As a result, the archive mushroomed and by the 1980s had outgrown its space, forcing the move across the street. Today the archive takes in 245 hours per week of raw video, according to archive director Dan DiPierro. About the time videotape came along, CBS installed a computer database to keep track of the millions of cassettes and film reels. Last year CBS installed the next generation of archiving, an IBM system that will allow video clips to be stored on the computer and replayed by the researcher. This means that as video is put online, it can be moved off-site to someplace where storage space is a lot cheaper.
Someone makes a request for a tape.
I digitize it in Kansas City and zap it back to New York. At that point I've preserved it, and I have it in a digital format. In the early 1990s, looking for new sources of revenue, CBS realized it was sitting on a gold mine. CBS needed the money and had miles of high-quality historical stock. It was a match waiting to happen.