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2025: The end of tape

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2025: The end of tape

There’s a number going around audio-visual archivist circles, that has many of them worried – 2025.

Magnetic tape that is not digitised by 2025, might be lost forever. Much of our national media history is stored on magnetic tape - including 1/4" reel to reel, Betamax, VHS, cassettes, DVs, mini-DVs - as well as our favourite mix tapes and old home movies.

But there’s still time.

2025: The end of tape asks conservators, collectors and media makers - from national institutions to remote indigenous communities – what is the value of an archive? And what are some of their most cherished moments captured on tape?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are warned the following program may contain voices of deceased persons.

Guests

Jan Müller, CEO of the National Film and Sound Archive

Ben Whitten, ABC audio engineer

Deborah Findlay, ABC archives technical operations manager

Napaljarri Katakarinja and Japangardi Fisher, archivists at PAW Media

Jupurrula Kelly, documentarian and founder of PAW Media

Ned Jampijinpa, PAW Media broadcaster

Daniel Featherstone, archive project manager, First Nations Media Australia

Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker, research fellow, Indigenous Studies Unit, University of Melbourne

Dr Nick Thieberger, director of PARADISEC

Many thanks also to Sabrina Lipovic in ABC archives for sharing fascinating anecdotes and myths such as...

'The “Save the Whale” movement of the 1970s, is said to have caused a generation of poor quality magnetic tape.

Manufactures, like Ampex, scrambled to find a substitute for the sperm whale oil used in the binder and lubricant. The result was an inferior synthetic formula, said to be the reason for sticky-shed syndrome, that’s when the oxide containing the magnetic particles falls away from its plastic backing, making it unplayable at the heads.

The “whale oil” ingredient to this story is often dismissed as an urban myth, due in part, to lack of company disclosure around formulas. But what is horribly real is “sticky-shed syndrome."

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