I know where I will be on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, and if you are a reader of my blog, you will probably want to be there too.
Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) is holding a special screening of "Tonight at 7" Houston Television From The Archive at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston: MATCH.
The non-profit TAMI created what it promises is a captivating and amusing showcase of Space City television highlights from 1961 to 2004. This exclusive program presents content from TAMI's extensive KPRC 2 and KHOU 11 collections.
This screening features footage contributed by KPRC-TV, Austin History Center, Houston History Research Center at the Houston Public Library, Travis Boles, Steve Candelari, Paul and Elizabeth Nelson, Lois Perucca, Kenny Ryman, and Larry Weidman.
TAMI is in the process of digitizing tens of thousands of KPRC-TV's films and videos. By the late 1960s, KPRC-TV produced approximately 700 hours of content a year. The station maintained that rate for the next 40 years. That equals roughly 28,000 hours of footage for our small team to inventory, digitize, and catalog. And those numbers only project output from KPRC-TV!
It's estimated local Texas television stations collectively produced at least 3,000 years of content in the pre-digital era.
An estimated 72,000 items in the KPRC-TV Collection remain undigitized. This multi-million-dollar endeavor could take more than 40 years to complete.
“Local television news collections are an invaluable record of the twentieth century that we will lose forever if we don't act now," said Katharine Austin, TAMI Curator.
The screening is presented by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Texas Film Commission, Houston Public Library's Houston History Research Center, and Houston Cinema Arts Society.
To help TAMI continue to discover and preserve DONATE HERE.
