Brown Media Library Gallery Guide: Overview
Welcome to the Brown Media Library Gallery. The Walter J. Brown Media Archive
& Peabody Awards Collection was started in 1995 and currently preserves over
250,000 titles in film, video, audiotape, transcription disks, and other recording
formats dating from the 1920s to the present. Our mission is to preserve, protect,
and provide access to the moving image and sound materials that reflect the
collective memory of broadcasting and the history of the state of Georgia and
its people.
The Peabody Awards Collection is the flagship of the archives, and contains
nearly every entry for the first major broadcast award given in the United States.
Entries begin in 1940 for radio and 1948 for television, and we receive at least
1,000 new entries every year --programs by local, national, cable, and
international producers. The collection provides a cultural cross-section of
television from its infancy to the present day, featuring news, documentary,
entertainment, educational, and children's programming. The judging for the
Peabody awards is conducted by the Peabody Awards Office in the Grady
School of Journalism from panel of distinguished television scholars, critics, and
media professionals. The award ceremony is held every year in New York in late
spring.
The History of Electronic Media
An archive of recorded moving images and sounds is useless without the tools
and equipment needed to capture and reproduce the recordings. Technologies
become obsolete almost as soon as they are adopted. This is true for amateur
and professional-grade equipment alike. Our challenge is not just to protect our
collections from deterioration, but to preserve the things that allow us to share
them. Migration to new formats is part of the answer, but this approach is a race
against time. Will the tools we need remain viable long enough for us to transfer
our unique audio and moving image holdings?
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George Foster Peabody (1852-1938)
George Foster Peabody, whose name has become synonymous with excellence
in broadcasting, was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1852. After the family fell on
hard times following the Civil War, Mr. Peabody relocated with them to New
York, where at the age of 14 he found work in the mercantile industry.
A self-educated man, Mr. Peabody achieved his greatest success while working
for Spencer Trask and Company, an investment firm that specialized in the very
lucrative fields of electrical and railroad construction.
It was during this time that Mr. Peabody began using his accumulated wealth to
support a variety of causes that were important to him, one of them being
education in the South. He joined the Board of Trustees for several institutions,
including the University of Georgia. Mr. Peabody became one of UGA’s primary
benefactors, providing funds for a new library, now the Administration Building,
and another building at the State Normal School on Prince Avenue. He was
instrumental in the creation of the 1905 master plan and purchased land for the
south campus expansion. He was a strong promoter of the University’s
agricultural program and provided funding for the establishment of the School of
Forestry.
In 1940, the University of Georgia and the Grady School of Journalism agreed to
administer an award for broadcasting excellence and it was named the George
Foster Peabody Award to honor Mr. Peabody’s many contributions to the
University. Mr. Peabody’s daughter, Marjorie Peabody Waite, served on the first
Advisory Board and commissioned the famous bronze medallion that features
Mr. Peabody’s likeness.
In the ensuing years, the George Foster Peabody Award has become the most
selective and prestigious award in electronic media. The Walter J. Brown Media
Archive and Peabody Awards Collection is home to the archive of the Peabody
Awards program.
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Walter J. Brown, 1903-1995
Born in 1903 in Bowman, Georgia, Walter J. Brown rose from humble, rural
beginnings to success as the founder, chairman, and CEO of Spartan
Communications, Inc., a media company of television stations in the South and
Midwest. The Walter J. Brown Media Archive and Peabody Awards Collection is
named to honor his contributions to the broadcasting world.
More about Walter J. Brown:
Brown graduated from Georgia Tech High School, attended Gerogia Tech and
later pursued a journalism degree at the University of Georgia where he studied
under John Drewry. In 1925 he married Georgia Watson Lee, granddaughter of
his father’s political mentor, Thomas E. Watson. The two started the Tom Watson
Book Company where Brown discovered his talent as a journalist. He
subsequently reported for several newspapers before moving to Washington,
D.C. to start his own news bureau.
In 1940, Brown moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina to manage WORD radio.
Brown’s work in radio led to television and by the time of his death in 1995 his
company owned TV stations in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida,
Alabama, Kansas and Iowa.
Brown returned to Washington in 1943 to serve on the staff of James F. Byrnes
when Byrnes was Director of War Mobilization and later Secretary of State. Brown
was a member of the American delegations to the Potsdam Conference and
the Council of Foreign Ministers in London. He is also the author of two books: J.J.
Brown and Thomas E. Watson: Georgia Politics 1912-1928 and James F. Byrnes of
South Carolina: A Remembrance.
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Peabody Awards Gallery
Bestowed annually since 1941, the George Foster Peabody Awards are the
world’s oldest, most prestigious prize for electronic media.
The Peabody Awards were born from the intersection of two laudable ideas:
honoring humanitarian George Foster Peabody and creating an award for
broadcasting equal in prestige to the Pulitzer for print. The first awards were
presented to the outstanding radio broadcasts of 1940 at a white-tie banquet in
New York City on March 29, 1941. Opened to television, cable and Internet
programming as electronic media expanded, the Peabody Awards now attract
more than 1,000 entries annually from around the world.
Georgia Collections Gallery
Brown Media Archives is the only public institution in the State of Georgia which
actively collects, preserves, and provides access to the moving image and
sound history of Georgia. Our diverse holdings reflect the collective memory of
our state and constitute a unique resource for studying and appreciating
Georgia's history and culture. Amateur film, video, and audiotape highlighting
Georgia people, places, and musicians can be found in many of our collections,
while our newsfilm documents the history of Atlanta and the Southeast, spans the
entire civil rights movement, and covers major social and cultural events of the
20th century. Other collections capture our state's rich folk traditions, depict life
on the UGA campus, and preserve the legacy of institutions ranging from the
Atlanta Gas Light Company to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia began buying and creating 16mm educational films in
the 1930s for distribution around the state. WGTV went on the air in 1960 and the
creative team at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education made programs
for National Educational Television (NET), the predecessor of PBS. The Office of
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Student Services made films for orientation. Even home movies show campus
buildings, protests in action, and famous art works. WUOG Radio produced and
saved thousands of programs since 1972. All these materials have come to the
Brown Media Archives and are an important part of the University’s audiovisual
history.
Georgia Folklife
The Georgia Folklore Collection contains field recordings of Georgia folk artists
and musicians made by volunteers from the Georgia Folklore Society. Over 1,000
hours of music, interviews, storytelling and rare performances showcase art forms
that developed stylistically into regional traditions as they passed from
generation to generation. Included are Sacred Harp singing, Gullah language,
bluegrass music, folktales and oral histories.
The Foxfire Collection contains video, images and records from the Foxfire
Institute, a non-profit educational and literary organization based in Rabun
County, Georgia. For 35 years, Foxfire students have been collecting the history
of the Southern Appalachian region, its people, and their ways of life. Their
unique approach to learner-centered, community-based education allows
students to use technology to preserve the old-time ways of mountain life.
Georgia Music
Georgia's music is as diverse as its citizens. From modern rock to old-time blues
and gospel, the music of Georgia is found throughout our collections.
Many of the roots of American music have sprung from Georgia's red clay soil.
James Brown, Ray Charles, Thomas A. Dorsey ("the father of black gospel
music"), and groups such as Gid Tanner and The Skillet Lickers, REM, The Indigo
Girls, and Widespread Panic are among the internationally influential musicians
who were born and/or have created their music here. Our holdings include a
variety styles such as bluegrass, work songs, lower Appalachian mountain music,
gospel singing, Sacred Harp, country and western radio programs from the
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1940s. We have music from Athens rock bands from the 1980s, the Savannah
Music Festival, the Down Home Blues Festival, and the Georgia Music Hall of
Fame.
Home Movies
Home movies have been popular since 28mm film came on the market in 1913.
The film got smaller over time (16mm, 9.5mm, 8mm, Super 8mm), before being
replaced by videotape. Today, digital formats dominate the market. Initially a
home movie camera and projector were expensive to own, but falling prices
soon put them within reach of the average family. Popular topics from the past
include vacations, parades, gardens, babies, family reunions, birthday parties,
and holiday celebrations, and films were shown in one's living room to small
gatherings of family and friends. Today, videos of any conceivable topic are
being shot on portable digital devices and posted instantly online for the world
to see, and personally recorded digital content is frequently seen in news
broadcasts. The home movie is not just at home anymore.
Town Films
Town films, also known as “home town movies”, or “local films”, were small-town
filmed portraits. They flourished from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Town films were creations of entrepreneurial filmmakers who traveled the country
selling their services to small towns, with the idea that townsfolk could see
themselves on the big screen. Local camera buffs also made their own versions
of town films. The Media Archives holds many examples of town films made in
Georgia. At the time these films were made, television was in its infancy and not
in every home, and the idea of seeing yourself on the big screen at your
hometown movie theater was a new and innovative idea. You were a movie
star in your own community when the film was shown. Unfortunately, many town
films deteriorated or were destroyed years ago, though the publicity about them
survives in microfilmed newspapers. Films that do survive are being studied by
scholars today.
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Newsfilm
Newsfilm was 16mm film shot by television reporters and cameramen as a story
occurred. We preserve several newsfilm collections including WSB-TV (1949-1981),
WALB-TV (1961-1978), and WRDW-TV (1961-1976).
From the earliest days of television, local stations produced their own news
programs and captured breaking events on 16mm film for editing into each
night’s televised broadcast. They shot, developed, and edited that film in record
time to make the nightly newscast. Beginning in the late 1970s, stations switched
to videotape which, though immediate to use, was also easily taped over or
erased. With today's digital recordings, access to content is even quicker, but so
is deletion, and files can also become corrupted. Film persists- it has physical
longevity and cannot be erased or deleted. Our newsfilm is a detailed record of
the past, including footage of Boy Scout parades, traffic accidents, building fires,
sporting events, protests, political speeches, visits by celebrities, beauty
pageants, and city council meetings, among other events.
More About the Newsfilm Collection:
Georgia history is highlighted in three newsfilm collections. The WSB Newsfilm
Collection contains raw news footage from 1949 to 1981. More than 5 million feet
of film clips shows the history of Atlanta and the Southeast, spans the entire civil
rights movement, and covers such social and cultural events as the
desegregation of the University of Georgia. Major leaders and political figures,
including Julian Bond, Jimmy Carter, Maynard Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Lester Maddox, Richard Russell, Carl Sanders, Herman Talmadge, George
Wallace, and Andrew Young, are featured in the collection.
The WALB Newsfilm Collection contains raw news footage from Albany and
surrounding areas from 1961 to 1978. This newsfilm collection covers the Albany
Movement of 1961-62, which is considered the first mass movement to
desegregate an entire community in the modern civil rights era, as well as the
people and events that affected South Georgia.
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National Collections Gallery
Broadcast Interviews
The interviews featured here highlight the variety of broadcast conversation
types that appear across our collections. They can be in the studio or out in the
field and contain surprises or appear very well orchestrated. All interviews
contain a microphone to pick up the sound of the human voice. The
microphone is either worn, or held above the interviewer and interviewee, on a
stand in front of the interviewer, or pointed at the subjects out of view of the
camera. Microphones vary in size and in the direction of sound they capture.
There is no interview possible without a decent recording made through a
microphone. The sound recorded is monitored closely to insure the level is neither
too low or to high, either end is disruptive to the listener and makes for a poor
interview on the technical level.
Arnold Michaelis Library of Living History
This important, unique collection consists of hundreds of hours of Arnold
Michaelis' audio, film, and video interviews recorded since 1958 with the world's
leading political and cultural personalities. Martin Luther King, Jr., Adlai
Stevenson, Dean Rusk, Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Indira Gandhi
are just a few of the men and women interviewed by Mr. Michaelis in their own
homes. Michaelis was an executive with Columbia Records, served as hostwriter-producer of ‘Music Magazine’ over WQXR, radio station of The New York
Times, and produced, in addition to many commercial radio and television
programs, such shows as CBS ‘Invitation To Learning’ and ‘Of Men and Books’.
From 1961 to 1963 he was the producer (with Stanley A. Frankel) and host of
ABC-TV's ''Adlai Stevenson Reports,'' in which Mr. Michaelis and Mr. Stevenson,
the United States delegate to the United Nations, had conversations with world
leaders. The series won a George Foster Peabody Award for its ''contribution to
international understanding.''
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Frost/Gannon Interviews with Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon is interviewed during different periods of his life by two different
people. The Frost/Nixon set of interviews is part of the Peabody Awards
Collection and the Nixon/Gannon set is a donation from Jesse Raiford. At the
time of the Frost/Nixon interviews in 1977, Frost was on his way to making a career
for himself in the US as a television personality. Gannon, a friend and aide to
Nixon during his administration, captures an oral history and retrospective of
Nixon in 1983. The result is two very different interviews.
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