Three words, kids: Missing. Presumed. Erased.

Or, An Epic Rant in Forty-Seven Parts**

Oh, what is she going on about NOW?

Well, it's time to rant about preservation. Must be Tuesday, you say. Yes, yes it is.

You know how it is--budget cuts, times are tough, bla bla bla. Well, a friend who works for the BBC mentioned on Facebook that today was the last ever taping of Blue Peter (a super-long running British kids show, think Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers) at its current location, at the BBC's famous Television Centre.That's because it is marked for closure.

A brief bit of history, for those of you into that sort of thing: Television Centre in London was the first building in the world entirely dedicated to recording and transmitting TV programs. In fact, it has been in operation for over fifty years for such a purpose. A crazy number of shows have been recorded there. Including some that have made their way to US audiences, like Monty Python, Absolutely Fabulous, Fawlty Towers, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and my personal favorite, Doctor Who (which has existed, in one form or another, since 1963). And that's just the ones you might have heard of. Think of the hundreds and hundreds of others I haven't mentioned here.

Amazing stonework (barely) saved from the bulldozer.

My heart broke when demolition was mentioned as a possible end for the structure. I kept thinking of the Chicago Stock Exchange, which is now just a memory, and a beautiful 1893 sculpted arch resting all by its little lonesome in a park on the corner of Columbus Drive and Monroe Street, and a careful transplant of the stock exchange floor inside the Art Institute of Chicago. A few reminders, some photos, and memories of how much we don't like old things and want to clear them away for new things, even if they're architectural masterpieces, or hold a ton of history.

Look at that awesome stencil work, people!

The Chicago Stock Exchange was designed in the late nineteenth century by  Louis Henri Sullivan, the founder of the architectural style known as the Chicago School of Architecture, and his partner Dankmar Adler. Its structural design and simple ornamentation gained it wide acceptance as an architectural masterpiece. In the 1960s and 70s many great examples of 19th century architecture in Chicago were removed to make way for newer developments, and despite the effort of early architectural preservation activists, the Stock Exchange was demolished as well. Another piece of history, gone.

I'm glad that Television Centre is no longer on that particular chopping block. But it's still slated to be sold and re-envisioned as part of an effort to create a flashy, shiny, cool cultural district. Which, I'm sure in 100 years' time will be heralded as an architectural and historical achievement that must be preserved, and so the cycle continues. I'm just not fond of the idea of casting a historic location (and all the history and culture they contain) aside due to budgetary concerns.

Now, see, I'm a librarian. I work in an archive doing digital preservation. I know we can't save everything. There isn't enough room in the world for all the stuff we generate. Picking and choosing and culling are all necessary. Otherwise, we'll never be able to find the important stuff (and what's important to one person/group is not important to another) for all the clutter. I'd just prefer that preservation decisions were based on a collection development plan, and not out of fear, or budgetary panic.

Budgetary panic eventually subsides. Economies bounce back, and the intense furor that people once felt to get rid of everything "unnecessary" dies down to a memory. And then we tsk and look back with 20/20 hindsight at how, maybe, we shouldn't have gotten rid of XYZ in a frazzled, well-meaning attempt to quell the rioting of those who would pitch their own mother out a window to save the equivalent cost of a loaf of bread and a sack of oranges on some random line item of a budget.

Yes, yes, budgets need to be cut, savings needs to be found somewhere, but I think SOMEONE needs to ask the question about what's REALLY important now, and what will REALLY be important later.

Don't rely on benign neglect to do the job of preservation.

British folks and American Doctor Who fans will know what I'm talking about when I say "missing, presumed wiped." This is what happened to a lot of early television. It couldn't be fathomed that saving a TV program on tape would have any value to anyone--tape wasn't cheap, and all it did was sit there and take up space. And television had not yet discovered the syndication market. Why would anyone rebroadcast a program? It was like a live theater event--once it was over, the moment was gone.

And yet... well, people did want to see things again. Or for the first time, if they missed an initial broadcast. And it's much cheaper to show reruns than constantly generating new content. Rebroadcasting was a goldmine that no one could comprehend in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And so a lot of cool stuff was lost. This might be ringing bells for Americans now... lost episodes of The Honeymooners and other very early television broadcasts, when the world was making the technological shift from radio to an audio and visual format. Amazing history, just gone because no one thought to either save it to tape, or if they did, they didn't think to KEEP that tape.

So young! So imperialistic! So Kipling!

Recently, a recording of Sir Ian McKellen's first television performance was discovered. I don't believe any other tapes from the series in question still exist. But it's fascinating to see the arc of his acting career, from infancy to now. And that ridiculous kids' show, Doctor Who, which has been kicking around for nearly 50 years. That's quite number of production staffs, television styles and aesthetics, actors and writers to go through. A single idea, carried out over multiple generations with multiple actors in the lead, that's certainly something worth studying and observing. But a lot of its early episodes were wiped. Every time an old episode, or part of an episode is found in an attic or at a station that should have destroyed the tapes decades ago, fans rejoice. But the history isn't just important for fans, it's important so that we know where our culture came from. Like it or not, television is a dominant medium with a long history that is deeply embedded in our culture.

The early days of Television Centre

Sure, I'm certain the BBC isn't foolish enough to just toss the contents of Television Centre out at the curb. I think there're plenty of Doctor Who fans who may well riot if that happens. Everything will get spread around other production centers, good bits of it probably lost, waiting to be rediscovered again in several decades' time like sunken treasure. But it will lose its context, and its home. That building will become something else. Walls will be rearranged to suit some other purpose and there may only be remnants of its original footprint hanging around. The gestalt of the place--the whole unit as a living and functioning piece of history will be gone.

There's been a ton of fuss raised in the public forum, both in politics and in journalism about the BBC, as a public institution, and how it spends the people's money, what its focus should be, how its spending should be conducted, and how it could or should save money in this economy. Way more to trudge up here. I'm just another voice chiming in with unwanted opinions at this point.

Thanks, publicly-funded PBS, for playing this in the US!

I know I have very little claim to this story, or to the history of Television Centre. Unlike my friend, I never worked there. The television shows that were produced there are only a second-hand part of my personal history. Its not part of my personal cultural heritage. Shoot, I may watch BBC television on Netflix and purchase the available Region 1 DVDs, but I certainly don't pay the licensing fee that British citizens pay to ensure the upkeep and survival of the network, one of their great cultural institutions. I can raise a fuss, but I don't have much of a leg to stand on.

I'm also not a nincompoop (despite what you've heard from others). I know times change, spaces get repurposed, old things sometimes MUST go, to bring way for new things. That's life. The only thing constant is change. I'm simply advocating smart choices, instead of fearful ones. Also, if left unchecked, the urges of the cost-savers would demolish or dismantle ANYTHING not turning a profit. No more libraries, no more natural history museums, goodbye to art programs and scientific research that does not present an immediate return on investment. Your favorite historic landmark? Too expensive to upkeep. Leveled and turned into a strip mall. Social services and public works? Too expensive. You think I'm kidding, but without the other side pushing against this idea that everything needs to be profitable and not just for the public good, we'd  experience that other extreme of there being NOTHING that isn't profitable left in our culture. That said, without penny-pincher realists pushing against my preservationist side, I'd be buried hip-deep in collections of things I just couldn't bare to part with and public works or cultural institutions that do not have SOME sort of worth approaching equal to their investment (maybe not monetarily, but at least socially or culturally)

However, this strikes me as one of those moments (and we probably have eleventy-billiondy in the US every day) where we COULD have saved something... and probably SHOULD have saved it... but we didn't. And then we don't realize what we didn't save until it was gone. I'm a realist--I know money doesn't  grow on trees. But I believe we should think things through, and act on strategy and long-term goals, and not short-term fear and panic.

Everything I could be saying here is based on preservationist anxieties. This cultural district thing could be awesome for West London. The Bee's Knees. When it's drawing in millions of people and dump trucks full of money, people will point to this post and talk about the paranoid American.

Artist rendering of the future fancy-pants cultural quarter

Or, y'know, it could crap out, and then there're a bunch of empty buildings no one can afford rent on. Just because you build it, that doesn't mean they will come. I've seen waaaay too many city development plans die horrible deaths after they eminent domain'd people out of businesses and homes to get higher rollers in the area--the higher rollers, even with tons of incentive, couldn't afford to stay, and the cities have gone from small players pulling in small profits to billions spent on development, and only empty buildings to show for it.

Betcha we'd save BUCKETS if we shut this puppy down for good.

So, I've taken a long, winding journey to get to the spot where I'm at right now. I think acting on short-term fear and panic brings long-term misery and cleanup. In so many areas of life: government, budgets, social programs, cultural trusts, history preservation, etc we need to learn to take a deep breath, don't panic, and have a strategy for the long-term, not just what will look good on a line item this year, then let the next guy, or the next generation deal with the unfortunate fallout. Think about what's REALLY best, and not what is convenient or tidy. EVERYTHING we do has long-term effects and we should look back at some of our preservation successes and follies before we step forward into the future.

**Kind of like the 1980 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Did she just say that out loud? Yes, she did.  It was only five parts. It just felt like 47. It took longer to read the book than for the mini-series to air. Faithful adaptations are awful. Cos one of the major strengths of Jane Austen's novels is that they make better movies than novels. And I say this as someone who loves Austen and will defend her right to write about whatever the hell she wanted to the death, and, oh... never mind. Caffeine overdose combined with Adult ADD.**