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The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, launched the Archive of American Television® in 1997.
AAT is committed to ensuring that the stories, visions and insights of those who have made television what it is, and those who continue to contribute to its development, are made available for future generations.
Over the last nine years, the Television Archive staff has created the world's most comprehensive repository of its kind. To date, more than 2,000 hours of videotaped conversations have been completed with over 475 television legends and pioneers.
Working under the auspices of the Television Academy Foundation, AAT contains interviews with actors, writers, producers, directors, craftspeople, executives, and many others.
With the help of industry volunteers, historians, journalists, and students, we are acheiving our broad goal of becoming the world's largest, most advanced interactive encyclopedia covering the history of television.
Preserving Our Grand Storytelling Tradition
In the grand traditions of storytelling, we preserve America's television history in order to educate and inspire future generations worldwide. More than our literature, music, film or visual art alone, the television medium continues to define our society.
Inspired by Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (in which Holocaust survivors provided videotaped testimonies), former Disney Television and UPN president Dean Valentine wanted to create a similar institution for the television industry.
Valentine developed and presented a proposal to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, under then-president Richard H. Frank and Academy Foundation Chairman Thomas W. Sarnoff.
Beginning in early 1996, the Archive of American Television completed its first six interviews as part of its pilot stage.
The initial six interviews were with Leonard Goldenson, founder of ABC, Dick Smith, television's first make-up artist, Elma Farnsworth, widow and lab assistant to television inventor Philo Farnsworth, Ethel Winant, casting executive, Sheldon Leonard, show creator and director, and Milton Berle, television's first star.
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