We begin our visit to WNYC (820 New York) with the station's archivist, Andy Lanset, whose shoulder is seen at lower right. His office, like many of the station's offices, is located high up in the tower part of the Municipal Building, and is perhaps five feet across, from stairwell to exterior wall, at its widest point. WNYC has an enormous amount of archival material, not just paper but also recordings (on electrical transcription, reel-to-reel tape, cassette tape, compact disc, and nearly every other format save wire-recorder and eight-track) of almost every program ever produced at the station. (The collection has numerous gaps in the early years, when programs were not always recorded or saved.) Surprisingly, even though WNYC's history goes back to 1924, and the station was municipally owned from its founding until 1997, a formal station archive was not started until 2000. (Prior to that time, this material was scattered about in different station departments, with independent program producers, and in the municipal archives, among other locations.)
Copyright 2008, Garrett Wollman. All rights reserved. Photograph taken 2008-01-16.