Unlocking ITV's archive: Preserving and digitizing a nation's broadcasting heritage

Industry:

Broadcast, Cultural Heritage

Challenge:

ITV faced an urgent risk of losing irreplaceable legacy tape assets to obsolete playback technology and metadata gaps, while demand for fast, scalable content access intensified.

Solution:

Project ADA pairs ITV with Iron Mountain to digitize 153,000 tapes end-to-end - secure handling, high-quality digitization, cloud storage, and metadata cleansing - turning the archive into a searchable, accessible asset.

Value:

ITV's archive is transformed from an at-risk collection into an on-demand content engine - unlocking faster production, new streaming revenue, and a self-sustaining resource that funds future preservation.

Securing the UK's broadcasting heritage

For broadcasters holding decades of irreplaceable programming on aging physical media, the window to act is narrowing. ITV, one of the United Kingdom's most storied public service broadcasters, recently took decisive action to preserve its media archive. Their archival team is currently partnering with Iron Mountain Media and Archival Services to digitize and future-proof a television archive widely regarded as among the UK's finest.

Solving the legacy media and tape obsolescence crisis

Established in 1955, ITV has served as a cornerstone of British public broadcasting for over eight decades. As a public service broadcaster, ITV holds legal obligations to provide news, current affairs programming, and accessible content—obligations that underscore the importance of maintaining a reliable, accessible archive.

Over its history, ITV has amassed a collection of more than 1 million tape-based media assets spanning the full breadth of its broadcasting legacy. Much of this material exists only on legacy tape formats—including D1, D2, and D3—that modern technology no longer readily supports. The specialist playback equipment required to access these tapes is approaching end-of-life, and the technical expertise needed to operate and maintain these machines is becoming increasingly scarce. Without intervention, vast portions of this culturally significant archive face the risk of becoming permanently inaccessible.

ITV's challenge, however, extended beyond physical preservation. Decades of cataloging had introduced inconsistencies across the archive's metadata—including errors in technical specifications, aspect ratios, and rights records—rendering a significant portion of the collection difficult to search, verify, or deploy commercially.

When the COVID-19 pandemic halted external production in 2020, ITV's archive became an urgent and critical source of programming. The episode highlighted just how pressing the need for rapid, scalable access to historic content had become, and catalyzed the formal launch of a structured digitization program.

Project ADA: Scalable media digitization and metadata enrichment

In response to these challenges, ITV launched the Archive Digitization Acceleration Program—known as Project ADA—in November 2025, in strategic partnership with Iron Mountain Media and Archival Services. Running through October 2027, the program is designed to digitize 153,000 tapes through a comprehensive, end-to-end workflow engineered for both scale and precision.

Iron Mountain's role encompasses every stage of the process:

• Secure physical handling and transport of fragile legacy media.
• Digitize to broadcast-quality standards with rigorous quality control and validation.
• Deliver into secure cloud-based digital infrastructure.
• Review each asset to ensure it is technically correct and fully documented before being committed to long-term storage—a critical safeguard given the irreplaceable nature of the material involved.
• Update of metadata with the ITV team reviewing and correcting decades of inherited cataloging inconsistencies, verifying technical specifications, rights information, and asset records.

The result is a digital archive that is not only preserved but also accurate, searchable, and ready for immediate use.