Recapturing temporal context in the digital archive: Easy-to-use methods for studying archived television

When linear television enters the archive, its temporal context tends to become obscured. Based on Dutch TV news, we propose three easy-to-use methods for recapturing this context: visualizing repetitive imagery through screenshots; colour coding the relationship between archived broadcasts and broadcast schedules as printed in newspapers; and colour-coding segments in archival speech transcripts. Together, these methods show how archived television can be understood as the epitome of a ‘recombinatory practice’ (Uricchio, 2011), mixing flow, segmentation, and repetition with archival reordering, while also emphasizing the need for broader access to that same temporal context.