Online available interviews with TV actors, creators, performers

Taped interviews with dozens of prominent TV performers and creators, including Dick Van Dyke, Sid Caesar and Norman Lear, are available online, officials announced.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation is making interviews from its Archive of American Television available for free to the public through an agreement with Google Video, officials said.

The archive allows TV history to be "told through the eyes of the creative geniuses in front of and behind the cameras, who shaped and continue to shape television into the most powerful medium in the world," foundation Chairman Steve Mosko said in a statement.

The first 75 of more than 280 interviews conducted over the past several years were available yesterday. Among the performers featured are Ossie Davis, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner and Angela Lansbury.

Among the TV producers, writers and others are Ted Turner, Dick Wolf and Steven Bochco.

The foundation was established as the charitable arm of the TV academy, organizer of the Emmy Awards, reported AP. P.T.