Why is preserving ‘born-digital’ programs different from keeping analog tapes?
In a relatively rapid period of time, digital technology has radically transformed the nature of television program production — from a linear, sequential analog process, to a non-linear, random access, totally digital environment. Consequently, standard preservation practices that have served (and continue to serve) to protect analog productions on videotape no longer apply. We are rapidly approaching the “tapeless environment” – where programs will live solely as “disembodied” assets, attached to their metadata, distributed and stored in a totally digital environment. This introduces an entirely new set of issues and problems relating to long-term program preservation, for which no coordinated strategy yet exists in public television. While digital material is generally easier to duplicate, it is also more fragile. Hard disks fail at the rate of roughly 2 percent per year, which means that digtal materials must be constantly checked, backed up, restored, and migrated from older to ne
