What Happened To The Tapes?

In fifty years of broadcasting, we used to refer to the WTVH-TV building in Syracuse as “our James Street studios”, but now it is closed and reportedly emptied of its contents because on the same day that 40 employees were fired this month, the movers came and loaded much of what was in the gigantic building onto a truck; destination unknown.

Having worked at that place for 25 years, I would say much of what was inside was a hodge podge of various styles of office equipment; metal desks, lots of shelving units, file cabinets and a few pieces of Stickley furniture.   The Chippendale conference table, upholstered chairs and executive desks in cherry always looked out of place, belonging as much in a streamlined mid-century building as Bauhaus at Versailles.  It didn’t match and it’s now all gone and that at least, is not a loss.

The cavernous area behind dual studios A and B was more interesting.  A combination garage, basement, attic and museum to Syracuse broadcasting history, it stored fragments of old sets and props and still more office furniture, stacked to the ceiling for lack of a better place to put it.  I used to wonder what the owners of the television station intended to do with it.  Did they think we’d make shows with that old stuff again when the audience favored syndicated programming from Hollywood?  So, aside from some sentimentality, that stuff is no loss either.  Perhaps it could have been pitched a long time ago.

But what happened to the tapes?   There were several rooms with thousands of rolls of film and videotapes bearing the images of every event that happened in Syracuse in fifty years.  Were they copied digitally onto some master frame and taken elsewhere?  Did the General Managers who came from out of town and left every couple of years even care about the history logged on those tapes?

Chief editor John Ellis who was dismissed along with several other long-tenured behind-the-scenes workers a few years ago was the unofficial keeper of station history.   In the comment section of my article entitled “A Tribute to my Former Colleagues”, dozens of Channel 5 veterans from around the country shared their memories and included praise for John for his ability to disappear among the racks on the second floor, and five minutes later extract the precise 15 seconds of “file tape” essential to the telling of a new story.  He was a one man video catalogue.

I recently asked John if he knew what happened to the tapes, which represented not only the history of a region, but the work ethic of a television station.

Few news stories occur when it’s sunny and 75 degrees.   The smokey house fire on a broiling hot day, the murder in an apartment in January when crews stand outside for hours waiting for an official statement, and on every story in between, all that heavy equipment that has to be lugged, set up and broken down, one to four times per day per crew of two.  You’ll see the emotion of the victims on those tapes, but you won’t see the empathetic souls who taped and interviewed them, nor the tears they fought to hold in.  All that is on those tapes and I’d like to know the plans for them.

John emailed a heartfelt essay of being the “reluctant historian” of WTVH.   He feels the connection to all those tapes that I predicted he would, and I’ll share his words on the blog tomorrow.

Tagged as: photojournalist, television station, WTVH