There’s nothing wrong with starting things slow, and given the amount of information that I’m going to be overwhelmed with before the TCA Tour is over, I have absolutely no complaints about the very first panel of Summer 2009. If you’re a regular YouTube surfer (and I have no problem outing myself as one), then you may already be aware that the Television Academy Foundation has a YouTube channel where they’ve been posting interviews with some of the most important names in the history of television. It’s been going on for quite some time now – they started doing these interviews over a decade ago – but now they’re kicking things up a notch by launching a new website: EmmyTVLegends.org.

Oh, but they haven’t actually launched the new site yet. They won’t be doing that until September 1st, although if you go to the site now, it kicks you back to their blog, where you’ll still find a lot of interesting stuff, including this description of their work: “The Archive of American Television strives to preserve the rich history of television – from its Golden Age through our present Digital Era. Our mission is to educate and inspire future generations by filming and providing access to exclusive in-depth interviews with legends and pioneers of the medium.”

True enough, as was proven to us today by Karen Herman, the director of the Foundation’s Archive of American Television. She showed us a cool little featurette which spotlighted some of the interviews within their archives, and she reminded us that, as we put together features in the future, it would behoove us to check in and see if perhaps they might have some soundbites that could assist us. I dare say they might: their marketing slogan is ““Some of TV’s Greatest Stories Were Never Broadcast,” and they showed exclusive interview clips with everyone from Don Knotts to Judge Wapner as they discussed their work on television. We saw three minutes’ worth of footage, and Herman proudly admitted that they have over 2,000 hours of this stuff.

Here are just a handful of some of the material that the Foundation already has available on YouTube. Man, I can’t wait for them to start rolling out more…