Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision And WBD Announce Partnership To Preserve 35 Years Of Aotearoa News And Current Affairs History

Wellington - 9 December 2024: New Zealand’s audiovisual archive Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) have today announced a partnership which will preserve and protect 35 years of New Zealand news and current affairs history for future generations.

Under this agreement, WBD will donate over 400,000 stories and programmes to Ngā Taonga, covering every episode of Three National News, 3 News and Newshub at 6, from Three National News’ launch on 27 November 1989 through to the final episode of Newshub on 5 July 2024.

In addition, key local news and current affairs content which aired over this period such as Campell Live, 60 Minutes, 20/20, The Nation, Election Night coverage, leaders’ debates and more will be included in the agreement.

All of this content will be digitally preserved to ensure that it stands the test of time for future generations.

Juliet Peterson, WBD VP Head of Networks ANZ said: “Over 35 years, Newshub and their predecessors 3 News and Three National News made a stunning contribution to our national history. They recorded key moments in our shared story, held politicians to account, and told the stories that mattered from Aotearoa and around the world.

“WBD remains committed to New Zealand, and while the decision to close Newshub was an extremely difficult one, we have made this donation so that three-and-a-half decades of world-class local journalism will be preserved for future generations. We are very proud to partner with Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision on this fantastic project.”

Ngā Taonga holds over 800,000 titles covering more than 120 years of audiovisual New Zealand history. Almost half of this collection is on portable magnetic tape, which has a much shorter lifespan than paper or film. As leaders in digital preservation, they are founding partners in Utaina, one of the largest audiovisual digital preservation projects in the world. This partnership with WBD represents the biggest single non-Crown archival deposit Ngā Taonga has ever received.

Honiana Love, Tumu Whakarae (Chief Executive) of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision said: “As the audiovisual archive of Aotearoa New Zealand, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision understands how critical it is to preserve the Warner Bros. Discovery collection of 35 years’ worth of news and events in Aotearoa. It would be a significant loss for future generations if New Zealanders were not able to access these unique and defining moments from our history. They provide a permanent record of our social history and whakapapa.

“Ngā Taonga is uniquely placed to care for this collection, being the custodians of other nationally significant broadcast archives. We are the only archive organisation in New Zealand with the technical capacity for audiovisual preservation at this scale. Taking in a collection of this size is unprecedented for the Archive, and it will take time to preserve and digitise. A phased approach will be taken as our experts ingest the collection into our care.”

WBD will donate the content to Ngā Taonga, while retaining the copyright they currently have; other third parties will also retain their copyright. Ngā Taonga will facilitate access to the collection through rights and clearance processes for researchers, the media industry, the museum sector and anyone who wants to discover the stories in the collection. Ngā Taonga will endeavour to make as much of the Newshub Archive accessible to New Zealanders online, subject to rights including kaitiaki clearance.

Upon receiving the more than 400,000 items from WBD, Ngā Taonga will work closely with audio and video media migration specialists Memnon to digitise the physical media to a digital file and then transfer the content to new storage, ensuring the collection is saved, protected and accessible for current and future generations.

Memnon are the audiovisual migration partners for the Utaina project who will be digitising the WBD collection items at their New Zealand Avalon Studios location.

Ngā Taonga has partnered with Factorial, who create workflows for digital media, custom software, storage solutions and archive infrastructure for this large collection.

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