WJZ-TV Collection
Scope and Contents
Consists primarily of local television news footage and programming.
Dates
- 1957-2000
Language of Materials
Collection content is in English.
Conditions Governing Access
Local access is restricted due to the fragile nature of the materials and amount of staff available. Local research is available for a fee and must be scheduled far in advance. Access to digitized reproductions of materials is available for free online. Please contact avtech@marmia.org for more information.
Conditions Governing Use
MARMIA allows and encourages free non-commercial use of material in which we own the rights. We license for commercial use to support our ongoing work. Please consult the archive regarding what specific conditions constitute non-commercial use or if you wish to use the footage commercially.
Historical Note
WJZ-TV Channel 13 is owned by the CBS Broadcasting, Inc. and is located in Baltimore, Maryland. The station was originally called WAAM and was Baltimore’s third television station. When WAAM began broadcasting in November 1948 under the ownership of Ben and Herman Cohen, it was an ABC affiliate. In 1957, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation purchased the station and renamed it WJZ-TV.
In 1959, WJZ-TV built the first three-antenna candelabra tower, sharing it with the other local Baltimore stations, WMAR-TV and WBAL-TV. In 1977, WJZ-TV News began its Electronic News Gathering (ENG) Library, recording newscasts and retaining raw footage on a daily basis.
WJZ-TV often preempted ABC programming in favor of locally produced shows and syndicated content from Westinghouse's broadcasting division, Group W. The affiliation switch to CBS occurred in 1995, ending WJZ-TV's decades long link with ABC. Westinghouse bought CBS in 1996, making WJZ-TV a CBS owned and operated station.
Extent
22,000 Videocassette
75 Linear Feet : Mix of paper documents and still photographs
Arrangement
Collection is comprised of 27 series. Broadcast shows are arranged alphabetically, including 20 programs arranged alphabetically, primarily by title. Programs that have fewer than 3 video tapes are arranged in the "Other programs" series. The last seven series contain a variety of non-broadcast elements and unidentified footage.
Custodial History
The collection was donated by the WJZ-TV station to the University of Baltimore's Langsdale Library Special Collections Department on August 16, 2007. The University of Baltimore gave the collection back to WJZ-TV, and the collection was then donated from the WJZ-TV station to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA) in May of 2017.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
WJZ-TV gave, transferred, assigned, and delivered to MARMIA all of WJZ's right, title, and interest in and to the collection, including copyright in 2017.
Existence and Location of Copies
Digitized videos from this collection are available publicly at https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948.
Processing Information
Processing of the collection is ongoing. Item-level description found in this finding aid is primarily transcribed from tape labels and should therefore be considered shorthand, practical identifiers used by the station in the course of production.
- Title
- WJZ-TV Collection
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive Repository