The Australian Television Archive is an unincorporated, non-profit venture created by James Paterson.

The aims of the Archive are:

1. To heighten public awareness of the importance of preserving our television heritage, in particular that of Australia - not many people realise how much of Australia's television heritage is being, or has already been, lost.

2. To uncover and preserve what material is still left.

3. To present some of the uncovered and preserved material to the public.

In order to help achieve these aims, James (with the help of Tom Bozic) has created an Internet presence for the Archive, as a means of not only "getting the message across" and providing a valuable source of information on archiving issues but to provide to the public access to a variety of multimedia clips in the form of an "online museum". It must be made perfectly clear that the online museum is NOT the Archive as a whole, rather, a small sample of it.

Where do you find the material and how do you preserve it?

Material is donated from various sources and formats - a majority of the material comes from visitors to the site. Unfortunately the television networks and programme makers themselves are usually not at all keen to assist with the Archive at all.

Videotape was never invented as a long-term storage format and recordings will gradually deteriorate over time. Over the years many and varied formats of videotape have been invented; not all of these are interchangeable with other machines, with each format having special playback requirements. As the older formats become outdated and obsolete, the machines are discarded in favour of newer technology, which makes it extremely hard to recover the older recordings because the machines to play them back on are simply not known to exist!

This is another area where the Archive specialises - within the Archive we have a collection of equally historic and vintage television and videotape equipment not only for museum display but for recovering early material.

Read our Archivist's Reference Manual section to learn more about how material is preserved.

I think I may have some old tapes somewhere, would they be of interest to the Archive?

Yes! A bulk of the Archive's material has come from personal donations of home "off the air" recordings. However it must be understood that we cannot purchase items, they must be donated. We are, however, more than happy to supply you with preservation copies in return.

Can I buy material from you?

No, unfortunately not, due to copyright laws this would be illegal and as such all work done is on a not-for-profit basis.

What formats can you transfer/recover material from?

Just about any format! Some examples:

• Betamax
• 3/4" Umatic (high and low band)
• V-cord
• 1" open reel Video
• 1/2" open reel Video
• EIAJ or "J" Format
• VHS
• S-VHS
• 16mm and 8mm Film

Many other formats are also available - please contact for further details, chances are we can transfer it!