Ilse Assmann is a qualified media information specialist with expertise and extensive experience in the management of broadcast archives (Radio and TV), organisational information & knowledge management, and heritage-related activities. Ilse has an extensive network of experts world-wide to deal with any specific need. Ilse is a SACIA Certified Broadcast & Communications Technology Professional.
1. Can you share your journey into working with audiovisual material in the Broadcast Archives? What motivated you to specialise in this area?
It is the stories kept in the archives, the ever-changing technology, the wonderful complexity of working with different collections and media formats and the passion shared among audiovisual archivists.
I was fortunate to work for a public service broadcaster, the SABC, and a commercial broadcaster, M-Net.
When I started as an archivist for contemporary or ‘light’ music at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), I knew nothing about archives or South African ‘light’ music. Surprisingly, this did not concern my employer. It is fair to say that I ended up in broadcast archives by sheer chance.
My responsibility was to organise and catalogue the backlog of ¼ tape and acetate disc music programmes and recordings, collect material and sort the huge 78 rpm music collection on the Radio Archive shelves. I spent many hours in the library, the discotheque (record library) and with SABC music producers to get an understanding of South African contemporary music. In due course I found gaps in our catalogue and contacted musicians, collectors and researchers to interview or to look for recordings to fill the gaps. I also learned about the technology and standards used in audiovisual archives. The writings of Helen Harrison[1] and Ray Edmondson[2] were of great value. Their insights provided the foundation that guided my understanding of the audiovisual archiving domain and its practices.
The Radio Archive went through a transformation and restructuring process at the time of my appointment. The purpose was to streamline functionality and focus on the different language and cultural groups in South Africa (in other words, an archivist for each public service radio station), as well as developing specialised collections. For the first time regional archivists were appointed to service the regional radio stations.
The archive had a vast collection of radio material dating back to the 1920s, the early days of broadcasting in South Africa. The archiving and cataloguing standards were based on BBC practices, following a fact-finding mission conducted by the SABC to the BBC during the 1960s. We underwent the same introductory training as sound engineers and controllers to gain a comprehensive understanding of sound, the various media formats, and playback equipment. Cataloguing was initially performed using cards, which were typed up and added to cataloguing cabinets.
The Radio Archive gradually advanced towards digital media formats aligned to the SABC’s broadcasting practices and an electronic cataloguing system.
In 2013 I exchanged the relative comfort of a national public service broadcaster for a fully commercial pay-tv broadcaster, and was introduced to a fast-paced, agile and technologically advanced environment. But not before I had exchanged the Radio Archive for the SABC TV News Archive for a brief period and had the privilege of getting to know the complex world of television news.
The commercial broadcaster had a progressive view about its archive. A digitisation project was approved in 2013, soon after my arrival and started in 2014. The collection was digitised with urgency and integrated into digital file-based workflows. An accurate inventory of all content was created, which facilitated the launch of new channels and enabled content to be used on different platforms, thereby recognising the potential for a return on investment through the reuse and repurposing of content.
In 2021 I founded Apricity Consulting and became involved in audiovisual archives in- and outside broadcasting.
2. What were the biggest challenges you faced in managing radio and television archives in South Africa, particularly during the transition to digital formats?
Audiovisual archiving is an expensive business. The collections require proper climate-controlled storage areas, well-maintained playback equipment, constant adaptation to technology changes to handle new media formats, and well-trained staff to collect, catalogue and make the analogue and digital content accessible.
The deterioration of analogue recording formats along with the obsolescence of playback equipment, poses a significant challenge for audiovisual preservation. As consumer demand for these technologies decline, they are withdrawn from the market, making it increasingly difficult to find replacement parts. The high cost and limited availability of spare parts have led to the dismantling of older equipment to salvage components. While old equipment can still be purchased online or at auctions, this is mostly not viewed as a viable long-term solution for archives and broadcasters who prefer to outsource digitisation. The only sustainable solution to preserving these collections is digitisation. But digital preservation is not without its own challenges and requires equally good housekeeping to ensure long-term preservation and accessibility.
The cost to keep and maintain both legacy and digitised/digital collections are exorbitant. The older the equipment becomes, and the further analogue formats deteriorate, the less likely it is that these collections can be digitised in the long-term. Digitisation is expensive, but the advantages outweigh keeping and managing analogue collections.
The shift from analogue to digital also led to challenges in skills transfer and training. As digital technologies replaced analogue systems, training programs for analogue skills at the SABC disappeared, and experienced engineers retired. Younger engineers are trained primarily on digital systems and need the transfer of knowledge and expertise to maintain and repair analogue equipment.
With the start of the digital era, the archives had to adapt to the broadcasters’ preferred recording formats and production systems, which were often not ideal for archive purposes. The SABC adopted digital recording formats such as DAT, Minidiscs, and CD-R for radio, while television transitioned to DVCPro and DVCam. An electronic cataloguing system was introduced for the SABC archives, but despite being shared among the TV archives, standards and access were not aligned. In hindsight, a unified metadata framework should have been developed to ensure consistency in cataloguing and access.
3. Can you share examples of key preservation strategies you used to ensure the longevity of broadcast material?
A preservation strategy consists of two overarching aspects: physical control and intellectual control of collections. Physical control includes managing analogue and digital formats, equipment, storage, and disaster prevention measures, while intellectual control involves maintaining accurate inventories, cataloguing, metadata frameworks, and copyright indicators.
In terms of physical control, broadcasters typically use high-quality recording formats and well-maintained playback equipment, giving them an advantage over non-broadcast audiovisual archives. The SABC proactively stored unused equipment to counteract obsolescence. For digital files, broadcasters adopted standardized formats such as. bwf and .wav for audio and .mxf for video, ensuring compatibility and preservation. Storage for physical and digital media was carefully designed to minimize dust, direct sunlight, and fire and flooding risks, with security measures in place. Although temperature and humidity control did not always meet ideal standards, efforts were made to maintain stable conditions. Digital storage solutions included onsite and offsite LTO libraries, with security protocols and disaster prevention policies in place.
Intellectual control varied across different archives. At the SABC Radio Archive, while accession lists were maintained, a full inventory was never undertaken due to the sheer size of the collection. Regular stock takes helped estimate the total number of media and hours in the archive. Cataloguing standards evolved from a cardex system to an electronic system, with a thesaurus used for referencing. The transition of cardex records to the electronic system was carried out as an overtime project to ensure the entire collection can be accessed on the electronic system.
At the commercial broadcaster, an accurate inventory of all content was compiled and implemented, updated daily to track content, and provide valuable information such as intellectual property and broadcast details. A metadata framework was developed to ensured uniform metadata standards across the digital workflow. A dedicated cataloguing and tagging system was acquired and developed alongside the production/playout system, allowing metadata and content files to be managed together. This ensured consistency and efficiency in content retrieval and use.
Unlike analogue archives, which were positioned at the end of the broadcast workflow, digital archives play a more central role in content curation and internal content provision. To align with digital workflows, the commercial broadcaster’s archives restructured, creating specialist roles such as digital cataloguers, technical quality controllers, and archive curators who were placed directly in the channels. A cataloguing team, including a quality control unit managing thesauri and controlled vocabularies, was established. Policies and procedures were developed to standardize archival processes, reinforcing the archives’ role within the digital value chain.
4. How did you address issues of intellectual property rights when managing radio and TV content?
The South African Copyright Act of 1978[3] guides issues of ownership and must be considered for reasons of preservation and use. For the purpose of preservation, the South African Copyright Act does not give outright permission to archives and libraries to digitise content that is not owned by the organisation the archives belong to. An amendment to the Copyright Act in 1997, however, allows broadcasters to ‘reproduce’ (i.e. shift the content onto a different platform/format for the sake of preservation) but not to be used without the consent of the owner, if the owner is not the broadcaster. The Copyright Amendment Bill (B13D-2017), though, addresses the preservation of content, regardless of the medium, for all archives, libraries and museums and galleries.
Intellectual property is dealt with during the cataloguing process and in the metadata framework. Notes are included on the system and on the container of the physical medium to warn the user if the use of content is prohibited for some reason, e.g. a music production to be used only twice without permission. In some cases, especially with oral history recordings or raw footage, embargoes are at times requested due to the sensitivity of a subject.
There are a number of issues the archivist needs to keep in mind – these are merely guidelines:
– Broadcaster’s content, i.e. commissioned and/or licenced in perpetuity content by the broadcaster, is safe to use by the broadcaster.
– Third party, sponsorship or shared license content, e.g. content used in news bulletins and actuality programmes or dramas which do not belong to the broadcaster and requires permission for use. The content is usually identified in the cataloguing system to alert the user.
– Licenced content, i.e. for example TV reality shows. The concept of the show is licenced to the broadcaster with certain conditions attached and allows the broadcaster to produce the show locally. The archives decided after consultation with the legal department to archive such content clearly indicating the conditions of use.
– Music content, i.e. music recordings commissioned or recorded by the broadcaster where the broadcaster is the owner of the recording. In the event of commercial recordings, the broadcaster does not own the recording and must declare and pay royalties to the collecting organisations when the music is used.
– In the event of embargoed content, a comment on the cataloguing system prevents the use of such content unless permission is granted. An embargo can be placed by either the broadcaster, or a community, an individual or the interviewee.
5. What role did broadcasters play in shaping public memory and identity during your tenure, and how did the archives support this role?
The SABC’s archives, including its regional archives, mirror the various cultures in South Africa. The archives actively promote the use of its collections and the recording of regional events. At the commercial TV broadcaster, content is often translated and dubbed in other languages, used in South Africa and across the African continent. The broadcaster bought and commissioned productions to reflect the country’s history and culture. Archivists with specific knowledge of the languages and cultures were employed to archive the collection.
Local content is king – there is no question about it. It defines who we are. Audiences want to listen to and see their own stories, told in their own languages and want to identify with their own cultures. It is often not really about how sophisticated the content delivery service is or how well a story is told. It is about a personal connection with the story. In my opinion, the archivist’s role is not to judge the quality of the story or production, but to preserve the story or production as part of a cultural memory.
From experience, the more organised the archive is, the more trusted the archive becomes. The improved relationship between the archive and the radio station or TV channel results in more content being used from the archives. Broadcast content plays a specific role in shaping identity, and it is the content in the archives – or sometimes the lack thereof (the gaps or silences in the collection) that help to shape memory. In instances where the archives lacked content, the archives tried to fill the gaps by reaching out to audiences. It is astonishing what content exists outside the archives, carefully kept by collectors. By building relationships with the collectors, the archives managed to fill gaps in its collection and continue to do so.
6. Can you elaborate on how you prioritized the archiving of materials that represent South Africa’s diverse cultural heritage?
In its preamble the Broadcast Act of 1999[4] states that broadcasters, inclusive of commercial and community broadcasters, ‘must reflect the multilingual and diverse nature of South Africa by promoting the entire spectrum of cultural backgrounds and official languages in South Africa’. As such, the Act has a direct impact on the modern content selection criteria archives adopted for preservation. Prior to the Act, selection criteria at the SABC Radio Archive were based on the BBC practices, such as uniqueness, historical events and type of production.
Selection criteria help to determine and maintain the focus of the collection and play a role in guiding new archivists to decide what content to archive. Eventually experience and knowledge outweigh the selection criteria. In all the archives where I worked, the diverse content of the broadcaster was catered for by appointing archivists with the necessary background. Curators positioned in the commercial broadcaster’s channels are experienced archivists with knowledge about the culture, language and content of the channel, and played a pro-active role to ensure the content found its way to the archives for cataloguing while at the same time advising the channel of content for re-use.
Prioritisation of content for digitisation purposes follows a different process. Content is selected based on re-use and aligned to the priority list set by the broadcaster. Otherwise, content is digitised upon requests.
7. How did national policies or legislation influence your work in heritage-related activities?
Legislation significantly influences the work of archivists, though South Africa lacks specific laws addressing the complexities of audiovisual archives. Instead, several Acts impact archival practices, including the Broadcast Act, Archive Act, Legal Deposit Act, and Copyright Act. The South African Broadcast Act of 1999, particularly section 8(j), mandates that the SABC maintain archives and provide public access. This legal recognition helped establish the importance of archives within the broadcaster. Similarly, the National Archives and Records Services Act of 1996 outlines general principles for collection management, preservation, accessibility, and proper record care, though it does not specifically address audiovisual archives.
During the 1980s, the SABC collaborated with the National Film, Video and Sound Archives of South Africa (NFVSA) in developing a ‘shadow archive’ agreement, providing copies of radio and video material. However, financial and technological constraints halted the project in the 1990s. The Legal Deposit Act of 1997 aimed to ensure all published media, including music, video, and film, were deposited at NFVSA. While the Act does not explicitly mention broadcasters, broadcasts qualify as published records, implying they should be deposited. However, the vast volume of daily broadcasts and limited resources made compliance impossible. Unlike the shadow archive agreement, which focused on archived content, the Legal Deposit Act sought to include all broadcasts, thus posing a significant challenge.
International standards played a crucial role in shaping in the audiovisual archiving practices where I worked. Organizations such as the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archivists (IASA) and the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) provided frameworks for preservation strategies. The IASA publication The Safeguarding of the Audiovisual Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy[5] still provides principles for managing both physical and digital audiovisual content. Cataloguing practices were influenced by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2)[6], which were adapted to meet the specific needs of different archival cataloguing systems.
Metadata and controlled vocabularies were also standardized using internationally recognized frameworks. The commercial broadcaster’s metadata system was based on the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) model, EBUCore[7], which itself is derived from the Dublin Core metadata elements. Thesauri used in electronic cataloguing followed the ISO-5964 standard for multilingual thesauri, which has since been updated. Additionally, the Library of Congress Authorities[8] were consulted to enhance controlled vocabularies, ensuring consistency in indexing and retrieval across archival collections.
8. What do you see as the biggest gaps or challenges for broadcast archives in South Africa today?
Broadcast archives operate in a fast-evolving, highly technical environment where both physical and digital preservation strategies are essential until all physical carriers have been digitised. Beyond digitisation, long-term digital integrity strategies must be in place to prevent content loss and ensure future accessibility. However, some South African broadcasters still face challenges in achieving a fully digital environment due to their analogue collections. Funding, staffing, and political will have largely hampered the archives’ activities and required careful thinking to effectively manage the archives regardless. In the end, each archive must develop a tailored preservation strategy based on its own unique requirements for cost, safety, longevity, and accessibility.
Training for audiovisual archivists remains insufficient despite efforts through workshops and conferences. While organisations such as ESARBICA and SASA (South African Society for Archivists) have started incorporating audiovisual archiving topics into their conference programmes, the lack of dedicated accredited courses is a significant gap. Currently, UNISA is the only university offering a semester module in audiovisual archiving. International training programmes do exist, with some providing scholarships and travel grants. Most recently, the SABC Radio Archive successfully applied for the IASA Preservation Training Programme, receiving intensive training in Johannesburg. The UNISA Archives and the National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFVSA) were invited to join the training. Such initiatives highlight the long-term benefits of structured professional training and the necessity for professional development of audiovisual archivists.
Despite their importance, broadcast archives are not always fully recognised by broadcasters as valuable strategic internal content partners. Broadcasters must integrate archives into their business models, acknowledging them as both preservation entities and internal strategic content providers. By working closely with archives, broadcasters can maximize the value of their content, explore new opportunities, and tackle industry challenges more effectively. Ensuring archives reach their full potential will require strategic investment, collaboration, and a shift in perception toward their role in the digital era.
9. What lessons from your experience could inform the next generation of archivists working in broadcast archives?
Be curious
Be open to change
Be adaptable
Learn constantly
Enjoy!
Often when I found myself at a crossroad in my career, understanding the value of content, experiencing the beauty of historic content and the power to remain relevant in the constantly changing world of the audiovisual- and broadcast world made me stay. Every time I listen to a radio drama, hear a historic clip, or watch a film that contains archive material, I know that somewhere a dedicated archivist was responsible.
10. If you could implement one change to ensure the sustainability of South Africa’s audiovisual archives, what would it be?
Archivists are passionate, committed protectors of content and memory. The idea that audiovisual documents can be recognised as primary documents is of critical importance to me and raises the stakes to ensure long-term preservation strategies are in place. In addition, the recognition of television and radio output as having cultural value offers additional sources to assist with information sharing to educate and inform and may help to examine and understand the past. If I could implement one change it would be to persuade owners of audiovisual archives to recognise the strategic partners they have in their archives and to change the mindset of viewing the archives as an internal content provider rather than a warehouse of content.
[1] Harrison, H. W., 1997. Training for audiovisual archivists. In: H. W. Harrison, ed. Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader. Paris: UNESCO
[2] Edmondson, R., 2016. Audiovisual archiving: philosophy and principles. 3rd ed. Paris: UNESCO
[3] https://www.gov.za/documents/copyright-act-16-apr-2015-0942
[4] https://www.gov.za/documents/broadcasting-act
[5] https://www.iasa-web.org/tc03/ethics-principles-preservation-strategy
[6] https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2018/12/anglo-american-cataloguing-rules-aacr.html
[7] https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3293.pdf
[8] https://authorities.loc.gov/
