WSB-TV - Over 5 million feet of newsfilm from this Atlanta television station dating from 1949 to 1981 represent a visual history of Atlanta, Georgia, and the southeast during a period of growth and social change. No other Atlanta area television stations saved their newsfilm, making this collection a unique historical resource. This collection is indexed in a database located in the Media Archives, please contact the Archives for research assistance. VHS reference copies are available for viewing by researchers and producers onsite in the Media Archives. Rights to this collection are held by the University. Please contact the Media Archives for licensing information.
A beta version of the WSB Newsfilm Database is now available for searching.
See also New Georgia Encylopedia for additional information on the WSB-TV Newsfilm Collection and on television broadcasting in Georgia.WALB-TV -- the NBC affiliate in Albany, Georgia, donated its archives of news footage to the University of Georgia Media Archives in June 2002. The WALB Collection consists of over 1600 cans of black and white, color, silent, and sound clips of footage shot in the field circa 1961-1978. Both national and Georgia news clips are represented. Topics covered include: footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Albany in 1962, as well as demonstrations surrounding his visit to Albany; politicians Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, Herman Talmadge, Lester Maddox, Carl Sanders, George Wallace, Richard Russell, and Richard Nixon; Vietnam; Civil Rights issues (including the Albany Movement); integration and segregation; coverage of the Georgia State Legislature; 1970s gasoline rationing and meat price hikes; tobacco farming and farm-related topics; various local celebrations for the United States Bicentennial; pageants and festivals around Georgia; voter registration; local sports; birth control; as well as many topics of local concern, such as high school sporting events, floods, fires, car accidents, homicides, holiday celebrations, education, health care, taxes, factory strikes, employment issues, and housing, among others.
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What is television newsfilm?
Newsfilm was used in broadcast for television newscasts from 1948 until the 1970s. Television from this time period is very different from the television news we know and count on today. During the early history of newsfilm local stations relied heavily on their cameramen to capture local news stories - there were no feeds between stations because the technology to do so was not yet in place. Cameramen would go out and capture the stories on 100 foot reels, return to the studio and process this reversal film stock ( film stock that passed through the camera and was broadcast ready after a one-step development process) , the film would then be viewed and edited, and put on a film chain (device that included one or more film projectors aligned to TV pick-up camera ) ready for the news broadcast. These16mm reels were filmed in black & white and then color with sound and without sound in the era before videotape was widely used. Unlike videotape or digital capture which can be easily erased for re-use, film can only be used one time. Film is also the most long-lived of the moving image formats and therefore newsfilm from collections like these are unique filled with one-of-kind images and interviews.
