ROY WETZEL PAPERS, 1952-2011

Roy Wetzel grew up in southeastern Michigan and developed an interest in American politics at an early age. He began making audio recordings related to presidential elections in 1952 as a hobby, starting with national party conventions and election night coverage. Between elections he continued recording news conferences, speeches, and significant political news stories, as well as collecting transcripts and related news articles.

In these early years, Wetzel systematically recorded audio from radio or television, such as the televised CBS Evening News, saved edited portions that were of interest to him, and then collected transcripts of the recordings when possible.

After working in news radio for a number of years, Wetzel began working for NBC in the early 1970s. His work gave him access to direct network feeds and press information, and he began systematically recording video broadcasts and other materials related to political affairs. Wetzel headed NBC’s Election Unit for four presidential elections from 1976 to 1988, and covered many local and off-year elections. Wetzel and his staff reviewed the tapes the day after the broadcast, using them to analyze the reporting. He would then use the data collected to create an in-depth study of the polling methods and systems utilized by different organizations.

Wetzel’s interest in politics extended to other countries as well. After becoming the General Manger of the NBC Election Unit, he began recording and studying how major news organizations covered elections in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany.

Roy Wetzel retired from NBC in 1989, but continued to record videos and collect content related to American presidential elections and politics through 2011. As he built his collection, Wetzel kept notes related to the recordings on each tape and collected other available related material. He organized and categorized the tapes and papers, later creating and maintaining a database describing the tapes.

Scope and Content of the Wetzel Papers
The collection contains the textual materials Roy Wetzel collected while making his audio and video recordings over the years. The materials are useful for understanding policy trends, public opinion, voter behavior, candidate effectiveness, media usage, and election history from the 1950s through the early 2000s, as well as communications and political polling techniques and procedures, and the ideas and theories behind them.

There are also materials pertaining to Wetzel’s role as an NBC executive and leader and innovator in the field of news media and political analysis, including his work directing the NBC Election Unit and the NBC News Information Service (NIS), one of the first 24 hour news services during the mid-1970s. In addition, the papers provide some information on NBC’s corporate history.

Related Materials
Related materials on the 1976 presidential campaign are located in the President Ford Committee Records, the Robert Teeter Papers, and other collections, which are listed in the Library’s Guide to Core Collections on the 1976 Presidential Campaign.