Welcome to The Analytical Aspie at long last! I’m mostly here to give my two cents on anything that interests me. And in my Aspie post on YouTubers I do like, I mentioned a fourth category of content I consume on the regular but felt was worthy of its own post: The VHS Archivers. Why? Well, did you ever come across channels called jflitter, KillianM2 or the JMX TV Archive? I certainly did. And I use the past tense for a deliberate reason. They don’t exist as individual channels today. And I blame that on YouTube’s VHS Vexation. Today, I want to explain why I find that utterly frustrating, the main reasons why I think this genre should keep on existing, as well as my own views of the issues that cannot be avoided if you’ve ever wanted to jump into this niche hobby. Which might soon find itself on life support unless appropriate action is taken.
Before I get all apocalyptic, let’s start by explaining who I think qualifies as a VHS Archive Channel. In order to attract my attention, a channel like this needs to be run by someone who discovers VHS Tapes, digitises the content recorded on them and uploads either the full tape or appropriately edited fragments onto YouTube. I’m not interested in channels who simply re-upload clips from existing TV Continuity Archive Websites but I’m okay for things that obviously don’t come from places like that to be put onto YouTube for reasons I’ll expand on later. And I’ll let The Curious Aspie take care of the technical side of archiving if people want to open my eyes to it. In terms of what I often look for, it’s an abridged list of the following and then some:
- Continuity and Adverts from Rádió Telifís Éireann (RTÉ) and UTV, especially the latter which I frequented the most growing up as a backdoor to programmes from ITV1. Although I might consider adding Sky One, at least during the mid-to-late noughties because of it being the go-to channel for new episodes of The Simpsons and other things that caught my eye.
- UK News and Continuity from the 1990s and 2000s because I find watching the news from yesteryear in 2025 fascinating. And my favourite styles of on-screen presentation were in place, especially from ITV.
- Any National Lottery Draws and Result Slides, especially during the midweek since I was never able to catch most of them, primarily because of School Nights.
- Any TV Shows, big or small that I watched (sometimes for ungodly reasons!), as a kid! The vast majority that I could list here have been discovered and uploaded onto YouTube in some form, but there are others that I have heard of that could be lost media. Forever.
- And Idents of TV Channels that I watched in passing, my mother watched idlily or enjoyed the most growing up. Especially those produced by UTV and Sky One.
Now, as far as I’m aware, there are three types of channels that co-exist (or at least try to). The first type are channels that have a clear design in their presentation, and a rhyme and reason for their accumulation of content. Two perfect examples of this (for me at least) are the VHS Archiver and the TV Curator. Their respective cover photos give a very clear picture of what content they have on their tapes and thus, what a viewer like me should expect, although there may be the odd surprise along the way.
Which brings me to the second type, what I call The Potluck Archives. Basically, these channels clearly state in their bio that they have no firm idea what they might find in the tapes they have collected and that viewers should expect surprises. Which is quite true in practice! For example, take The Ted Taylor Files. Who would have expected him to discover bits and pieces of Fame Academy’s second series, which someone should really try to piece together in a few neat packages if possible. In fact, if I were to break down the list of VHS Archive Channels I’m subscribed to by category, I would say Potluck Archives make up the largest slice by some distance.
And the third and final type of archive channel that I know of are what I would call DCAs: Deactivated Channel Archives. Basically, their goal is the preservation of as much of a deleted Archive Channel as possible to keep the content alive and accessible. The main example is It’s so Archivious (UK), who has preserved some videos from two of the channels that I definitely watched that are now in the VHS Graveyard. And I think that despite many challenges that inevitably come with trying to be a DCA, they have an important part to play in making sure this whole ecosystem is alive and thriving. But before I expand upon what I mean by that particular sentence, let’s talk about why I am personally obsessed with it in the first place.
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