History
Motivated by Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, which has videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors, Dean Valentine (former Disney Television and UPN president) was inspired to create a similar project for television. Valentine developed and presented a proposal to the TV Academy, under then-president Richard H. Frank and Academy Foundation Chairman Thomas W. Sarnoff. NBC executive Grant Tinker, Award-winning producer David L. Wolper are the Archive's founding co-chairs.
Beginning in early 1996, the Archive of American Television completed its first six interviews as part of its pilot stage. The initial six interviews were with Leonard Goldenson, founder of ABC, Dick Smith, television’s first make-up artist; Elma Farnsworth, widow and lab assistant to television inventor Philo Farnsworth; Ethel Winant, casting executive; Sheldon Leonard, show creator and director; and comedian Milton Berle. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation officially launched the Archive of American Television in 1997.
Thousands of hours of historic interviews have been completed with over 500 TV legends. Full-length video interviews currently online include actors Alan Alda, Richard Crenna, Barbara Eden, Jonathan Winters, Ossie Davis, Michael J. Fox, Dick Van Dyke, Dick Clark, Florence Henderson, Andy Griffith, Bob Newhart, Julia Child, William Shatner, Carl Reiner, writer and producers Norman Lear, Sherwood Schwartz, Steven Bochco, and Dick Wolf, news legends Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Robert MacNeil, Jim McKay, Mike Wallace and David Brinkley, and Executives Fred Silverman, Leonard Goldenson, Bea Arthur, Roger Ebert and Ted Turner.
TV Foundation Chair Jerry Petry and Archive Director Karen Herman guide the day to day operations of the Archive. Archive staff, professors, scholars and journalists from around the country volunteer their time to conduct these interviews. The Foundation employs a small staff who prepare all of the research and questions in advance. Local video crews photograph each interview.
Read more about this topic: Archive Of American Television
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
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