Local media moments recalled in Seattle Television History project

A wild-eyed television preacher, uncensored public access nuttiness, even a young Ellen DeGeneres featured on a local comedy show segment - when Stephen Groening had students explore the history of local television for a class, they sure found a lot of good stuff. The students, about 40 in all, conducted this media scavenger hunt for a spring quarter class called Television History, taught by Groening, an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media. Groening will teach the class again in spring of 2017. And what the students found - through online searches and explorations of UW Libraries extensive Special Collections - will live beyond the classes in an online archive Groening has created called the Seattle Television History Project. The archive's stated mission is to be an open-ended, publicly accessible research project "aimed at recovering, archiving and publicizing the local history of television in Seattle” and to serve as a site for original scholarship on the history of television. That involves much more than just the old programs themselves. The archive is interested in press coverage of TV, television clubs and viewing parties as well as "the people of television - on-air talent, camera operators, producers, editors and interns - (who) all contribute to television culture and history.