WCNY’s contribution will be part of the American Archive’s 40,000 hours of content produced over the last six decades. The archive is designed to ensure that public investment in non-commercial media – totaling billions of dollars over the years – is fully protected for, and accessible to, generations to come.

“The American Archive is one of the most important responsibilities facing our public media system,” said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB. “Taxpayers have funded more than half a century of local, regional and national television and radio programming, and the American Archive will serve as a return on that investment.”

Since the project launched two years ago, public television and radio stations across the country have identified nearly 2.5 million records, including complete local and national programs, raw footage, unedited interviews, recorded speeches, scripts and photos. Together, these represent more than 1 million hours of video, film and audio recordings from more than 100 stations.

WCNY’s footage of the “Bluegrass Ramble” show, a documentary entitled “Central New York in the 40s” and several Syracuse Symphony Orchestra performances will be part of the station’s initial contribution.

“We are proud to have a role in creating the American Archive,” said Robert J. Daino, WCNY president and CEO. “As part of this initiative, public radio and television stations across the country are not only contributing to a historical record of public media in the 20th century, but they are re-connecting audiences, present and future, to the media that holds the memory of the events, people, and landscapes of their communities.”

Public radio and television stations participating in the initiative have completed the initial phases of the project, including inventorying their archives and selecting the content to be preserved. As a next step, CPB is preparing to transition the American Archive to a new permanent home that will allow it to sustain and expand the work in the future.

CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,300 locally owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology and program development for public radio, television and related online services.