RTÉ plans €2.5m project to digitally archive almost 40 years of footage

Tue, 08 Feb, 2022 - 21:53

Sean Murray

RTÉ is set to spend up to €2.5m on a major project that will digitally archive over 287,000 hours of footage, spanning almost 40 years.

The broadcaster said it wants to make the digitised recordings and catalogue records available for production purposes and potentially leading to publication on the RTÉ Archives website.

The extensive project, which is expected to take up to three years, will see 17,942 hours of GAA coverage, 9,840 hours of rugby footage, 7,560 hours of soccer, and 2,397 hours of Olympic coverage joining a digital archive.

The recordings come in different formats, comprising 253,000 separate tapes.

“The videotapes contain a mixture of studio and field recordings produced originally for TV programming purposes,” said RTÉ.

Cork studio

There will also be over 6,000 hours of content directly from the regional studio in Cork to be digitised as part of the process.

RTÉ hopes to award the contract in early April. Once it has awarded the contract, it will request a sample of 100 videotapes to be digitised as a “test batch”. If the outcome of this test is not accepted by RTÉ, it can terminate the contract, it said.

On its archives website, RTÉ says that it combines “hundreds of thousands of hours of moving image and sound recordings together with significant collections of photographs, manuscripts and administrative documents” to showcase a “unique record of Irish life”.

Atop its home page on Tuesday was a video from 1977 where presenter Mike Murphy investigates claims of paranormal activity by spending a night in Marlay House in Dublin’s Rathfarnham.

An RTÉ spokesperson said that the project is a sign of the broadcaster’s commitment to “safeguard endangered historic recordings”, to preserve and guarantee their accessibility for future generations.

“Once digitised, RTÉ Archives content is managed and maintained to best international standards for preservation and is linked to searchable catalogues which provide vital access for researchers, production, and the creative industries for the re-use and development of productions and projects which require the support of archive material,” said the spokesperson.

“Public access will also be further enhanced online via the RTÉ Archives website and across RTÉ.ie services and will continue to grow as we add material to our daily curated publications and collections, copyright and resources permitting.”

'Neighbours'

Separately, RTÉ is also in talks with the makers of the Australian TV show Neighbours, after the future of the long-running soap opera was cast into doubt.

The show, which broadcasts on RTÉ2, is being dropped by the British TV station Channel 5.

Such is the popularity of Neighbours around these shores, it is understood the British broadcaster had helped to subsidise the production of the Australian show through advertising.

An RTÉ spokesperson said: “RTÉ is currently in talks with Fremantle in relation to Neighbours.”

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