The Indiana Broadcast History Archive (IBHA) is an initiative to collect, preserve, digitize, and showcase historical material related to the people, stations, and companies involved in Indiana radio and television during the past century. In addition to a traditional archive devoted to film, video, audio, photographs, and printed material, the IBHA is built around this integrated multimedia website that serves both as a public site for Indiana broadcast history as well as a digital research site for media scholars.
The IBHA is committed to both saving Indiana broadcast history that is in danger of being lost as well as promoting other groups devoted to state radio and television history. Some of those organizations are highlighted on the Other Archives page.
The IBHA is a subsidiary of The Media School Archive at Indiana University-Bloomington and is part of the University library and archive system.
How the Site Works
We are digitizing our archive items as quickly as possible. Currently, we have video and audio clips available. In the future we plan to add scripts, promotional material, other documents and more historic photographs.
You can use the Search button at the top of the site to see if we have any specific video or audio clips. You can also search for stations or people on our Browse page. We have created more than a hundred individual entries for people and stations. We are just getting started. Don't be surprised if you don't see anything yet for a specific person or station. If you would like to help us provide background information, check our How to Help page.
Because of copyright laws, we can not post most of our videos online without restrictions. If the video clip isn't playing, go to our Full Access page for more information on how to access all of our archive material.
The Projects page includes research students and volunteers have done on specific topics related to Indiana television and radio.
Our Oral History page provides links to the oral history video and audio interviews available in our archive.
We are attempting to provide captioning on all of our video and audio clips. If you need captioning on a specific clip, please contact the IBHA.
While we do maintain a physical archive in the IU Media School, at this time it is not designed for in-person research.
Background
The Indiana Broadcast History Archive officially launched in 2021 with a grant from Indiana University's Arts & Humanities Council and the New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Program. That grant allowed us to build this website, accept new archive collections, buy archive supplies, and hire students to help us research and write stories about the people and stations involved in Indiana radio and television, as well preserve and showcase material from our archive.
We purposefully chose to include all of Indiana's radio and television stations, even though we know it will take a much larger effort to do justice to all of the people and stations in our state. In the first two years, we have added eight archive collections with four more in process. We have saved, digitized and posted more than 1500 video/audio clips.
At this early stage, most of our collection focuses on television. We plan to build out our radio history in the future. Our hope is this starting point will spark more interest to help us bring in more archives and tell more stories.
Our initial strategy is to collect archives from Indiana broadcasters who have saved airchecks, scripts, promotional material, and other mementos from their career. If that's you, please get in touch with us.
IBHA Leadership
Mike Conway serves as Director of the IBHA. He started his 20-year broadcast career in 1979 as a freshman at IU, working at the campus radio station, WIUS (now WIUX). Later in college, he also worked at WFIU, the NPR affiliate at IU as well as WTHI TV and radio in his home town of Terre Haute. Professor Richard Yoakam was his mentor and helped him throughout his careers. After graduation, Conway worked in local television news at a number of stations mostly in the Midwest and Great Lakes area. During these years, Conway watched in horror as stations loaded their historic broadcasts and other material into dumpsters whenever they ran out of space in their buildings.
Conway earned his master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, where he began his research career as a broadcast news historian. He returned to Bloomington as a professor of journalism in 2004.
Josh Bennett is The Media School’s Archivist. In this role, Josh archives student productions, processes Media School collections, and manages collection development policies and procedures. He works with educators and researchers both at IU and beyond to provide access to archival material. Josh and his team fully digitized the Roy Howard Archive housed at The Media School, and he also co-created the Indiana Broadcast History Archive. Josh has a master’s degree in Library Science with a specialization in Archives and Records Management from Indiana University.
Future Generations
The Indiana Broadcast History Archive is committed not only to honoring the past, but also to connect future generations to the role of the state's radio and television stations. For the past few years, IU Media School students in a variety of classes have helped log videos, research people and stations, and create projects involving state broadcast history. That work is part of our archive. We also invite broadcasters to come to campus and meet with our students.
In the future, our hope is to expand the connection through specialized classes, documentary projects, and conferences dedicated to Indiana Broadcast History.
Beyond Indiana
You will notice information and archive material from outside the Indiana borders. It is common for people in broadcasting to work at stations in more than one state. If a collection in our archive includes out-of-state material, we have decided to keep it since the lack of broadcast history is a national issue.
Archive Access
To comply with copyright laws, we are not allowed to post most of our archive videos on the main website. Instead, you will see an image from the video. If you would like to view a specific video, as well as the entire digitized collection, visit our Full Access page.
Future
What you see in the IBHA is just the beginning. With funding and support, we plan to build the archive into a statewide resource with information on all of Indiana’s television and radio stations and the people who worked in the industry. Here’s how you can help.
If you would like to help fund the IBHA, you can click on the donate button below. All donations will be used to support the archive through digitization and archive costs, student part-time jobs to help us with researching and writing stories about Indiana broadcasting, and other efforts to keep alive our radio and television history. If you would like to help us research and write stories about Indiana broadcasting, or if you have archive material you would like to donate, see our How To Help page.