A few years back, Steve Hulse visited the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. I recently contacted the curator of the museum who informed me that the review is just as pertinent today as it was when it was first written with the museum ever expanding it's archives as well as playing host to a number of special events such as its screening of a tape of the final '64 performance of BEYOND THE FRINGE, which aired in a severely edited version on BBC2 but has never been seen in its entirety. With this in mind I thought it worthwhile reviving Steve's original article.

It's an oft-quoted maxim that work and play don't mix. But for this particularly jaded scribe that old chestnut proved as hollow as a cheap gigolo's promises, on a hot and humid June afternoon in New York City. When for an all too few glorious hours, work and play combined into an enchantingly harmonious whole.

The location: 25 West 52 Street, New York, NY 10019. The venue: An Aladdin's cave of televisual treasures and radiophonic rarities founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, better know as The Museum of Television & Radio.

Dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of world television and radio programmes for both serious researchers and future generations of the general public, the museum began life modestly on the 9th November 1976, as The Museum of Broadcasting, occupying two floors of an East 53 Street office building. By the 12th September 1991, the museum had been re-christened by its board of trustees, and the enterprise had grown and prospered enough for a shift to its present location named in honour of its founder, the William S. Paley Building, strikingly designed by celebrated architect Philip Johnson. While March 18th, 1996 heralded the opening of the museum's west coast branch, situated in the Leonard H. Goldensen Building, at 465 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, in Los Angeles, California.

Currently, the museum harbours a collection of over 120,000 programs ranging across more than 75 years of television and radio history. Traversing in the process such diverse fields as news, public affairs and documentaries, to performing arts, children's programming, sports, comedy and variety shows, through to commercial advertising. Carefully chosen for its artistic, cultural, and historical significance, the collection has been gathered and lovingly catalogued in a sophisticated computerized library that is easily accessible to the public. As I experienced at first hand, when within mere minutes of interrogating the library database, my deliberately diverse random selection of drama series episodes, including part one of the Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Tony Randall and Helen Hayes, through to Boris Karloff as Colonel March of Scotland Yard, investigating the thorny puzzle of The Second Mona Lisa, were delivered directly to my private and sophisticated viewing console for an hour of intensive - and it must be admitted, intensely pleasurable - study.

But these delights were by no means all on offer to me on that particular afternoon. In the cool, comfortable and darkened interior of the fifth floor's Screening Room 5, I revisited the hormonal induced delirium of my teenaged years, thanks to the museum's timely screening of the birth of "Jiggle Vision", in the form of the original 1976 pilot episode of Charlie's Angels. Just one of a series of screenings that day which ranged from seven of the original Honeymooners sketches from the Cavalcade of Stars series, in a tape especially produced by the museum itself, to the pilot episode of The Monkees. Including the black and white screen tests of Davey Jones and Michael Nesmith spliced into the episode in under twenty-four hours by its creators to spice-up the original in what became a successful attempt to persuade NBC to pick up the series.

Amongst its many important functions, the museum organizes seasons of major exhibitions, screening and listening series, seminars, and education classes focusing on a broad range of topics of social, historical, popular, and artistic interest. The seminars feature in-person interviews/discussions with writers, producers, directors and actors directly involved with much of the landmark historical programming already housed within its collection. Added to which, the museum has successfully instigated an enlightened education program for groups and students from the elementary to the university level that has been designed to foster critical thinking through interpretation and analysis of the important (and in many instances, still largely under appreciated) on-going social legacy bestowed to society through its radio and television output.

The all important collection continues to grow and be enriched through contributions from such important institutions and diverse sources as the commercial networks, studios, the Public Broadcasting Service, cable services, local radio and television stations, advertising agencies, individuals, producers, and networks from other countries.

Although the visit was, sadly all to brief, my appreciation and respect from the sheer dedication, professionalism, good humour and unbounded expertise of both the institution, its staff and its all-important mission, etched an indelible impression into my memory.

For anyone even remotely interested in the history and rapid evolution of broadcast media, a visit to the environs of the Museum of Television & Radio, should they be fortunate enough to find themselves in New York, is an absolute must.

For in its stated mission to preserve and enlighten us to the media's past, this most venerable of institutions is also serving to aid us in shaping that same media's future.

NOTE:
Special professional and deeply personal thanks are extended to Mr. Ned Kulakowski, Public Relations Assistant for the Museum of Television & Radio, for his unstinting kindness and invaluable assistance in making my visit (and by extension, this article) possible.

Further details about the museum, its mission, and its opening times can be obtained directly from the museum's official web site: http://www.mtr.org.