Important stuff on yesterday's TV that has been archived by me. Every day at rauskuck.

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Pre-History : My Video- Archive

Some of my friends say there is only rubbish on TV. I don't think so. Besides all that obvious trash you can find a lot of information about the real world. You just got to know when and where it appears. There are documentaries and news from all corners of the earth, politics, science, nature, ecology. In 1993 I started collecting pieces of that kind, in the beginning with a focus on ethnology/ anthropology and african politics.

When in 1994 in Rwanda the genocide of the Tutsis took place, most german media told the story as a big incomprehendible slaughter amongst crazy negroes. I then started to look for better information and began collecting anything I could grab about the rwandan conflict: german and english newspapers, books, recordings from radio, etc. - and of course TV-recordings. In the beginning there were quite few of those, mainly from CNN and french channel TV5. There are some jewels from that time in my collection. Then in 1995 BBC-World began it's broadcasting here and so the amount of material grew. Several longer docus and "arte"-topic-events added to it. Until 2004 I have been collecting about 100 VHS-tapes only with material on Rwanda and the war in Zaire/Kongo, adding up to about 300 hours of video.

All that stuff is preserved in tin-boxes and waits here for someone to make a real archive out of it. For most of the recordings I at least noted date and title of the broadcast. For the early years there is a list of the most important pieces.

 

Then other subjects arose. In the first place, starting off in 2001, the "war on terror", the US-wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and the conflict of Israel vs. Palestine.

As the mountain of videos grew I turned over to DVD in the end of 2004. By now I own 4 gorgeous Toshiba-HDD-recorders which are recording nearly all around the clock, helping me to miss nearly no programme. Every morning I need a few hours for a speedy scan of the recordings of the day before. I dicide what I find important and interesting, so that I will cut it out and save it. I sort the pieces into subjects and when there are about 4 hours on one subject I make a new DVD out of it, then erasing the material from the recorder.

This method, of course, lead to a spread in the items I found interesting and worth collecting. Just because there is so much important stuff on TV if you have the right tool to find it, a time-machine so to say. By the end of 2006 Al-Jazeera-English appeared and made the amount double, as there are so many gripping and important reports from the countries of the south on that channel.

Starting October 2007 every day I give my selection of important recordings to the public via this page: www.rauskuck.de . In the "Themenarchiv" I am sorting the entrys through countries and topics, thus giving a survey of contemporary history.

What I am recording every day:

All day (rotating): Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN (all in english) and Euronews (in german)

every night the world news from Sky News, once a day russian RT (both in english)

twice daily iranian news-channel Press-TV (in english), from the livestream, since PressTV got censored on cable and sat

the main news from german  ARD, ZDF, arte, RTL and a bit of german news-channel n-tv

the "Journal Afrique" and one more news-show from TV5 (in french)

sometimes Africa-news from RTP (in portuguese)

several german daily magazines: 3sat-kulturzeit, nano, buten & binnen

and weekly magazines : Weltspiegel, auslandsjournal, Frontal 21, Monitor, Panorama, Zapp, arte-reportage, etc.

lots of special features and sometimes political comedy.

 (That amounts to  35 ~ 40 hours per day.)

Why "rauskuck"?

The word "rauskuck" has a double meaning: it's the man in the watchtower, the outlooker in the crow's nest of an old sailing ship. And also it is the place where I take a view out over the city, over the sea, and via modern media over the whole world.

If you do only know german TV and the provincial "Tagesschau"-news you don't get an idea of the world. I may not and I cannot give you videos for download. I just note and report (and often comment on) what I saw on TV every day, what I found interesting, important, worth preserving.

Under Construction!  Plea for help

Still I am doing it all by hand. I might need s.o. to create a local Access-Database for the automatic connection of the daily rauskuck with the sorted archives. Maybe s.o. can build such a thing for me - I am not able to learn that stuff.

I am precariously living on small social welfare. That doesn't make things easier. Maybe there is a sponsor out there who finds my work precious and worth being supported...?

Also, if you want to give hints and corrections, please mail to:

       eingang (at) rauskuck (dot) de 

 

         The archive (sorted by subjects)

        The archive (sorted by date)

       The latest edition of the rauskuck