The Vanderbilt Television News Archive and NBC Universal have formed a new partnership to provide streaming video access for students, researchers and faculty at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. This agreement allows the Vanderbilt Television News Archive to deliver 8,800 hours of NBC news broadcasts in its collection of streaming video to the colleges and universities that subscribe to its online service.
The online video will bring sight and sound to students and faculty as they study major events that transpired over the last four decades. The archive’s collection provides valuable content across a variety of disciplines, including history, journalism, politics, popular culture and ethnic studies.
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive has recorded and preserved newscasts of the major television networks, including NBC, for almost 40 years. A provision in the U.S. copyright law provides legal protection to libraries such as Vanderbilt to record and loan physical copies of news broadcasts, but does not allow online streaming.
With this new agreement, NBC Universal grants Vanderbilt limited permission to stream its copyrighted material to colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. NBC Universal retains full ownership of content of the newscasts. Online viewing of the content through Vanderbilt’s service is intended for education and research; those interested in licensing of the content for commercial use will continue to work through NBC Universal.
The agreement provides an enormous benefit to higher education, according to Marshall Breeding, executive director of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. “In an age when students thrive on online video, it’s important for libraries to offer high-quality content delivered in rich media formats,” Breeding said. “The enrichment of our subscription service to include the NBC content in streaming video tremendously increases its educational value.”
Breeding added that Vanderbilt is pleased that NBC Universal has taken this bold step to benefit higher education. The university created a digital archive of the news broadcasts in its collections with funding received through two “We the People” grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It began recording newscasts digitally in 2003.
“NBC values education and views this agreement with the Vanderbilt Television News Archive as a way to make a positive impact,” said Cheryl Gould, senior vice president of NBC News. “We’re pleased to work with Vanderbilt to include our material in what they offer to colleges and universities while preserving our rights to our content.”
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive, a unit of the Vanderbilt University Libraries, is the world’s most comprehensive archive of news broadcasts of the U.S. national television networks. The archive began recording newscasts on Aug. 5, 1968, as a three-month experiment and is now in its 40th year of operation. Its collection consists of a comprehensive archive of evening news broadcasts supplemented by selected special news programs. These include coverage of major events such as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, Democratic and Republican political conventions since 1968, presidential election coverage, the Watergate hearings and many others.
For more information on its subscription service, colleges and universities in the United States and Canada can contact the archive at tvnews@vanderbilt.edu or call 615-322-2927.
Vanderbilt University is a private research university of more than 6,500 undergraduates and 5,300 graduate and professional students. Founded in 1873, the university comprises 10 schools, a public policy institute, a distinguished medical center and The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center. Vanderbilt, ranked as one of the nation’s top teaching and research universities, offers undergraduate programs in the liberal arts and sciences, engineering, music, education and human development, and a full range of graduate and professional degrees.
NBC News has been a leading source of global news and information for more than 75 years, first on radio, and today via broadcast and cable television, the Internet, radio and cell phones. Operating around the clock with bureaus in key cities in the United States and overseas, NBC News provides immediate coverage and in-depth reporting of major events to a worldwide audience. For more than a decade, NBC News has served as the dominant force in television news, watched by more Americans than any other news organization.
NBC News provides more than 25 hours of weekly programming, including “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” and the top-rated rated “Today” and “Meet the Press with Tim Russert” programs. “Dateline NBC” is the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime. As the only broadcast news division with an affiliated cable channel, MSNBC provides 24-hours-a-day coverage of news events around the globe with the dedicated resources of NBC News. MSNBC.com consistently ranks as one of the leading news and information sites on the Internet – winning both of the Industry’s top honors for online news in the past year. NBC Mobile provides news and information updates and show excerpts to cell phone users throughout the day reported by the anchors and correspondents of NBC News, and NBC News Radio produces up-to-the-minute radio reports for affiliated stations in all major markets across the country.
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, (615) 322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu