1. I'm this week's "Outside Voices" commentator at the CBS News Public Eye website. I'll post a link when it goes up on Friday. (Re: Public Eye, Previously on TV Barn...)
2. Hey, old timers! Remember when I visited the CBS News Archives? Back when CBS was just starting to digitize zillions of hours of videotape, newsreels and whatnot stored in its 57th St. facility, it seemed a wild idea to deliver video on the fly. I had no idea what DVDs were -- underwear, maybe -- so needless to say I couldn't even imagine somebody sitting at home, using search to find just the moments from CBS's vast news archive they wanted, (like, Morley Safer in Vietnam, at right), then burning it to a disc and mailing it to their house. But soon ... amazingly enough ... you can.
CBS NEWS ARCHIVES, ONE OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST SOURCES OF NEWS CONTENT, SOON TO BE ON DVDS
Selected Content from CBS News’ Vast Archives – Plus 60 MINUTES Segments – Will be Offered on Customized DVDs Through an Agreement Signed by CBS News and Amazon.com’s CustomFlix
CBS News Archives, one of the great treasures of news content in the world, will soon make selected segments available on customized DVDs through a unique agreement CBS News has signed with Amazon.com and its subsidiary, CustomFlix. The deal was announced today by Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.
Containing millions of feet of film and over two million videocassettes, the CBS News Archives is one of the world’s largest repositories of news content and historical footage. A virtual video history of the world from the mid-20th Century on, the archive includes some of the best reporting and footage from World War II, the Cold War, the Kennedy assassinations, the Civil Rights movement, the space program -- including the 1969 moon landing -- the Vietnam War, Middle East conflicts, the 9/11 attacks and every important news event in between. The archive also contains news segments produced by 60 MINUTES – the most watched and respected television news magazine in history.
“This arrangement provides us a way to make thousands of hours of CBS News content accessible to millions of Amazon.com customers on DVD,” said McManus. “The service is another way to fulfill our goal of making CBS News content easily accessible to the public.”
“CBS News programming is a natural fit for the CustomFlix Create Your Own DVD service,” said Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, co-founder and managing director of CustomFlix. “We understand that many customers want the flexibility of picking and choosing CBS News content in a collectible format and customized DVDs are a perfect solution. Through the CustomFlix Create Your Own DVD service, customers can select the specific news they want and then CustomFlix builds a customized DVD containing just that content.”
Amazon.com customers can order segments of daily or weekly news broadcasts and compilations on Amazon.com, or choose to assemble their own compilations from thousands of news segments through the CustomFlix Create Your Own DVD service. Customers can also order single reports or customized disks of CBS News programming on CBSNews.com. CBS News programming now available for purchase includes:
- 60 MINUTES - Content from the most successful news broadcast in television history, from hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, and feature segments to profiles of the people who have helped change our world.
- CBS EVENING NEWS - Classic and current news segments from the CBS Network’s daily newscasts’ weekday and weekend editions.
- CBS NEWS SUNDAY MORNING – Content from the number one Sunday morning news program, from newsmaker and celebrity profiles to compelling feature segments.
- CBS Long-Form Documentaries - Numerous single-topic documentaries produced by CBS News Productions over the past 10 years.
The DVDs created by the CustomFlix Create Your Own DVD system have uniquely customized artwork, are professionally packaged with full-color DVD faces and covers in over-wrapped amaray-style cases, and can contain up to 10 news segments or 90 minutes of video.


Comments