New WFIU/WTIU News documentary explores John Miley’s extensive sports broadcast archive

‘Archiving Airwaves: The Miley Collection’ premieres  Thursday, September 12 at 6:30 p.m. on WFIU and WTIU

Four generations of John Mileys in front of a banner that reads “The Miley Collection: The Foremost Collection of Sports Audio in the World.”

93-year-old John Miley of Evansville, Ind., has compiled the largest collection of sports broadcasts in the country. He began making recordings in 1947, while he was a high school student. Nearly eight decades later, his collection now includes more than 44,000 recordings of radio and TV sports broadcasts.
 
A new radio and television documentary from the WFIU/WTIU News team explores Miley’s extensive collection, which includes every Super Bowl, a half-century of the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500 races, the World Series games from 1954 to the present, and more. Archiving Airwaves: The Miley Collection premieres Thursday, September 12 at 6:30 p.m. on WFIU Public Radio and WTIU Public Television. The program will also be available to stream for free on the PBS app.

In Archiving Airwaves, Miley discusses how he amassed his archive, which covers almost a century of important moments in sports.
 
“I had no idea what I was doing, really,” Miley said about his collection. “What I was trying to do was I knew that when I retired, I would want something to do, and what’s better to do than listen to old sporting events.”
 
Historical highlights of Miley’s archive feature the Brooklyn Dodgers’ final game; the heavyweight title fights between Joe Louis and Billy Conn; Roger Maris’s 61st home run in 1961; and the fourth quarter of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point performance in 1962. Miley also has the play-by-plays of famous sportscasters, such as Mel Allen, Red Barber, Ted Husing, Harry Caray, Ernie Harwell, Vin Scully, and Bill Stern.
 
Archiving Airwaves also includes an interview with Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas, who has known Miley for nearly 50 years. They first met when Costas was beginning his career at KMOX radio in St. Louis.
 
“When I got to NBC, and later to HBO, anytime we were doing historical stuff, one of my suggestions was, ‘Let me check with John Miley,’” Costas said. “And very often, he had not only what we were looking for, but more than what we had asked for related to that topic, or that game, or that broadcaster.”
 
The documentary follows Miley on his search for a permanent home for the collection after he passes away. Archiving Airwaves reveals how Miley came to the decision to donate his entire archive to the National Sports Journalism Center at the Indiana University Media School. The program looks at the Media School’s plans for digitization to make the collection available as a resource for students and the public.
 
“This is a history of sports broadcasting in the United States over the last century,” said Galen Clavio, the director of IU’s National Sports Journalism Center.
 
Watch a trailer and learn more about Archiving Airwaves: The Miley Collection at wtiu.org/archivingairwaves.
 
Archiving Airwaves: The Miley Collection is made possible with support from IU Credit Union.