Since the KUTV News collection arrived at the Marriott Library’s Special Collections Department in 2005, Moving Image and Sound Archivists have been striving to provide access to these valuable historical materials recorded on now obsolete broadcast videotapes. Now, 241 news broadcasts from 1977-1979 are newly available to the University of Utah community and researchers around the world thanks to a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

Local television news broadcasts are important primary source documents that allow scholars today to hear and see historical events as they unfolded. They hold a treasure trove of stories not reported or archived by national networks: stories which reflect regional concerns and narratives and which shed light on how local communities reacted to national trends and world events.

Since the KUTV News collection arrived at the Marriott Library’s Special Collections Department in 2005, Moving Image and Sound Archivists have been striving to provide access to these valuable historical materials recorded on now obsolete broadcast videotapes. Now, 241 news broadcasts from 1977-1979 are newly available to the University of Utah community and researchers around the world thanks to a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

Local television news broadcasts are important primary source documents that allow scholars today to hear and see historical events as they unfolded. They hold a treasure trove of stories not reported or archived by national networks: stories which reflect regional concerns and narratives and which shed light on how local communities reacted to national trends and world events.

In Utah, as across the country, the late 1970s were a time of cultural upheaval marked by high profile historical events, including the debate for and against the Equal Rights Amendment pending its 1979 ratification deadline, the 1977 execution of Gary Gilmore at the Utah State Prison after the Supreme Court reversed a previous decision defining capital punishment as “cruel and unusual,” and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ 1978 revelation that opened the priesthood to men of African descent.

These narratives, as well as hundreds of informative news stories about local people, places and events, have been both digitized and thoroughly described. Thanks to this grant from CLIR, historians, filmmakers, genealogists, and students of disciplines like Political Science, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Communications are now able to search broadcasts between January 5, 1977 and March 6, 1979 for content relevant to their research.

This project was timely. Not only can current active discussions on race, gender, and civil liberties benefit from the historical insight provided by these over-forty-year-old tapes, but this funding also came at a vital moment in the lifespan of these videocassettes. Because of format obsolescence and the chemical deterioration that degrades magnetic tape, these unique recordings were at risk of becoming unplayable.

Appropriately, the program which funded this project is titled, Recordings at Risk. A national regranting program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by CLIR, Recordings at Risk supports “the preservation of rare and unique audio, audiovisual, and other time-based media of high scholarly value through digital reformatting.”

The KUTV News collection is the only publicly accessible television news archive in the area.  Thanks to this $20,500 grant, researchers worldwide can search the contents of these newly preserved broadcasts using the collection finding aid and request personal research copies of the videos without visiting the University of Utah campus.  

To request a video, please send the Reproduction Request form on the Special Collections website to Moving Image & Sound Archivist Molly Rose Steed (molly.steed@utah.edu).  

The digitized broadcasts may also be accessed via the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library from any computer on the University of Utah campus using a hard-wired internet connection. 

Questions about accessing the news archive? Contact Molly Rose Steed at molly.steed@utah.edu