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Tom Reed hosting an episode exploring the teachings of Malcolm X
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is pleased to announce a preservation and access initiative to offer free online research viewing of the African American news and magazine television program For Members Only. Created, hosted and independently produced by former local disc jockey, Los Angeles Sentinel columnist and L.A. jazz and blues historian Tom Reed, over 175 episodes of the impactful For Members Only series are now streaming on the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform: digital.library.ucla.edu/tomreed
Airing in Los Angeles on KSCI UHF Channel 18 from 1980 into the 2000s, For Members Only offered viewers Black perspectives on topics ranging from local social issues to African American history to celebrity interviews. Guests on the program included luminaries such as boxer and humanitarian Muhammad Ali and author Alex Haley, often alongside noted politicians such as Congresswoman Diane Watson or community activists such as Michael Zinzun. Additional examples of guests appearing on the program include Emmy-winning actress Alfre Woodard and Grammy Hall of Fame Award inductee Nina Simone.
Singer-songwriter and activist Nina Simone on For Members Only
Many episodes of For Members Only trace African American contributions to popular music, with numerous segments highlighting topics covered in Reed's self-published book, The Black Music History of Los Angeles — Its Roots. At least four times a year, the magazine format of the series would yield to specially themed documentary-type episodes with titles such as “African American Women of Courage,” “Malcolm X: He Is Still Among Us,” “Smoking: A Cause of Death in the Black & African American Community” and “Mesoamerican and African American Contributions in and Near Los Angeles to 1950.” In a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Reed said of his program, “It's not popular television … We like to stick to positive images.” While an official obituary is not available, the website laradio.com reported that Mr. Reed died in 2020: laradio.com/2020d.htm
Author Alex Haley and Tom Reed
As a personal enterprise with a small part-time staff, Tom Reed procured funding and produced the low-budget For Members Only program as a labor of love. Airing in sporadic paid time slots on KSCI via paid advertising sold by Reed, the series included self-produced commercials for local Black businesses and national and local ad spots from corporate sponsorships. The commercials serve as a valuable record of African American businesses and enterprises in Los Angeles, with the corporate sponsor spots illuminating how national products were marketed to Black audiences during the 1980s and '90s.
Dancer, actor and artist Geoffrey Holder in a national TV commercial for 7 Up
After several years of discussions and building trust, in early 2019, the UCLA Film & Television Archive acquired Tom Reed's personal collection of For Members Only broadcasts. To our knowledge, these are the only existing master copies of this historic series. This collection comprises approximately 29 Betacam tapes and 177 ¾-inch U-Matic tapes, carrying approximately 195 For Members Only episodes (with some repeats). In November 2020, thanks to funding from the John H. Mitchell Television Preservation Endowment, the UCLA Film & Television Archive digitally preserved these holdings at DC Video in Burbank, California. As Mr. Reed did not maintain any documentation or episode guide for the series, and TV Guide listings with synopses only occasionally appeared, in 2022, the Archive embarked on an effort to log information for each episode to aid discovery. This metadata, now searchable in the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform, includes listings of all guests, topics and commercials featured in each episode.
Original KSCI UHF Channel 18 tapes of For Members Only at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Local television productions from the 1950s through the 1990s have a low survival rate, as most producing stations and/or local production entities did not have the budget, staffing, storage space or mission to preserve or save programming after it aired. The fact that 20 years' worth of episodes of the independently produced, L.A.-based For Members Only program survived to be preserved is a unique instance, representing a rare opportunity for the study of a single local TV series across several decades. The research value here is compounded significantly in that the For Members Only series was produced specifically by and for L.A.'s African American community.
Comedian and activist Dick Gregory and Tom Reed
“With the launch of this rare collection, the Archive is extremely grateful to the late Tom Reed and our colleagues and partners in the UCLA Library Digital Initiatives and Information Technology departments for their vital support in helping us make this historic television content accessible for research,” said Associate University Librarian and Archive Director May Hong HaDuong. “I invite students and scholars from the UCLA community and beyond to visit the collection online and take in Mr. Reed’s remarkable contribution to the diverse communities of Los Angeles.”
Watch online through the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform: digital.library.ucla.edu/tomreed
—John H. Mitchell Television Curator Mark Quigley
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