VINTAGE COMMERCIALSPreserving broadcast TV from home-recorded tape
Super Bowls, debate nights, Saturday mornings and local news, taped off the air by ordinary people and kept in a closet for decades. We capture them before the tape gives out and publish them for anyone to use.
As of September 2026.
Why commercials?
Networks kept their shows. Almost nobody kept the ads, the station IDs, the local news breaks and the promos in between, yet that's what really shows what an evening of TV was like. Often the only surviving copies are on tapes someone recorded at home.
Home tapes don't last forever. Every year more of them go moldy, snap or get thrown out in a house clear-out. Once a tape is gone, whatever was on it is usually gone too.
From tape to archive
- CaptureThe tape is played on a serviced deck and dubbed to DVD, which becomes the physical copy.
- RecoverThe disc is read back to the computer bit for bit.
- CatalogEvery commercial break is logged and each ad is cut out, dated by the day it aired.
- PublishEach commercial goes to YouTube on its own, so people can find it by searching.
- ArchiveThe full recording goes to the Internet Archive with its original closed captions and a transcript.
That leaves three copies of every tape: the disc, the Internet Archive and YouTube.
Donate your old tapes
We're looking for VHS tapes recorded off the air at home: sports, news, holidays, specials, anything with the commercials still in. Estate sales, attics and basements are where they turn up.
Store-bought movies aren't needed, but home recordings of any era are. Call or email and we'll work out how to get them.
Want your own family tapes digitized? That's tape transfer by our sister shop VHS Now.