Cinergie: Special Issue

Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti no. 28 (2025)

Tele-Archives. Reframing Archival Research on Local Televisions Across Europe

edited by Giulia Crisanti (Sapienza Università di Roma), Myriam Mereu (Università degli Studi di Cagliari), Emiliano Rossi (Università di Bologna) and Paola Zeni (Università degli Studi di Torino)

The full issue is downloadable here

Tele-Archives. Reframing Archival Research on Local Televisions Across Europe

(Excerpt from the editorial introduction)

In the last fifty years, archivists and historians have been drawing increasing attention to the need to preserve “today’s television programming for tomorrow’s viewers”, as well as to the constraints inherent in this task, given the extensiveness of television production and the fragmentation – when not the actual lack – of systematic archival endeavours. When it comes to television history, archival recording is neither straightforward nor to be taken for granted. Significant archival voids recurrently loom over the possibility of fully restoring the many hidden histories that television holds. More often than not, scholars face huge gaps in television archival collections or even the absence of audiovisual recordings. A proper archival mentality began to emerge among major Western broadcasters only in the late 1960s and early 1970s, leading to the first pioneering efforts to systematize and preserve major television productions, especially information programmes.

However, archival preservation has largely been limited to public broadcasters or to major private TV networks. This reflects the broader structural obstacles faced by local televisions, which often ran short of resources or institutional interest in keeping a historical track of their activity. At the same time, television technological advancements have made recording devices obsolete, frequently preventing accessibility to audiovisual collections, especially those pertaining to off-network TV stations. Systematic initiatives to create accessible television archives are not only relatively recent; they have also struggled to keep pace with the ever-growing and constantly evolving nature of audiovisual production. From the 1970s onwards – when, as a general rule and despite significant territorial differences, TV companies began to store and preserve their activity –, the liberalisation of television broadcasting, combined with the increasing globalisation of television markets, led to a rapid proliferation of channels across Europe. In this context, the European television landscape unfolds as a vast ocean: rich in discoveries and hidden depths, yet extremely difficult to navigate and systematically explore.

This special issue of Cinergie stems from the need to tackle these challenges. The articles that it brings together testify to the difficulties of accessing (or even locating) archival collections and databases, of verifying private sources and securing rights, of assembling the fragmented pieces left by many locally based TV stations, which have for too long remained at the periphery of mainstream historical investigation. In doing so, the authors of this issue jointly trace new pathways of archival research; they propose innovative strategies to fill archival voids, casting light over so-far hidden television experiences and unveiling their contribution to the history of local communities, as well as to the broader evolution of media systems in different European contexts. The focuses of the various contributions range from analyses of how streaming TV platforms have reshaped approaches to preserving public memory to the mobilisation of television for educational purposes or to the medium’s role in crafting regional identities and their public representation. What emerges is the common adoption of what could be considered an archaeological and “patchworking” approach to television archives, integrating sources from a variety of formal and informal outlets, such as private collections, in-depth interviews, and newspaper and magazine libraries. In particular, the authors seem to share the commitment to moving beyond conventional repositories, mapping out a series of counter-archives, digging into dispersed and heterogeneous sources, and recovering lost material. The contributors to this issue thus resurface neglected broadcast histories and marginalised voices, shedding light on television’s role in supporting experimental artists – from British independent filmmakers to the Italian Studio Azzurro movement –, in processes of place-making, or in the broader socio-economic and cultural developments that have shaped Europe’s media landscape in the last fifty years.

Building on these insights, this special issue of Cinergie aims to redefine the significance of archives within television and media studies. It does so by integrating comprehensive international perspectives with detailed analyses of local and private broadcasting in Italy, alongside an examination of the transformation of traditional television genres on local TV channels. Such an approach is particularly necessary considering that the historiography on European television has often relied on memorialist accounts, whereas systemic historical investigations of commercial and local broadcasting remain scarce. Against this backdrop, the Italian case offers a key example: the Constitutional Court rulings of the mid-1970s and the 1975 Rai reform ended the state monopoly, fuelling the proliferation of private and local stations which paved the way for what Umberto Eco termed the ‘neotelevision’ era. Yet this process was shaped by wider transnational transformations: new technologies, market liberalisation, shifts in audience consumption, and the growing influence of North American models. Such contexts call for a comparative approach capable of situating national evolutions within the international scenario; at the same time, the focus on archives foregrounds the methodological complexities and opportunities of studying local and private broadcasters. Notably, the scarcity of institutional repositories often forces researchers to adopt multilayered action plans, drawing on private collections, ‘grey’ archives, oral history, and cross-media sources such as print press, radio, and cinema.

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Table of Content

Giulia Crisanti (Sapienza Università di Roma), Myriam Mereu (Università di Cagliari), Emiliano Rossi (Università di Bologna), Paola Zeni (Università di Torino)

Introduction: Tele-Archives. Reframing Archival Research on Local Television Across Europe

Marco Manfra (Università di Camerino), Grazia Quercia (Università Guglielmo Marconi)

Broadcasting Knowledge: the Role of the Television Archive in the Pedagogical Legacy of OU’s A305 History of Architecture and Design (1890–1939)

Chiara Borgonovo (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele), Laura Marcolini (Studio Azzurro Produzioni srl)

Studio Azzurro and Rai: Retrieving Neglected Histories from Artist Archives

Victoria Lowe (University of Manchester)

Adapting Manchester: Granada Studios, Brideshead Revisited (1981) and the “Performance” of Place

Nicole Atkinson (Birkbeck, University of London e LUX)

Reconstructing Histories: Mapping Artists’ Film and Video on Channel 4 (1982–1992) through the Archives of LUX, British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection, and REWIND Artists’ Video Archive

Gabriele Angelo Perrone (Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino)

Mus-Mus-Musica! Videomusic’s Archive at Museo Nazionale del Cinema

Pınar Aslan, Hakan Koluman, Sena Özşirin (Üsküdar University)