How do TV stations store their TV shows & movies?

[Squall]

I've always wondered this myself. Do TV stations take great pains to preserve and maintain their TV show & movie collections? Do channels with huge libraries of material (like Cartoon Network) keep their material saved on DVDs in a bomb shelter under CN Studios in southern California? I'd like to think TV stations went to great pains to preserve and maintain the content they own. I'd hate to think that some tornado, hurricane, earthquake, or human catastrophe (like fire or terrorism) would destroy forever a TV show I know & loved...

[Roger Smith]

hmm maybe they made copys from them and put them in boxes or tape them and put them in a secret shelter so later civilizations find the stuff we did! or in cause the building goes boom

[Space Cadet]

I've always wondered this myself. Do TV stations take great pains to preserve and maintain their TV show & movie collections? Do channels with huge libraries of material (like Cartoon Network) keep their material saved on DVDs in a bomb shelter under CN Studios in southern California? I'd like to think TV stations went to great pains to preserve and maintain the content they own. I'd hate to think that some tornado, hurricane, earthquake, or human catastrophe (like fire or terrorism) would destroy forever a TV show I know & loved...

I think networks usually have vaults and there is someone who takes care of it. At least, that's what I got from that ESPN commercial.

[Anthonynotes]

For local TV stations, probaby depends on the resources of the station and their interest in preserving their old material on what gets stored, and for how long. Newscasts are almost certainly all archived; other locally-produced live-action shows might vary, depending on the factors mentioned above.

For network broadcasts, newscasts are archived, as are any shows the network owns (like the Tonight Show); I'd presume shows that others produced (like "Happy Days"/"Seinfeld"/etc.) are archived by that show's producers. Same deal for cable-based series...

In the earliest days of TV, shows were mostly live---save for some being recorded to film first (like "I Love Lucy"), or "kinescope" (which was just filming the image of a live broadcast off a TV, which back then was the only way of distributing shows for west coast broadcasts/archiving). Videotape was invented in the late 50's, which greatly helped in recording TV shows.

-B.

[ZorBrak]

Shouldn't this be in the entertainment forum?