Nine PBS lost access to 50TB of archives when its data center vanished
Nine PBS in St. Louis is suing the owner of a Denver-based data center after spending much of this year attempting to regain access to more than 50TB of its archival data. The data center became defunct and changed ownership multiple times under circumstances that remain unclear. Read Entire Article
The archival data of Nine PBS, a public media outlet in St. Louis, has been inaccessible since early 2026 following a puzzling data center shutdown. This data center, which had been storing more than 50 terabytes of historical broadcast content, vanished under mysterious ownership transitions. The station had been trusting this center since 2019, even after multiple name changes, including OSS predecessor.
Despite the presence of a 30-day contract renewal window, Nine PBS lost access abruptly in March 2026. The center's website had already been offline, and the data center had fallen behind on its payments to the Colorado Secretary of State. Upon further investigation, Nine PBS discovered that the data center was owned by Iron Mountain, a different company.
Subsequent legal actions ensued when Nine PBS sued OSS owner Charles Wells and the company itself. The confusion deepened when James Tramel, a managing partner in a group that acquired OSS, denied any involvement after Nine PBS paused proceedings. Later, Nine PBS resumed the lawsuit after Iron Mountain initially promised to return the archives but reneged.
The situation highlights the risks of relying on external tech companies for critical systems and the necessity of maintaining additional backups. This case echoes South Korea's recent experience when a data center fire resulted in the loss of 858 terabytes of data.
Written by urgent.news from TechSpot's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
