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The Olympic World Feed Project: Searching, acquiring and preserving the international television signal of the Olympic Games from 1956 to 1988
Journal of Digital Media Management,
10
(1),
36-52
(2021)
Abstract
This paper describes the project carried out by the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH) to locate, acquire and preserve all official televised coverage (ie the international television signal) of the Olympic Games broadcast between 1956 and 1988. After providing a general overview of the audiovisual archives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which are managed and overseen by the OFCH, and outlining the OFCH’s mission and challenges in this respect, the paper discusses how the television broadcasting of the Olympic Games has evolved and the impact of these developments on the race to repatriate and preserve this content. The paper goes on to discuss the Olympic World Feed Project, describing the planning that went into recovering more than 3,000 hours of content missing from the IOC’s archives, as well as the various steps involved and the numerous challenges faced along the way. In particular, the paper provides a case study of the acquisition of the international television signal produced during the XIV Olympic Winter Games — Sarajevo 1984.
Keywords: international signal; Olympic Games; Olympic movement; digitisation; preservation; heritage; archives; Olympics
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Yasmin Meichtry is the Associate Director at the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, where she is responsible for all Olympic patrimonial collections from acquisition to conservation and valorisation. In addition to heading the Heritage unit, she is also in charge of the Executive and Development & Innovation Services. Yasmin is an experienced film publicist and production adviser. She has previously directed the Fondation Suisse/Pavillon Le Corbusier in Paris, and served in the Swiss diplomatic services as Counsellor for Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
Isabel Sánchez is a project manager at the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage Images and Sounds archive. As part of this role, she is responsible for the acquisition, digitisation and preservation of historical television coverage of the Olympic Games. She also leads several migration and preservation projects of film and video archives. She has previously worked for various production companies and cultural institutions, including the Montreux Jazz Festival, where she was responsible for audiovisual production and content creation..
