LibGuides: Radio, Television, and Film (RTF): Finding Broadcasts, Videos, and Commercials

Broadcasts, Videos and Commercials

Ad Council
Public Service advertising campaigns.
Ad Forum
Directory of advertisements from broadcast, print and internet media. Can search by award winners, advertising agencies and more.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Free streaming access to public television and radio programs from the past 60 years.

American History In Video
This collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and their presentation over time, through documentaries, commercial and governmental newsreels and archival and public affairs footage. The full runs of newsreels from United Newsreel and Universal Newsreel from 1929 through 1967 are included.
Users may also make isolated clips from the videos and save them in a free account available for registration set up within the database.
BBC Sound Effects
Unlimited users.
Over 16,000 sound effects are made available by the BBC in WAV format to download for use under the terms of the RemArc License. The sound effects are BBC copyright, but they may be used for personal, educational or research purposes, as detailed in the license.

C-Span Video Library
The C-SPAN Video Library began within the Purdue University School of Liberal Arts in 1987 under the leadership of Dr. Robert X. Browning, who sought a way to archive and index the thousands of hours of congressional coverage produced by the network every year. The project quickly became one of the most comprehensive video archives of governmental and political content, and C-SPAN assumed responsibility for the archival operations in July 1998.
FilmSound.org
A collection of free sound effects for download.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Reports: 1974-1996
Unlimited users.
Provides access to full-text searchable news reports from Latin America, Middle East and Africa, Near East and South Asia translated into English between 1974-1996 by the now defunct Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which gathered open source intelligence for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). FBIS gathered news reports from radio broadcasts, news services, and clandestine broadcasts.

Generic Radio Workshop Script Library
Welcome to the Generic Radio Workshop: the original and largest collection of radio scripts and transcripts from the Golden Age of Radio available on the Internet.

Internet Archive
A digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts that exist in digital form. Includes texts, audio, moving images, software, and archived web pages. Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has archived over 150 billion web pages from 1996 to the current year.

Library of Congress Recorded Sound Research Center
The Recorded Sound Research Center provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress.

Nexis Uni
Broadcast transcripts from the major television and radio networks as well as political transcripts covering Congressional committee hearings, press briefings from the State, Justice, and Defense departments, and presidential news conferences.
Old Time Radio Researchers
Unlimited users.
The Old Time Radio Researchers maintain a library of over 60,000 episodes from what is commonly known as the Golden Age of Radio (1930-1960), freely available to the public. Includes classic programs like The Lives of Harry Lime, Black Museum, Captain Horatio Hornblower, Theater Royale, Scarlet Pimpernel, Suspense, and Secrets of Scotland Yard. The UT Libraries holds many of these titles on open reel tape in the Historic Music Recordings Collection.
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Unlimited users.
Updated daily. Provides a searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from 1968 to present (ABC, CBS, NBC), 1995 to present (CNN), and selected content from PBS and FOX News. Also includes more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming including ABC's Nightline since 1989. These special reports and periodic news broadcasts cover presidential press conferences and political campaign coverage, and national and international events such as the Watergate hearings, the plight of American hostages in Iran, the Persian Gulf war, and the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001
See Additional Info section for information on requesting loans from the collection.
Note: The Archive offers video streams that are duplications of entire broadcasts. Broadcasts from CNN and NBC can be streamed; broadcasts from all sources, including ABC, CBS, and Fox, can be loaned and downloaded in MP4 format after creating an account and paying a duplication fee ($17 per clip + a $10 processing fee). See Request a Loan from the Collection for more information.

UC Santa Barbara America Radio Archives
The American Radio Archives (ARA) is one of the largest collections of archival material documenting the history of radio broadcasting in the United States. Its more than 50 collections include the papers of important figures in the history of radio like Norman Corwin and Rudy Vallée, as well as archives of the collections of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters Collection and KNX radio with its thousands of radio scripts and transcription discs.

Internet Archive
A digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts that exist in digital form. Includes texts, audio, moving images, software, and archived web pages. Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has archived over 150 billion web pages from 1996 to the current year.

Ad Council
Public Service advertising campaigns.
Ad Forum
Directory of advertisements from broadcast, print and internet media. Can search by award winners, advertising agencies and more.
YouTube
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.

Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Unlimited users.
Updated daily. Provides a searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from 1968 to present (ABC, CBS, NBC), 1995 to present (CNN), and selected content from PBS and FOX News. Also includes more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming including ABC's Nightline since 1989. These special reports and periodic news broadcasts cover presidential press conferences and political campaign coverage, and national and international events such as the Watergate hearings, the plight of American hostages in Iran, the Persian Gulf war, and the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001
See Additional Info section for information on requesting loans from the collection.
Note: The Archive offers video streams that are duplications of entire broadcasts. Broadcasts from CNN and NBC can be streamed; broadcasts from all sources, including ABC, CBS, and Fox, can be loaned and downloaded in MP4 format after creating an account and paying a duplication fee ($17 per clip + a $10 processing fee). See Request a Loan from the Collection for more information.
Factiva
9 users.
Updated daily. A global information resource, providing full-text access to top national and international newspapers (including full text of the Wall Street Journal), newswires, business journals, market research reports, analysts reports and web sites. Contains over 8000 publications with content from 118 countries in 22 languages.
We have a limited number of users for this database. Please select the logout option before you leave your session. When the limit is reached, a username and password prompt will probably be displayed. If this happens, simply wait 15 minutes and then try the link again.

American History In Video
This collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and their presentation over time, through documentaries, commercial and governmental newsreels and archival and public affairs footage. The full runs of newsreels from United Newsreel and Universal Newsreel from 1929 through 1967 are included.
Users may also make isolated clips from the videos and save them in a free account available for registration set up within the database.
Art and Architecture In Video
A collection of documentaries and interviews illustrating the theory and practice of a variety of art forms and providing the context necessary for critical analysis. The collection spans time period and region, including coverage of the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Modern, and Contemporary Art. In addition to art history and theory, the collection addresses applied topics such as architectural and graphic design. The breadth of coverage makes this collection integral to both scholarship and technique, providing access to the seminal artists and works who continue to inspire the artists, architects, designers and critics of today.
Asian Film Online
An online streaming video collection of nearly 600 narrative feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Offers a view of Asian culture as seen through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker. Through a selection curated by film scholars and critics, viewers can explore the impact of globalization and urbanization on people’s everyday lives throughout the greater Asian region. Twenty-four countries across the region are represented, with a strong concentration on China, India, Iran, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.
Dance Online: Dance in Video Vol. I-IV
Scheduled to contain 250 dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover performances of ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Included are classic performances from top ballet companies and experimental works from up-and-coming dance troupes.
Ethnographic Video Online, Vols. I & II: Foundational Films
A comprehensive resource for the study of human culture and behavior. Features cross-searchable access to the acclaimed Ethnographic Video Online and Anthropology Online collections and provides anthropologists, sociologists and cultural historians with an expansive and multifaceted survey of the discipline. Researchers can explore a wide range of materials—from documentaries and field notes to written ethnographies and reference works.
Film Scripts Online
A collection of feature films containing over 1,100 scripts, many of which have never been published. Volume I covers American classic cinema, and Volume II expands into international and contemporary films. Includes detailed indexing on scenes, characters, and people. Supplemental information includes short biographies on the writers, and awards given to individual films have been noted. Film scholars can compare the writer’s vision with the producer’s and director’s interpretations from page to screen.

Films For Action
Films For Action has cataloged over 1,500 films and videos that can be watched free online. These films address social, environmental, and media-related issues.

Kanopy
This streaming service provides access to thousands of titles covering various educational topics and feature films from producers including Criterion, Documentary Educational Resources, New Day Films, Media Education Foundation, California Newsreel, PBS and others.
Latin America in Video
Provides access to documentaries produced in Latin America, by some of the most important producers and independent filmmakers in Latin America. The documentaries cover Latin American issues, such as cultural identity, political history, human rights, popular culture, agribusiness, education, religion, and more. The collection’s materials are presented in their original language with abstracts and indexing in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
Music Online: Opera in Video
Scheduled to contain 250 of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the world’s best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a work’s importance to the operatic canon.
Theatre in Video
Contains streaming video of more than 250 of the world’s most important plays, together with more than 100 video documentaries. Also includes the full text of plays, their history of performance, production background, reference materials and ephemera.

Paley Center for Media - Collection Database
The Paley Archive is made up of over 160,000 television and radio programs and advertisements, covering more than a century of media history, beginning with a 1918 speech by labor leader Samuel Gompers. The collection spans all genres: comedy, drama, news, public affairs, performing arts, children's, sports, reality, animation, and documentary. The Archive also includes an international presence, with assets collected from seventy countries.