Audiovisual memory on the internet: the path of the historical archive of Argentina radio and television

Abstract

The sound and television archive of the media of the Argentine State is one of the oldest and most extensive in the country. Televisión Pública (Channel 7) preserves 57,000 hours of video dating back to 1956, and Radio Nacional some 160,000 hours of audio from 1938. Since 2007 the "archive issue" began to be thematized and since 2009 conditions were generated to stop the deterioration of physical media, store them in adequate conditions and digitize them. The public side of the project consisted of the publication of a large volume of historical material on YouTube. This aspect was the point of disagreement between the authorities that led the project until 2017 and those that assumed its coordination on behalf of the “macrista” administration. The latter incorporated a more restricted vision of the legal mandate to offer “universal access” to content. Based on a pressing need: to preserve and democratize one of the country's greatest audiovisual treasures, RTA undertook an ambitious challenge from a technological, economic and organizational point of view. The project was affected in 2015 and 2019 by the change of government authorities, which resulted in changes in its operating logic, especially in relation to the availability of content on the internet. However, fifteen years after its birth in 2007, the initiative outlasted several directors and political authorities, an auspicious fact considering the low-institutional scheme that is common in state media.