Size: two vaults, 533 m2
Temperature: 4°C
Relative Humidity: 25%
Holdings: 115,000 cans
The film archive's mission sounds simple enough: "To ensure the preservation of all program material created on film, broadcast by the CBC, as cultural assets for future generations." But take one quick pass through the two film vaults in the Broadcast Centre basement and the job's true scope is clear - 115,000 cans of film is a lot of film.
How much? Joined end to end, it would stretch 19,500 kilometres. That's long enough to ring halfway around the equator. Or to span the distance from St. John's, N.L., to Victoria, B.C., three times over. Here in the vaults, to conserve space, film reels are stored in colour-coded plastic "cans" (red = irreplaceable negatives, yellow = magnetic audio, etc.) and packed side-by-side in horizontal slots on long moveable shelves. The contents are grouped into four categories: master elements, production elements, outtakes, and news. To the average person, they're precious copies of The Beachcombers, The Nature of Things or This Hour Has Seven Days.
This still-growing collection, which includes all nationally broadcast material and local Toronto programming, along with some regional material, spans CBC Television's 50-year history. In our digital age, film and TV might sound like an odd fit. But for many years film was a CBC mainstay. In the 1950s and early '60s, programs were recorded on film directly from television monitors. These copies are known as kinescopes. The adoption of two-inch videotape ended the need for kinescopes, but film - mostly 16mm - continued to be used to make news programs until 1978 and documentaries and other shows into the early '90s and beyond.
