DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, is the oldest and largest public-service radio and television broadcasting company in Denmark. DR aims to preserve its vast historic radio recordings and audio collections.
The collection comprises published programs of all genres as well as unpublished productions (such as concert recordings) dating back to 1950 up to 2006. DR has selected Memnon in a recent open EU public tender process to work on the digitization of 86,000 hours of recordings on 211,200 historic analogue 1/4’’ audiotapes.
Oscar Rishede, Project Manager of the digitization project in DR remarks: “DR holds this project as highly important, since it will ensure preservation, availability and use of a very large and broad collection of common cultural audio heritage”.
Through this project, DR and Memnon will work to future-proof and convert the historic open reel magnetic tape recordings into new digital and open master formats. This will give DR and its audience access to a unique and extensive range of historic broadcast materials in new digital environments for remote access and new productions.
DR has been at the forefront of efforts to safeguard endangered historic recordings and secure their future existence. Back in 2007, DR worked with Memnon on another project awarded through a public tender process to safeguard a 375,000-hour DAT Audio Tape collection of archived radio recordings.
The Memnon team is thrilled to partner with DR on this audio digitization project and expects to complete it by the beginning of 2023.
