LibGuides: ACRL/EBSS Library Resources for Communication Studies (LRCS): Television & Radio

About

This guide is intended to identify the primary, English-language resources available for research in the fields of U.S. television and radio.

Current Page Editor: Kristin Peace

Databases

See General Communication Databases to get started.

For audience measurement sources see Media Ratings, Data, & Statistics.

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive (fee-based) This database offers two thematic collections covering “Music, Radio and The Stage” and “Film and Television”. Combined they offer access to nearly 30 key US and UK trade and consumer magazines covering the broad spectrum of the entertainment industry and media including film, television, popular music, radio, and theatre.
Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text (fee based) Full-text and bibliographic coverage from scholarly and popular sources, and spanning the entire spectrum of film and television studies.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database (fee-based) Indexes around 400 scholarly and trade journals, magazines, books, and newspapers covering theater, dance, film, television, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling, and more. It draws from both current files and selected backfiles to 1864 and 134 publications are included in full text. Available through ProQuest

Journals and Trade Publications

Television Archives & Historical Video

Alexander Street Press (fee-based) Text, audio, and video collections that support virtually every academic discipline. Collections includes 60 MINUTES: 1997-2014, PBS Video Collection: Third Edition, and World Newsreels Online, 1929-1966.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting A collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH to preserve the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years.
AP Archive - YouTube channel Includes 1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories, which date back to 1893.
Internet Archive - Adviews AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Internet Archive - TV News Repurposes closed captioning to enable users to search, quote and borrow from the Internet Archive’s collection of 500,000+ US TV news broadcasts aired since 2009. Borrow shows (select "Borrow a DVD" on any show detail page) from the Internet Archive library on a DVD-ROM for 30 days for a $25 processing fee.
Kanopy (fee-based) Kanopy offers access to a large, curated catalog of educational, entertaining, and enriching films (including over 800 television series episodes). Users can watch films anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Media History Digital Library Dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound for broad public access.
Paley Center for Media - Collection Database The Paley Center's permanent media collection contains over 160,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. The online database offers synopses, along with production credits for the programs.
Television Academy Foundation - The Interviews From website: Includes "over 900 oral history interviews (approximately 4,000 hours) with the legends of television. The Interviews continues to produce new interviews every year, and covers a variety of professions, genres, and topics in electronic media history and American culture."
UCLA Film and Television Archive - Television Collection From website: "The television collection documents the entire course of broadcast history; it includes the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences/UCLA Collection of Historic Television, donations from the Hallmark Hall of Fame, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, and Loretta Young and a collection of milestones in the history of television technology."
Vanderbilt Television News Archive (fee-based) This archival collection includes more than 30,000 television evening news broadcasts from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, as well as over 9,000 hours of "special news-related programming" (such as presidential press conferences). The archive has been developed since 1968. Subscribing institutions can search abstracts of the news programs and view limited streaming content. DVDs of the news programs can be ordered from Vanderbilt for a fee.

Radio Archives & Historical Audio

American Archive of Public Broadcasting A collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH to preserve the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years.
Internet Archive - Radio News The experimental Radio News Archive allows people to search through English language talk & news-focused radio stations from 2016 through the present using transcripts created with automatic speech recognition technology.
Library of Congress - Recorded Sound Research Center The Library of Congress holds the nation's largest public collection of sound recordings containing music, spoken word and radio broadcasts, nearly 3.5 million recordings in all. Over 110 years of sound recordings history is represented in nearly every audio format, from cylinders to CDs, covering a wide range of subjects and genres in considerable depth and breadth.
Media History Digital Library Dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound for broad public access.
Paley Center for Media - Collection Database The Paley Center's permanent media collection contains over 160,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. The online database offers synopses, along with production credits for the programs.
Radiooooo.com: The Musical Time Machine Select a country and a decade from 1900-present, and radiooooo.com will create a "radio station" of music representing that time and place.
UC Santa Barbara - American Radio Archives One of the largest collections of radio broadcasting in the world (formerly housed at the Thousand Oaks Public Library). The American Radio Archives focus on entertainment programming from the "Golden Age" of radio, up to the 1950s. Find thousands of scripts, recordings, photographs and much more.
World Radio History Full text scans of historical broadcasting magazines in the fields of radio and television. Includes Broadcasting Magazine, Broadcasting Yearbook, Radio Annual, and more.

Broadcast & Radio Transcripts

Foreign Broadcasts Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports (fee-based) FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1996 constitutes a one-of-a-kind archive of transcripts of foreign broadcasts and news that provides fascinating insight into the second half of the 20th century.
Generic Radio Workshop Script Library Online repository of radio transcripts from the Golden Age of Radio (1930-1960).
Nexis Uni (fee-based)

TV Ratings

Nielsen | Top10 Weekly list of what Americans are watching and playing, including streaming, TV, advertising, and video games.
Adweek.com | Ratings Ratings of and articles about shows in the current season. For historical ratings, search the AdWeek database.
The Futon Critic Republish Nielsen ratings of primetime TV shows.
RadioInsight: Nielsen Audio Ratings

Associations and Organizations

Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
Association of Moving Image Archivists The Association of Moving Image Archivists is an international nonprofit association dedicated to the preservation and use of moving image media.
Broadcast Education Association A professional association for professors, industry professionals and graduate students who are interested in teaching and research related to electronic media and multimedia enterprises.
Hollywood Radio & Television Society
The International Association for Media and History From website: "an organization of scholars, filmmakers, broadcasters and archivists dedicated to historical inquiry into film, radio, television, and other related media."
National Association of Broadcasters A trade association that represents the interests of free, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters.
Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) "Founded as a grassroots organization in 1946, RTDNA works to protect the rights of electronic journalists in the courts and legislatures throughout the country, promotes ethical standards in the industry, provides members with training and education and honors outstanding work in the profession through the Edward R. Murrow Awards."

ACRL/EBSS Library Resources for Communication Studies (LRCS)