Radio relics preserved, then tainted

Plans for a $35-million American Radio Archives museum and research centre that will chronicle the development of broadcasting were due to be unveiled Friday in Thousand Oaks, California.

But the archives’ planned centerpiece - a collection of hundreds of thousands of historic relics of early Los Angeles broadcasting - sits locked up in a Hollywood basement.

The carefully preserved original scripts, fragile transcriptions of radio shows and news broadcasts, antique microphones and rare equipment from Southern California’s first stations have been contaminated by toxic PCBs. And nobody can agree who should pay for the cleanup.

Read the story in the Los Angeles Times

Source: Media Network