For residents of Indiana, names like Howard Caldwell, Ken Beckley, Barbara Boyd and Anne Ryder may ring a bell. They are among the many local broadcasters Hoosiers have welcomed into their living rooms over the years to deliver the day’s news from the warm glow of a television. At Indiana University Bloomington, a professor and an archivist teamed up to preserve Indiana’s history as told by the familiar faces and voices of local radio and television broadcasters.

“It’s the story of our state,” said Mike Conway, professor in The Media School and director of the Indiana Broadcast History Archive. “That’s what we do at The Media School: We tell stories.”

Conway worked in broadcast news for nearly 20 years before becoming a journalism historian, returning to his alma mater as a professor. He was inspired to create the archive because he noticed a lack of preservation for broadcast news in comparison to print news. This archive is the first of its kind.

Media School professor Mike Conway delivers a lecture during his History of Journalism class. Conway's students are recording broadcasters' oral histories, which are included in the Indiana Broadcast History Archive. Photo by James Brosher, Indiana University

“You can search The New York Times all the way back to the 1860s, but we don’t know what the local TV or radio station did 10 to 20 years ago because it just wasn’t saved in any systematic way,” Conway said.

You can read much more at: https://news.iu.edu/live/news/33757-indiana-broadcast-history-archive-preserves-the.