As some of you may know, I founded The St. Louis Media Archive at the downtown library over 20 years ago. The goal was to collect and preserve as much local media history as possible. And boy, did we!
Now we’ve hit a plateau of sorts. It’s not that donations have stopped. They’ve just slowed.
STLMedia Message Board contributors Burnout and Jonnie King were kind enough to clean out their closets to contribute airchecks and other broadcast ephemera. In fact, we have a lot of stuff, but we can always use more.
The collection has over 400 local airchecks, the oldest being the live broadcast from the Brewery at the end of Prohibition, a feed that went nationwide from KMOX.
There’s a huge cache of radio playlists, which provides a great overview of the music history of the last century.
And pictures…lots and lots of photos are cataloged by station. I get a kick out of looking at all the old equipment.
Those of you who have visited my website, http://www.stlradio.com/, have seen some of the print ads for local radio stations that we have collected.
Some people might ask why I even bother to do all this. Well, I have the time and the drive, and I hate the thought that this stuff might get trashed by someone who doesn’t realize its importance. That’s where you come in.
What do you have that we can preserve? Let me know at fabsher@swbell.net.
Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration required)
