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The Remarkable Story of a Woman Who Preserved Over 30 Years of TV History

Thousands of hours of Marion Stokes’s personal recordings will now be digitized, one tape at a time.

ABOUT 71,000 VHS AND BETAMAX cassettes are sitting in boxes, stacked 50-to-a-pallet in the Internet Archive’s physical storage facility in Richmond, California, waiting to be digitized. The tapes are not in chronological order, or really any order at all. They got a little jumbled as they were transferred. First recorded in Marion Stokes’s home in the Barclay Condominiums in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, the tapes had been distributed among nine additional apartments she purchased solely for storage purposes during her life. Later, they passed on to her children, into storage, and finally to the California-based archive. Although no one knew it at the time, the recordings Stokes made from 1975 until her death in 2012 are the only comprehensive collection preserving this period in television media history.

In 1975, Stokes got a Betamax magnetic videotape recorder and began recording bits of sitcoms, science documentaries, and political news coverage. From the outset of the Iran Hostage Crisis on November 4, 1979, “she hit record and she never stopped,” said her son Michael Metelits in Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, a newly released documentary about his mother and the archival project that became her life’s work.

“She was interested in access to information, documenting media, making sure people had the information they needed to make good decisions,” says the film’s director, Matt Wolf.

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The year 1980 brought the launch of CNN, and the 24-hour news cycle. Soon, three, four, five, and sometimes as many as eight tapes were spinning away at once in Stokes’s apartment, recording news broadcasts, commercials, and everything in between on multiple networks. While many people assumed that television networks held on to everything they aired, that wasn’t the case. Studios were constantly erasing and recycling broadcast tapes in order to save money and free up storage space.

“We’d be out at dinner and we’d have to rush home to swap tapes.”

Stokes was no stranger to television and its role in molding public opinion. An activist archivist, she had been a librarian with the Free Library of Philadelphia for nearly 20 years before being fired in the early 1960s, likely for her work as a Communist party organizer. From 1968 to 1971, she had co-produced Input, a Sunday-morning talk show airing on the local Philadelphia CBS affiliate, with John S. Stokes Jr., who would later become her husband. Input brought together academics, community and religious leaders, activists, scientists, and artists to openly discuss social justice issues and other topics of the day.

“Our vision is really aligned with Marion’s,” says Roger Macdonald, director of the television archives at the Internet Archive. “It’s really bold and ambitious: universal access to all knowledge.” Marion’s son had contacted the Internet Archive when he was trying to find a home for her tapes in 2013. Macdonald immediately seized the opportunity. Within 20 minutes, the two were on the phone.

Macdonald recalls asking Metelits, “How could you physically manage taping all this stuff? And he said, ‘Well, we’d be out at dinner and we’d have to rush home to swap tapes’ … that was one of the cycles of their lives, tape swapping.”

In addition to her son Michael and her husband, Stokes’s nurse, secretary, driver, and step-children were enlisted to assist in her around-the-clock task of capturing every moment on television. She would also involve them in active conversations, asking those around her what they thought about how the issues of the day were being handled on broadcast television.

Having been surveilled by the government for her early political activism––she and her first husband, Melvin Metelits, had attempted to defect to Cuba together before splitting up––Stokes was exceedingly cautious about her recordings while she was alive. She eschewed Tivo, and although she was an early and evangelical investor in Apple Inc., she never sent an email in her life. She even managed to convince the rest of the already-wealthy Stokes clan to buy Apple stock, which paid off in spades. She funneled these funds into her recording project and the massive storage space she required as the sole force behind it.

“She’s already excluded from power and established institutions, so it makes sense that she’d want to pursue her life’s work privately,” says Wolf.

Now, Stokes’s work will be made publicly available on the Internet Archives, bit by bit, offering everyone the opportunity to examine history––and perhaps to set the record straight

Dads now spend 3 times as much time with their kids than previous generations 👏👏👏

Our children are growing up in a world very different from the one we were raised in. Their car seats have them looking backward, but our children are facing the future head-on. People often point to digital devices like the iPhone and Alexa when discussing how childhood has changed over a generation, but there's a huge human element transforming how kids experience the world.

Modern dads take parenting seriously, spending three times as much time with their children as men did two generations ago, and they're doing a lot more during that time.

Back in 1982, a whopping 43% of fathers admitted they'd never changed a diaper. Today, that number is down to about 3%, and that's great, because research indicates that when dads dress, diaper and bathe their babies, the father-child relationship grows stronger as the child grows.

Today's dads get that. Research shows millennial dads have more egalitarian beliefs about childcare, and are striving to see more even distribution of parenting duties in their own households. The numbers prove things aren't perfect—many dads admit things aren't yet even in their homes (mom still does more)— but one recent study found modern dads devote 30 more minutes to daily household chores than their own fathers did, and they're spending more time with their kids than previous generations.

That's huge. Engaged fathers create all kind of benefits for kids. They're teaching our daughters that they are not less than boys and teaching our sons that dishes and laundry aren't "women's work" (those things are just a part of being an adult).

This trend of dads doing more at home isn't just good for our kids, it's good for our marriages (which is also good for our kids). Research indicates that when 60% or more of the parenting responsibilities fall to mom, the relationship between mom and dad suffers. But, when dads do their part around the house, couples have stronger relationships. Simple things, like dad loading the dishwasher, are so powerful.

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Dads feel #dadguilt, too

Despite how far they've come, today's fathers often feel conflicted and struggle with dad guilt, and, in most households, mom is still doing more. This can result in some differences in perception between partners. Jill Whitney, licensed marriage and family therapist, previously told Motherly a dad today may "compare himself to his own father and see the ways he's much more involved than his dad was—when his partner may see the ways things aren't really even."

(Indeed, a recent study found working moms typically have less than an hour of less than an hour of leisure time, while dads had nearly two, and studies show moms are multitasking more than dads.)

Dads get that though. Pew polling found about half of dads want to be spending more time with the kids than they do, they just can't get over some of the work-life barriers.

Dads need support, too

According to Kevin Shafer, an associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, dads "repeatedly tell researchers they want to be more involved parents, yet public policy and social institutions often prevent them from being the dads they want to be—hurting moms, dads and children alike."

According to Shafer, paid parental leave for moms and dads, and a change in overall work culture is desperately needed. His research found "fathers were more nurturing, emotionally engaged and better co-parents if they worked for organizations with cultures and policies that promoted family involvement."

Dads are doing so much these days, it's time for society to step up and support them. As the authors of a recent study out of Boston College note, many of today's dads are highly conflicted. They want "to climb the corporate ladder but at the same time want to spend more time with their children. [These are] fathers who assert that their children's interests are their top priority but who are also highly susceptible to the demands of their corporate cultures."

It's clear workplaces need to change to support all parents. Maybe then, the number of fathers who do an equal share of the childcare (currently 1 out of 3) will be be more reflective of the number of fathers who want to (2 out of 3).

Yes, there are challenges that this generation of fathers is figuring out, but we have to admit they've come so far. We see it in our families, and in our social media feeds, as celebrity dads like The Rock and John Legend are being very public about the hands-on role they play as parents.

Dads now spend 3 times as much time with their kids than previous generations

Our children are growing up in a world very different from the one we were raised in. Their car seats have them looking backward, but our children are facing the future head-on. People often point to digital devices like the iPhone and Alexa when discussing how childhood has changed over a generation, but there's a huge human element transforming how kids experience the world.

Modern dads take parenting seriously, spending three times as much time with their children as men did two generations ago, and they're doing a lot more during that time.

Back in 1982, a whopping 43% of fathers admitted they'd never changed a diaper. Today, that number is down to about 3%, and that's great, because research indicates that when dads dress, diaper and bathe their babies, the father-child relationship grows stronger as the child grows.

Today's dads get that. Research shows millennial dads have more egalitarian beliefs about childcare, and are striving to see more even distribution of parenting duties in their own households. The numbers prove things aren't perfect—many dads admit things aren't yet even in their homes (mom still does more)— but one recent study found modern dads devote 30 more minutes to daily household chores than their own fathers did, and they're spending more time with their kids than previous generations.

That's huge. Engaged fathers create all kind of benefits for kids. They're teaching our daughters that they are not less than boys and teaching our sons that dishes and laundry aren't "women's work" (those things are just a part of being an adult).

This trend of dads doing more at home isn't just good for our kids, it's good for our marriages (which is also good for our kids). Research indicates that when 60% or more of the parenting responsibilities fall to mom, the relationship between mom and dad suffers. But, when dads do their part around the house, couples have stronger relationships. Simple things, like dad loading the dishwasher, are so powerful.

Amazon Gift Card| Free Amazon Gift Card

Dads feel #dadguilt, too

Despite how far they've come, today's fathers often feel conflicted and struggle with dad guilt, and, in most households, mom is still doing more. This can result in some differences in perception between partners. Jill Whitney, licensed marriage and family therapist, previously told Motherly a dad today may "compare himself to his own father and see the ways he's much more involved than his dad was—when his partner may see the ways things aren't really even."

(Indeed, a recent study found working moms typically have less than an hour of less than an hour of leisure time, while dads had nearly two, and studies show moms are multitasking more than dads.)

Dads get that though. Pew polling found about half of dads want to be spending more time with the kids than they do, they just can't get over some of the work-life barriers.

Dads need support, too

According to Kevin Shafer, an associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, dads "repeatedly tell researchers they want to be more involved parents, yet public policy and social institutions often prevent them from being the dads they want to be—hurting moms, dads and children alike."

According to Shafer, paid parental leave for moms and dads, and a change in overall work culture is desperately needed. His research found "fathers were more nurturing, emotionally engaged and better co-parents if they worked for organizations with cultures and policies that promoted family involvement."

Dads are doing so much these days, it's time for society to step up and support them. As the authors of a recent study out of Boston College note, many of today's dads are highly conflicted. They want "to climb the corporate ladder but at the same time want to spend more time with their children. [These are] fathers who assert that their children's interests are their top priority but who are also highly susceptible to the demands of their corporate cultures."

It's clear workplaces need to change to support all parents. Maybe then, the number of fathers who do an equal share of the childcare (currently 1 out of 3) will be be more reflective of the number of fathers who want to (2 out of 3).

Yes, there are challenges that this generation of fathers is figuring out, but we have to admit they've come so far. We see it in our families, and in our social media feeds, as celebrity dads like The Rock and John Legend are being very public about the hands-on role they play as parents.