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Category: Television

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“Daisy”: The Most Effective Political Commercial Ever?

Posted by: Mike Mashon

As we enter the homestretch of the 2016 Presidential campaign, we’re sure to see an increasing number of television ads. Although social media is now an important part of any candidate’s promotional arsenal, the amount of money spent on TV ads continues to grow with each cycle. Given the ubiquity of TV spots, it’s hard …

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Now Playing at the Packard Campus Theater (July 30-31, 2015)

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, July 30 (7:30 p.m.) “Classic Jazz from the Library of Congress Archives” (1940s-1980s) An evening of rarely seen performances by such legendary jazz musicians and singers as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gilliespie, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, John …

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Now Playing at the Packard Campus Theater (March 19-21, 2015)

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, March 19 (7:30 p.m.) Public Broadcast Laboratory (1967-1968) Public Broadcast Laboratory (PBL) was the first regularly scheduled educational television program aired nationwide, shown on National Educational Television (NET) stations. It premiered in 1967, offering incisive reporting, examinations of …

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You Won’t BELIEVE What They Said About Us!

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center has garnered a fair amount of media attention over the years and 2014 was no exception. Here’s a selection of print and broadcast stories from last year that, taken together, provide a good overview of who we are and what we do. The announcement of new additions to the National …

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The Cabinet of Curiosities: Video Recording Logs

Posted by: Mike Mashon

I wrote in an earlier post about how few copies of Johnny Carson’s first ten years of hosting the Tonight Show survive because of NBC’s re-use of the 2″ Quadruplex videotapes on which the show was recorded, a practice that stopped once Carson purchased the show from NBC in 1972. One of our video preservation …

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Now Playing at the Packard Campus Theater (November 20-22, 2014)

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, November 20 (7:30 p.m.) A Night of Electric Blues: Great Blues Performances on TV (1955-1989) Selected from the Library’s video collections and digitally restored by Video Preservation Specialists at the Packard Campus, this memorable evening features legendary blues artists …

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When Polio Was Defeated by a Vaccine…and a Seven-Year-Old Girl

Posted by: Mike Mashon

She remembers the “hot packs”–towels soaked in boiling water, wrung out, then wrapped around her legs. She remembers the blisters. She remembers the endless hours of physical therapy, the manipulation of her limbs, especially her right leg, the one affected by polio. She also remembers the kindness of her doctors and nurses, the friendships she …