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Research Impact

Research Impact

Making large-scale provision of historic television widely available 

Professor Ellis and other colleagues worked with Learning on Screen to deliver large-scale provision of digitised historic TV for education and research through Box of Broadcasts. BoB is the world’s largest archive of broadcast material available for teaching and research, making available over 2.5 million items of TV content. Almost all HEIs in the UK subscribe to BoB, using content from news and documentaries to sitcoms and reality shows to enhance learning and teaching across the curricula. 1.7 million programmes a year are streamed by teachers, lecturers and students.   

Our researchers were also partners in the pan-European EUScreen project to make historic TV content universally available. EUscreen is a network of 17 European TV archives and work with researchers from Utrecht University and NTU Athens. EUscreen helped to change the perceived value of “ordinary” TV and has enabled many broadcasters to digitize and present their holdings online.  

Our novel ‘hands on history’ research has also secured the material heritage of TV production, and produced dozens of online demonstrations of historic TV production technologies and working practices. Hands on media history methods continue to be developed with private collectors and Luxembourg University among others. 

Uncovering the forgotten television drama across nations in the UK 

Professor Hill and colleagues have worked with cultural organisations and archives, to recover, restore, archive, screen and release forgotten TV drama production in regions and nations of the UK. Hill and colleagues: 

  • increased the availability of largely neglected television dramas of the past and enhanced our understanding of them 

  • broadened the programming and curation of historical television material 

  • influenced the attitudes and practices of archivists towards neglected material and improved access to it.

We have partnered with the BFI, ITV, BECTU, the North West Film Archive and Network Distribution, and collaborated with universities across the UK’s four nations to deliver a wide programme of screenings, DVD releases of forgotten TV drama and boost archival and research practices in relation to historical television.

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