Memorial Library accepted WYOU Community Television’s donation of “Nothing to Hide” videotapes Friday, creating the largest cable access video archive of a show centering on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender topics in the nation.
David Runyon’s “Nothing to Hide” program included coverage of LGBT events, speeches and interviews with local and national leaders of the organization. The program ran on WYOU from 1981 to 2001, making it the longest running LGBT program in the world during its time.
A number of guest speakers participated in the ceremony including Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, UW Library System Director Ken Frazier, Executive Director of Madison OutReach Steve Starkey and former WYOU Board Chair and political activist Richard Russell.
Baldwin described the acquisition as a team effort to ensure the future of public access television, preserving it through the digital transition of global media.
“Especially with other areas of our media [failing], we need to have a way to keep the spotlight on what’s going on in our communities, our government and our educational institutions,” Baldwin said.
Black also noted the importance of public access television and highlighted the need for legislation for its protection.
“As media shrinks and as this coverage contracts in many of the traditional forces of media, public access television is more important than ever, and it is threatened. It is threatened at the national and state level,” Black said.
He added he is currently fighting for legislation that would protect this type of media, and hopes such action is initiated on the national level as well.
WYOU recently had its funding from the city of Madison slashed in half. After much debate and WYOU representatives pleading to restore the funding through a budget amendment, the city council ultimately decided to maintain the budget cut, eliminating $30,000 of city funds to the station.
Frazier saw the acquisition as a powerful symbol of recognition of the importance of the LGBT community, and said it also provides a valuable educational resource to campus.
“We’re very interested in supporting students and scholars who will use this material to write articles and books, but the other part of this is we intend to preserve this cultural record forever,” Frazier said.
In addition to archiving and circulating the tape collection for students and community members, Memorial Library also digitized the master videotape editions, making them more accessible and creating the largest repository of LGBT tapes in the nation, according to a statement by WYOU.
“[The tapes] will make a very useful resource available to more people,” Madison OutReach member Wayne Gathright said. “In their current [form], they’re very hard to distribute and have people be able to use them for research. By the library digitizing them and making them available online, they’ll be available to the entire world for research and viewing.”
