Videotape has been the production and storage medium of choice for much of television history. Digital disks and computer editing suites might soon render it passé, but for the moment videotape still rules.
At the CBC - where video archives are subdivided along programming lines - all new broadcasts are currently copied for archiving in either digital Betacam format or, to a lesser extent, newer high-compression digital SX format. Digital Beta is also the tape of choice for creating new archive copies of older programs currently stored on older videotape formats. Along with copying work, footage is also "shot listed" (scene contents are summarized in sequence) and catalogued in databases that CBC staff can then search from their desktop computers (these databases include all national and regional holdings but not sports, which is catalogued separately.)
Digital copying produces an exact replica of the original. As long as this tape is properly stored and preserved, archivists know they'll be able to make as many additional copies in future as they need without any loss in quality. This means your children and grandchildren will be able to watch the same broadcasts of This Hour Has 22 Minutes or Hockey Night in Canada that you do today.
The goal of the video archives is to have two copies of every program ever broadcast on the CBC - one "untouchable" master and one available to CBC staff to copy for reuse, rebroadcast or licensing to outside clients such as filmmakers and foreign networks. But as long as tapes decay and technology changes, the video archives will always be something of a work in progress.
