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Vanderbilt University, of Nashville, TN maintains a collection of over 30,000 US network television news broadcasts dating back to 1968. Tapes are available on a fee-for-service basis. Transcript abstracts are keyword searchable from the site.

Anyone can request a loan of a tape from the library, but must pay the duplication fee for the tape of a single broadcast or segment. Standard (non-academic) users pay:

- $3.00/minute if under 30 minutes

- $82.50/half hour (rush half hour $165.00)

 

Users may also request a compilation tape made up of different broadcast segments. Standard (non-academic) users pay:

- $7.50/minute if under 30 minutes

- $225/half hour (rush half hour $400.00)

 

Academic users pay significantly less (see this page for academic rates). All users pay a $10.00 service fee and postage.

 

Despite the steep fees paid, ALL TAPES MUST BE RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY WITHIN 30 DAYS. (extensions are available.) Vanderbilt does not hold the copyright to these materials and therefore does not license or sell the material.

 

Users can search the archive's Evening News Archive, Special Reports Archive, and Special Collections for free using keywords.

 

Evening News & Special Reports Archives are broken down by year (users select the year in which they want to search - multiple years can be selected). A maximum of 200 hits may be returned.

 

A search in 1974 and 1975 for "Nixon" returned the maximum 200 - 100 per year. Clicking on an item labeled "1975.07.30 NIXON / CIA 5:23:30-5:23:40 . . . . . Wednesday . . . . . ABC" brings up this brief description - "ABC Evening News for July 30, 1975 - 1975.07.30 NIXON / CIA - 5:23:30-5:23:40 . . . . . Wednesday . . . . . ABC - (S) Sen. CIA cmte. will invite ex-Pres. Rich. Nixon to testify. - REPORTER: Howard K. Smith." This information would be necessary if ordering a tape of this segment.

 

One interesting feature is a button that allows users to see all the news stories in the same telecast as the item they have selected.

 

One drawback is that there may likely be more than 200 items pertaining to a search term and the particular news story for which a searcher is looking might not be returned in the results.

 

The Special Collections Databases are broken down by subject. Only two currently are listed "ussr-coup" and "gulf-war." Search results are formatted in a similar fashion as the archive searches noted above.

 

NOTE: Transcripts include notes of network commercials airing in individual broadcasts. Advertiser names can be used as keywords in Archive searches.