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Save the Channel 8 Archives

Help fund the professional digitization of Channel 8's analog tape library.

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Save the Channel 8 Archives

Save the Channel 8 Archives

Save the Channel 8 Archives

Save the Channel 8 Archives

Save the Channel 8 Archives

Help fund the professional digitization of Channel 8's analog tape library.

Help fund the professional digitization of Channel 8's analog tape library.

Help fund the professional digitization of Channel 8's analog tape library.

Help fund the professional digitization of Channel 8's analog tape library.

Lauren Adams
Lauren Adams
Lauren Adams
Lauren Adams
1 Campaign |
Unalaska, United States
$5,690 USD 41 backers
71% of $8,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Choose your Perk

Channel 8 Bumper Sticker

$10 USD
Est. Shipping
May 2015
2 out of 500 of claimed

30th Anniversary Water Bottle

$40 USD
Est. Shipping
May 2015
4 out of 30 of claimed

"I Flashed Unalaska!" T-Shirt

$50 USD
Est. Shipping
June 2015
5 claimed

Classy Small Ch8 Coffee Cup

$80 USD
7 out of 20 of claimed

Channel 8 T-Shirt

$100 USD
Est. Shipping
May 2015
10 out of 100 of claimed

Pick the tape, get a copy

$500 USD
Est. Shipping
September 2015
0 claimed

Memorialize a Channel 8 Star!

$1,000 USD
0 claimed

Your name in the credits!

$1,500 USD
Est. Shipping
July 2015
1 claimed

Project Summary

Unalaska Community Broadcasting (UCB) is raising funds to save the video history of our community. There are about 1900 tapes in our attic that are rapidly degrading. Tapes need to be digitized for our permanent archive, and for local viewing and use.

UCB serves the community of Unalaska and Port of Dutch Harbor in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.  We operate a television station over Channel 8.  Since our beginning in the early 1980s, Channel 8 has always existed for Unalaska.  Volunteers and staff cover every major news and cultural event that takes place in our community. 

UCB was recently included in the American Archive Content Inventory Program through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and this allowed us to create a database of all of the tapes in our collection.  The AACIP program then funded the professional digitization of 65 tapes.  UCB footed the bill to digitize an additional 73 at-risk and high priority tapes at the same time.  In our attic, there are still about 1900 tapes left to digitize at the cost of about $40 per tape. 

This project will professionally digitize 10% of our remaining tapes - a small but substantial step towards our eventual goal of digitizing the entire collection. 

What We Need & What You Get

UCB is hoping to raise $8,000 using Indigogo.  Funds will cover professional digitization of 200 tapes.  That’s about 10% of the video cassettes in our library.  Digitization costs about $40 per tape, and that’s not including shipping and the purchase of hard drive space needed for storage of digital content.  The bottom line is that digitization is expensive, but the results are astounding!  When we received digitized video content through the AACIP project, we were amazed by the quality of the video clips.  For the first time in more than a decade, we were able to view beautiful footage of Unalaska before paved roads,the old softball field, the fishing fleet heading out for the King Crab opening,  and Reeve Aleutian Airways planes taking off and landing.  Most importantly, we were able to identify the faces of friends and family and Channel 8 volunteers and staff.  Viewing the archival video made us realize the value of the tapes that are currently languishing in our attic.

The video clip above is just a tiny sample of the content that was discovered during the last round of digitization.  We need your help to save more Channel 8 tapes. 

Our collection is full of treasured footage including:

  • Oral histories with local elders and important Unangan cultural demonstrations including dance, language and subsistence activities, as well as Russian Orthodox traditions and practices. 
  • 30 years of footage of Unalaska kids growing up: countless school music performances, holiday events, foot races, and Fourth of July parades.
  • Arts and cultural projects such as original television dramas, plays and performances, cooking shows, and experimental video created by station volunteers.
  • Documentation of WWII history, including footage of commemorative events, and interviews with veterans who served in our region during the War. 
  • Interviews of celebrities and politicians who visited  Unalaska such as Senator Ted Stevens, author Alex Haley, musician Jimmy Buffet, actor Richard Gere, Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe, and AFL’s Larry Csonka. 
  • Footage of YOU.  Community members and volunteers are the real stars of Channel 8.  We document nearly every cultural event that takes place in our small town and if you have lived in Unalaska you were probably on Channel 8 at some point.

What do you get back?  First of all, the joy of knowing that you just unearthed a unique piece of video that hasn’t been seen in many years.  But we also have some perks built in to our giving structure to sweeten the deal.  If you give $10, you can have a bumper sticker that we designed based on a patch that the station used to give out in the 1980s.  When you give $40 you’ve just funded the digitization of an entire tape!  That’s exciting!  And in return, we’ll give you a limited edition 30 year anniversary water bottle.  For only $80, a coffee cup is yours and the cup features our old logo of the eight ball knocking over the Channel 8 broadcast tower.  For only $20 more, you can have the same cool design on a t-shirt.  Every dollar donated helps us reach our fundraising goals, but the high dollar donors get to have the real fun.  If you give $500 we let YOU pick ten of the tapes to digitize.  As a thank you, we’ll also send you DVDs of all ten tapes.  People who give $1,000 can ask staff to help memorialize the person of their choice with a custom DVD.  And for only $1,500 we’ll give a business or individual sponsorship credits before and after our new Flashback Friday television show, the show that’s going to get this content off the shelves and back on the airwaves!

Other Ways You Can Help

Even if you can't give, you can help by telling people about our effort to save the Channel 8 archives.  We have 60 days to raise the funds, and we need friends of Channel 8 from past and present to give us a hand.  Share this project on your Facebook page, email the link to a friend, talk about it, think about friends who used to be frequent volunteers on Channel 8 and make sure they have all the information that they need to contribute to this essential community project. 


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