Louisiana network launches online archive of historic video

A new digital archive co-created by Louisiana Public Broadcasting contains more than 500 hours of streamable online video, including civil-rights era broadcasts, Louisiana-themed cooking shows and speeches by political leaders. The Louisiana Digital Media Archive went live Jan. 20 after more than five years of development, featuring videos from both public and commercial broadcasters. “One of our missions is to create TV worth watching,” said Beth Courtney, president of LPB and a 30-year veteran of the station. “If we’ve made 40 years of TV worth watching, it’s worth saving.”

LPB inventoried and digitized video artifacts from the civil-rights and World War II eras as part of an American Archives pilot project in 2009, a CPB-funded effort to create a national archive of public television content.