A PBS station has taken legal action after losing access to more than 50TB of programming and archival material spanning 70 years of television history.
Nine PBS, the TV network’s St. Louis affiliate, filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28. The station claims its files became trapped in legal limbo after its cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage, apparently went out of business.
The archive is believed to remain inside an Iron Mountain facility in Denver. However, the company has reportedly refused to hand it over because OSS owns the physical infrastructure housing the files.
Nine PBS fights to recover decades of television history
According to Current, the files include television programs, photographs and videos dating back to Nine PBS’ launch in 1954.
The archive contains coverage of the Great Flood of 1993, the pandemic and the history of East St. Louis.
Nine PBS had worked with OSS and its predecessor since 2019. When the station attempted to renew its contract in February 2026, it allegedly received no response.
PBSOSS then reportedly cut off access when the agreement expired on March 6, despite the contract providing Nine PBS with 30 days to retrieve its data after services ended.
The station later discovered that OSS’ website had disappeared and the company was listed as delinquent by the Colorado Secretary of State.
Nine PBS initially sued OSS and obtained a default judgment stating it owned the files and had an “immediate right to possess the data.” The court ordered OSS to return the archive or help transfer it to another provider.
Iron Mountain subsequently confirmed that it possessed the data and initially appeared willing to cooperate, according to the complaint. However, it later refused to release the files, citing OSS’ ownership of the equipment storing them.
Nine PBS’ new lawsuit seeks to prevent Iron Mountain from deleting, modifying or overwriting the archive while the ownership dispute is resolved.
“We are committed to ensuring we can recover and restore full access to this valuable content, which Nine PBS rightfully owns, as it holds significant historical importance for St. Louis,” Nine PBS VP Leah Freeman said.
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