3 36

Heading Heading Visual and Performing Arts (64)subs1-5 n/asubheading 6(2)

Film/Video and Photographic Arts

subsub6(2).1

Cinematography and Film/Video Production 190 38 228

Subsub 6(2).2

Documentary Production 5 5 10

Sub sub 6.3

Film/Cinema/Video Studies 147 31 178

Sub sub 6.4

Film/Video and Photographic Arts, other 40 10 50

sub sub 6.5

Photography n/a

Peterson’s Guide to Colleges.

UndergraduateHeading Visual and Performing Arts UndergradSubheading Film/Cinema/Video StudiesSubsubheading

Film/Cinema/Video Studies 242

Subsubheading

Cinematography and Film/Video Production 210

Heading Communication/JournalismSubheading Communication/Journalism

subsubheading

Radio & Television 226

Radio, television and digital communication related 44Mass Communication/Media 538

Heading Communication Technologies


Radio and Television Broadcasting Technology 86

Appendix D. Complete bibliographic information for sample

Author(s) Title Year Edition Publisher Holding Libraries

Owens, Millerson

Television Production

2013 15th Focal Press (Taylor and Francis) NY & London

Manhattan CC, Brooklyn, NYCCT

Zettl Video Basics 7

2013 1st Cengage Advantage, Boston, MA

Bronx CC

Harris Television Production & Broadcast Journalism

2012 2nd Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc. Illinois

York College

Owens, Millerson

Video Production Handbook

2013 5th Focal Press (Taylor and Francis) NY & London

Manhattan CC, Bronx CC, Kingsborough

Rea, Irving Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video

2010 4th Focal Press (Elsevier) Burlington, MA and Oxford

NYCCT

Jacobson Mastering MultiCamera Techniques: From Preproduction to Editing and Deliverables

2010 1st Focal Press (Elsevier) Burlington, MA and Oxford

NYCCT

Braverman Video Shooter: Storytelling with HD Cameras

2010 2nd Focal Press (Elsevier) Burlington, MA and Oxford

Manhattan CC, NYCCT


Author(s) Title Year Edition Publisher Holding Libraries

Singleton-Turner


2011 1st Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York

Brooklyn College


Appendix E. Complete list of digital preservation terminology

Definition Source

Definition Source

Definition Source

Definition Source

Term NDSA ALA DPC UM # of Times Term Appears

Digital Preservation

x x x x 4

Emulation x x x x 4Metadata x x x x 4Migration x x x x 4Born digital

x x x 3

Provenance

x x x (variation)

3

Refreshing x x x (variation)

3

Access x x 2

Authentication

x x 2

Authenticity

x x 2

Digital Content

x x 2

Digital materials

x x 2

Digital Object

x x 2

Format migration

x x (variation)

2

Integrity x x (variation)

2

Life Cycle Management

x x (variation)

2

Process noun

x x 2

Reformatting

x (variation)

x 2

Render x (variation)

x 2

Storage x x 2

Unique identifier

x x (variation)

2

Verify x x (variation)

2


File format x x 2

Archival Original

x 1

Backup x 1

Bag x 1

Bagger x 1

BagIt Specification

x 1

Best Edition

x 1

Bit Preservation

x 1

Canonical x 1

Chain of Custody

x 1

Checksum x 1

Creation x 1

Dark archive

x 1

Derivative x 1

Digital archiving

x 1

Digital publications

x 1

Digital repository

x 1

Digital Signature

x 1

Disaster prevention

x 1

Electronic Records

x 1

Fixity check

x 1

Ingest x 1

Instance x 1

Maintenance

x 1

Management

x 1

Master files

x 1

Obsolescence

x 1


Organizational Unity

x 1

Package (verb)

x 1

package(noun)

x 1

Permissions

x 1

Preservation copy

x 1

Process verb

x 1

Received version

x 1

Restricted Use

x 1

Schema x 1

Validation x 1

Digitization

x 1

Documentation

x 1

Air Today_Gone Tomorrow

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