More than 30,000 hours of KEYT television archive footage spanning four decades has been preserved at UCSB and is now available for viewing through a new streaming media service.

The footage, taken from video recordings and millions of feet of 16mm film, includes local television icons such as John Palminteri, Tracy Lehr, Paula Lopez, Paul Vercammen, Debby Davison, King Harris and many others who have told the spectacular stories that have unfolded in the community.

The footage includes KEYT’s coverage of everything from Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan, David Attias and Eliott Rodger to the Montecito debris flow and the Painted Cave fire.

KEYT reporters have covered the wind, the rain, the car crashes, the oil spills, but also the people, the human-interest stories, from Summer Solstice and Fiesta to everyday people doing amazing things.

“There was an old guy who shined shoes in front of Joe’s Cafe, and we did a report on Daniel Collier, the shoeshine man,” Palminteri said. “We won a Golden Mic for a special feature on how we told that story. Oftentimes he was ignored by people. He was such a wealth of a character. It mattered to me to tell that story. It mattered to him to have that story told.”

Palminteri, Lehr and Vercammen spoke at a media panel at UCSB earlier this week to talk about the archives and share their stories.

KEYT General Manager Jim Lemon moderated the discussion hosted by UCSB’s Special Research Collections.

Although he wasn’t on the panel, KEYT’s longtime chief videographer Herb Tuyay sat in the front row and was showered in accolades for his video storytelling over the years.

Lemon told the story of how Lehr and Ryder Christ, former news director, covered the Montecito debris flows. They were driving to the scene, heard an explosion, and just barely managed to evade the mudslide.

“People would say, ‘Why do you want to stay at KEYT? There’s no news there,’ and I am like, ‘Are you kidding me?'” Lehr said. “Every time I turn around, there was national news coming out of this market, and weather. People think there’s no weather. There’s weather.”

Vercammen, who also worked at CNN after KEYT, talked about covering Reagan and rubbing elbows with the White House press corps because Reagan owned a ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

“I just had marvelous interchanges with them all the time,” Vercammen said. “I got into a raucous fun debate with Sam Donaldson over a feature and a Chianina bull at the Mid-State Fair that was 6-foot-3, and it was all over whether this bull could mate with other cows. I promise you this is all true.”

He recalled how Helen Thomas, famed UPI reporter, “couldn’t pronounce fajita” while they ate at La Super Rica.

“And then you hang up your coat at night and say, ‘These people are pretty damn important.'”

Palminteri talked about being invited to the annual barbecues with Reagan, who spent summers in the Santa Ynez Valley.

“They said the local press could join the barbecues, and we couldn’t believe it,” Palminteri said. “They said ‘no pictures,’ and we took pictures; and they said ‘no autographs,’ and the next year we’d bring the 8x10s we got from Longs and he signed them.”

He also recalled covering the Painted Cave Fire in 1990 in the evening and then making an ominous prediction on air.

“By tomorrow morning this will be the largest fire, the largest loss,” Palminteri said. “I studied the Sycamore Fire, but as far as structures it was like 500 structures in one night and I knew that already, I could figure it all out. I knew it would jump the freeway to Modoc Road.”

Tuyay chimed in from the audience and said, “That was your crowning moment.”

Palminteri responded, “I should have retired then?” to the laughter of the crowd.

Tuyay said Palminteri perfectly summarized the whole day in 12 minutes of airtime.

“He was there from the very beginning,” Tuyay said.

At the time, Palminteri also worked for KTYD on morning radio. He said he learned from radio how to ad lib better than some others.

“He became Johnny on the spot,” Tuyay said, in that moment, covering the fire.

Lehr fought back tears recalling her coverage of the Rodger stabbings and shootings in Isla Vista in 2014. She interviewed a mother on air.

“People were chalking ‘I love you.’ I still cry because we keep coming back to tell these stories, and they don’t leave you,” Lehr said. “Sad things happen to the brightest and the best, and it was heartbreaking.”

She said as the local station, they reported over days looking for stories.

“We were trying to find some light in the darkness, it was tough,” Lehr said.

Palminteri acknowledged the camera workers who also have to go the scenes, and don’t get the attention that the on-air reporters do.

“Many of them are under 25 years old, who have never experienced even a house fire in a neighborhood, and you drive up San Marcos Pass, in the dark of the night with me and going into a living hell and find a safe spot to broadcast,” Palminteri said.

“Or we are going into Isla Vista knowing there’s an active shooter, or we are going to La Conchita knowing the hill is still moving and there’s 10 dead people under the mud.”

The panel also discussed how technology has changed over the years.

In the old days, photographers would lug around 50 pounds of equipment, from the camera and tripods, and batteries and videotapes, and other gear they would wear around their waist.

“I looked like the Michelin man,” Tuyay said.

Now they shoot using tiny memory cards.

About 100 people attended the event, including journalist Jerry Roberts, SBCC Trustee Jonathan Abboud, and Lopez.

“At a time when social media and AI slop increasingly shape — and pollute — public discourse, KEYT’s archive is a remarkable treasure that pushes back on the idea that  recency should be our most important value,” Roberts said.

“A remarkable history of decades of one of California’s most consequential regions, the KEYT collection shows that our shared memory did not begin with the internet. Protecting and digitizing this material is an act of civic responsibility by the UCSB Library that ensures future generations can see how we got here, and how it happened in the day-to-day real lives of real people.”

Lopez recalled when she was still a UCSB student but worked the nightside at KEYT, and she and Tuyay were driving back from Atascadero and heard on the scanner that there was SWAT action going on in Guadalupe.

This was before cell phones, so they used a two-way radio to let the station know they were headed toward the scene.

Some murder suspects were inside a house in Guadalupe.

“We pulled up, saw the house, and authorities had determined that the suspects were hiding in the attic.”

Lopez said authorities asked Tuyay to “turn on the light so that we could see the roof.”

“I looked at him and said, ‘Doesn’t that make us a target?'” Lopez said. “I was scared to death.”

Lopez ending up doing a stand-up broadcast, and the two won an award for their coverage.

You can watch KEYT’s archives by clicking here.