Broadcasting Baltimore Update #9: 1,036 hours completed!

Watch these collection highlights at https://tinyurl.com/BroadcastingBaltimore In 2022, MARMIA received a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) grant to digitize and describe 1,000 hours of footage from our WJZ-TV Collection that documents the voices of underrepresented communities in Baltimore City from 1977-2000. Voices represented in the project include Black Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #9: 1,036 hours completed!

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #7: Now & Then

In the WJZ-13 collection, there is a series called "Field Tapes." This series contains archival footage and camera-original recordings produced and recorded by Norman Vogel for use on a segment called, "Now and Then" which aired on the news. From what we can tell, "Now and Then" was a regular part of Eyewitness News and … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #7: Now & Then

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #5: Community Festivals

AFRAM (1978) Ethnic festivals started out as neighborhood parties and over the years grew into larger events that drew thousands of people from in and outside Baltimore. Largely funded by the city, different ethnic groups created an event to help celebrate Baltimore's diversity. Every summer people would look at the schedule to see the "Showcase … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #5: Community Festivals

Searching for Thunder Thigh Revue

Members of the MARMIA team recently received a tour of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dream exhibition. Audiovisual records are notoriously difficult to search. They take time to digitize, watch, and describe. In 2022, we received an ATHA Rocket Grant which helped us create speech-to-text transcripts for … Continue reading Searching for Thunder Thigh Revue

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #4: Focal Point

Only a few hundred reels of film from WJZ-TV survived. People thought video was going to replace film and switched over without knowing that videotape would be a more volatile and short-lived material. Rumor has it that decades ago while repaving the WJZ parking lot, they buried the film library under the asphalt. In the … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #4: Focal Point

Community Archiving Builds Community

This summer I spent much of my time outside of my day job working on MARMIA community archiving projects, both here in Baltimore and in Eastern Serbia. In Baltimore, I assisted MARMIA's AMIA Pathways Artist-Archivist In Residence SHAN Wallace to promote a celebration of home movie preservation, with SHAN providing free video digitization to local … Continue reading Community Archiving Builds Community

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #3: WJZ-TV Collection Featured on Digital Maryland

We have officially launched another segment of our three-year CLIR-funded grant project, Broadcasting Baltimore: Digitizing Hidden Histories in the WJZ-TV Collection, by having our collection available to search in Digital Maryland. Digital Maryland is a collaborative, statewide digital preservation program of the Enoch Pratt Free Library/Maryland State Library Resource Center. Users can search and explore … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #3: WJZ-TV Collection Featured on Digital Maryland

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #2: Shakedown!

We now have about 30% of our digitization complete (300+ hours) for our CLIR-funded project, Broadcasting Baltimore: Digitizing Hidden Histories in the WJZ-TV Collection, and among the tapes digitized includes the series described as “WJZ’s nightclub on the air,” Shakedown! This series was executive produced by Michael Easterling, produced by Earnest Winbourne, and hosted by … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #2: Shakedown!

Focus on: Helen Delich Bentley

Photo of Helen Delich Bentley courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Industry As mentioned in a previous blog post, one of my favorite Baltimoreans is Helen Delich Bentley. Bentley was a politician, journalist, and most importantly to me, a big fan of industry and television: she was a broadcasting pioneer, having produced and hosted the … Continue reading Focus on: Helen Delich Bentley

Broadcasting Baltimore Update #1: City Line Is Digitized

Our three-year CLIR-funded project, Broadcasting Baltimore: Digitizing Hidden Histories in the WJZ-TV Collection began in September of 2022. The project’s goal is to digitize and describe 1000 hours of video from the WJZ-TV Collection that documents the voices of underrepresented communities in Baltimore City from 1977-2000. We began by digitizing the rest of the WJZ-TV … Continue reading Broadcasting Baltimore Update #1: City Line Is Digitized