‘Entertainment Tonight’ at 45: Inside TV’s Pop Culture Archive

For 45 years, “Entertainment Tonight” has chronicled the lives of the famous, amassing a vast archive of celebrity encounters, behind-the-scenes moments, and pop culture history. Now, CBS Media Ventures is undertaking a massive project to digitize and preserve its entire 11,600-plus episode library, a task revealing not just forgotten interviews but also the show’s enduring role as a visual record of the entertainment industry.

Launched in 1981 as the first daily syndicated program dedicated to pop culture news, “ET” distinguished itself by delivering coverage via satellite, offering immediate access to breaking entertainment stories. Today, the show reaches nearly 3 million viewers nightly, according to Nielsen, and garnered 1 billion views on YouTube last month. But the true value of “ET” lies in its 200,000 hours of footage, a time capsule of Hollywood’s evolution.

The archive contains iconic moments like Jane Fonda demonstrating aerobics routines in the 1980s, Michael Jackson filming the “Beat It” music video, and early interviews with stars like a 19-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of “Growing Pains” and Arnold Schwarzenegger during the production of “The Terminator.” George Clooney’s first interview, conducted in 1985, is among the 164 he has given to the show over the decades.

“ET” executive producer Erin Johnson highlighted a 1987 segment featuring William Shatner riding a whale at Marine World in Vallejo as a prime example of the archive’s unexpected treasures. The stunt, intended to promote the Endangered Species Act, exemplifies the show’s willingness to cover unusual events alongside traditional celebrity news.

The digitization effort, involving the shipment of video tapes from a Burbank storage facility to a CBS News archive in New Jersey, aims to restore and transfer all episodes to digital files. “We’ve uncovered things that we thought might have been gone,” Johnson said in a recent interview. This undertaking safeguards against the fate of many celebrity talk and late-night shows from the 1960s and 70s, where cost-cutting measures led to the routine erasure and reuse of tapes.

Despite often being referred to as the “toy department,” current co-host Nischelle Turner emphasizes that “ET” operates as a legitimate news organization. “It’s been that way since it started,” she said. This self-perception is reflected in the show’s consistent use of its archive for career retrospectives, aired under the title “ET Vault Unlocked” and available on YouTube, and in its contributions to tributes following the deaths of prominent figures, such as the Bob Newhart tribute that received a Daytime Emmy nomination.

The archive’s value extends beyond broadcast, generating revenue through licensing footage for celebrity documentaries and specials. “ET” footage has appeared in recent productions including Apple TV’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” Netflix documentaries on Arnold Schwarzenegger and Wham!, Hulu’s “Brats,” and HBO’s reunions of “Friends” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

Co-host Kevin Frazier recounted a recent discussion about a potential segment on the Kennedy family, which led to the discovery of footage from a visit to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port with Ethel Kennedy. “Literally name a person, and we can connect the dot and show you something about their life from that ‘ET’ vault,” Frazier said.

Turner and Frazier also noted the emotional impact the archive has on actors, who often express gratitude for seeing footage of themselves with deceased relatives. The digitization process, previously requiring a production assistant to manually search through shelves of unlabeled cassette tapes, will streamline access to this historical record.

Even as plans to make the archive more widely available online are under discussion, Johnson acknowledged a strong public appetite for revisiting these moments. “There are definitely conversations about that,” she said. “I think there’s a huge appetite to observe these stars that we all know and love in that different light. They are kind of like the best of their home movies.”