Most of the museum's footage originates from "airchecks" of local Chicago channels (and to a lesser extent other cities) that were recorded primarily in the 1970s and 1980s.
The registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation displays on its website more than 4000 clips of commercials, news broadcasts, PSAs, bumpers, obscure specials, moments of technical difficulties and other off-air recording excerpts, as well as occasional master tapes donated by former television employees.
[2] On September 15, 2011, the museum announced that it had discovered and transferred long-lost footage of the original Svengoolie program; it subsequently displayed the missing episodes on its website the following Monday.
[5] In 2018 the site unearthed a rare color kinescope of a 1971 newscast on WLS-Channel 7, featuring Fahey Flynn, Joel Daly and meteorologist John Coleman.
[6] On April 26, 2022 the museum announced it will be premiering a long-lost episode of 'BJ's Bunch', a Bill Jackson created show done at WNBC in 1973 that was discovered in the Peabody archives.