Why is it so difficult to find historical footage of past events which were, at the time, broadcast for free?

August 12, 2008 1:20 PM

Why is it so difficult to find historical footage of past events which were, at the time, broadcast for free (for example, archival video of the Olympic Games and the Oscars)? Wouldn't the economic value of making these events available somehow (for a fee) outweigh their value sitting on a shelf somewhere, unwatchable except in tiny snippets or on very rare special occasions?

The current Beijing games has made me interested in going back to see events from past Olympics, especially those featuring athletes who are competing again this time. Considering the popularity of these types of events, I am surprised that it isn't possible to find archival video (either legally for purchase, or otherwise). I have observed this same behavior at work with other high-popularity events, like the Super Bowl or the Oscars.

Obviously the broadcast/distribution rights-holders of these events are fiercely protecting their property, as one would expect. It would seem, however, that the value of these events goes down immediately after they are completed (after everyone knows the winner of the game, most people would have no interest in watching). I am interested in understanding the economic rationale behind limiting their availability - is this a Long Tail kind of thing where it wouldn't actually be worth it to produce DVDs or otherwise manage these assets? Or is the strict limitation supposed to add to the "special/exclusive" nature of these events, thus attracting more viewers the next time they occur?

posted by chos to media & arts (12 comments total)

I've thought the same thing, but with the back catalog of everything produced over the past 20-odd years.

There could be a conflict of interest creating a market failure -- since the current media producers mostly own that which they have produced, and AFAICT they make more money directing our eyes and ears to their current goods rather than having us explore their back catalogs.
posted by yort at 1:31 PM on August 12, 2008

It's not about you.

It's about television producers buying snippets from the rights holders - namely the networks, film makers, studios, etc.

Why give something away when you can make money selling it to professionals who then use it in their own commercial shows?

Friend of mine is a producer for a very popular and deep pocketed show. I was hanging out with him one day while he was on the phone with some agent who owned the rights to a piece of footage he wanted to use for a video montage. The footage was a 30 second clip of Nelson Mandela waving to a crowd. The price? $5,000.
posted by wfrgms at 1:47 PM on August 12, 2008

Possibly the tragedy of the anti-commons.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:01 PM on August 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

It may have been broadcast for free, but someone owns it. And usually they're going to want a lot of money for someone to excerpt clips from it. Especially for sporting events, but even things like historical newsreels that are so old you would think they'd be public domain are very very pricey. Putting it all out there, for free? Unfortunately not going to happen.
posted by yellowbinder at 2:15 PM on August 12, 2008

What makes you think it is "difficult" to get archival footage? The fact that it isn't all free on you-tube doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Getty Images runs a lucrative business re-selling old snippets of film, and they are far from the only one. And Archive.org does have an ever growing collection of "ephemera" recordings available for free.

What I find interesting is that local TV stations outsource the archiving, and sale of archived footage, to someone else, fairly consistently. From a footage consumer perspective, I can see the value in only having to go to one guy to buy "all news footage about XYZ", but it always seemed strange to me, when I'd appeared on the news, and wanted a copy, that if I called up the TV station that filmed me, they'd send me to a third party. But they always had someone to send me to.
posted by nomisxid at 2:19 PM on August 12, 2008

Just to clarify, I am not asking why these things are not available for free - obviously they have value and their owners should be free to collect on that. I would be happy to pay a reasonable fee for access to archived events of this type, and I suspect there would be lots of other consumers who would be so inclined (see, for example, the large audiences for DVD releases of old television series). I was more curious about the economic rationale of making distributing/excerpting these broadcasts so expensive/limited. It doesn't seem obvious that it would be more cost-effective to charge $5000 for a snippet of video, that might be affordable by only a small number of studios/re-packagers of content, than it would to make this footage more generally available, at a more affordable (not free) cost to the masses.
posted by chos at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2008

I think the question is also the cost of storage and access.
Who has the physical storage space or servers to hold this data? Who is going to maintain this space with pretty high archival needs? For physical objects: controlling humidity, earthquake/flood/fire damage, etc.; for digital, who is keeping the electricity paid? Who's managing the servers and buying more memory? Who is uploading these hours of content?
Access: so, you have a shelf of videos/a server with 1000 hours of the 2004 Olympics on it. How can you locate the 30-second clip of Michael Phelps winning event X, given that metadata isn't encoded on the digital files? Are you going to pay someone to index them or will you really sit down and watch 1000 hours of tape? If you do sit down and watch 4 days of tapes, who gets to put them back in order on the shelf? Who makes sure you don't steal the tape (or erase that section)?
What happens when we all adopt a new standard for data storage or film media, and who transfers all the old data/materials to make them accessible?

This is why it costs $5,000 to get a 30-second clip of something "free." Basically, you're not paying for the clip: you're paying for shelf space for 30-odd years, someone to handle the conversions through different standards and formats, and someone to index it and therefore make you able to access that one 30-second clip without having to sort through hours of dross.
posted by holyrood at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

It is, as you say, a "Long Tail" problem combined with the fact that, as others have mentioned, archival footage is actually pretty valuable when sold to other content producers. Now anyone who wants to, say, market a DVD of the record-breaking 100 meter dashes for the last 50 years has to pay the networks.

This is actually why the History Channel does almost nothing after about World War II except for original programming. It's actually cheaper to fly to godforsaken places around the world and shoot entirely new footage than it would be to pay to use the archived news clips that covered events between 1950 and now.

This is also why you never see any television programs about, for example, 9/11, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, or breakup of the Soviet Union, that use any news footage from the time unless it's footage from the network who is broadcasting the program.

Yes, this is terrible. We're actually in danger of completely losing a significant percentage of the cultural material produced in the last century because rights holders refuse to release it and the media decays before it is preserved.

No, there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Aside from radically reshaping copyright. Which ain't gonna happen.
posted by valkyryn at 2:28 PM on August 12, 2008 [4 favorites]

As far as you're follow-up clarification goes, we're talking about an absolutely massive amount of material here, the vast majority of which does not exist in any digital medium. Even today, much television production uses Betamax of all things. Keeping this stuff isn't that expensive, but accessing it is.
posted by valkyryn at 2:31 PM on August 12, 2008

I've been to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, and was able to peruse their entire collection of recordings on computers. So, if there's something you absolutely must see, you can head there. I'd presume their California location has the same features. I do not recall the limitations of how many, but I do recall that there were no recording facilities available to young whipper-snappers like me.
posted by Xoder at 4:26 PM on August 12, 2008

No, there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Aside from radically reshaping copyright.

Actually, come to mention it, I had an idea a while back on how to attack this particular problem. I would think that it would be possible to create a project similar to Wikimedia Commons, but one which accepts uploads of currently-copyrighted material without making it available to the public. If a particular video clip is going to become public domain in 2028, for example, it could be stored for a couple of decades as long as it isn't exhibited in any way that would violate copyright, and release it on that future date when it's legal.
posted by XMLicious at 4:33 PM on August 12, 2008

Many countries have Olympic feeds, right? Is it somehow possible to get it from one of these countries instead?

And seriously, I'd buy DVD sets of the last couple Olympics. They cut out so many of the events I want to see (and specific athletes I want to see) that the network coverage is next to worthless.
posted by devilsbrigade at 7:51 PM on August 12, 2008