Earlier this year, St. Louis-based local TV station Nine PBS found out the limitations of cloud storage the hard way. However, now it looks like the story might have a happy ending after all.
What happened?
Back in 2019, Nine PBS started storing its data in the cloud using a provider called Open Source Storage (OSS). In February 2026, the TV station reached out to OSS to renew its contract. However, Nine PBS could not get a response from the cloud storage company. Even worse, when the contract expired, the TV station found that it had lost access to all of its data. This was despite the contract allowing for a 30-day grace period for customers to download their stored data. In addition, Nine PBS discovered that the OSS website wasn’t working and the company was officially listed as delinquent.
What data was lost?
Nine PBS had around 50TB of data stored with OSS. This included clips covering 70 years of the history of East St. Louis. The lost videos also documented events such as the COIV-19 pandemic and the Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993. Thankfully, by March 2026, Nine PBS had learned that the missing data hadn’t been deleted. In addition, the TV station understood that OSS had stored its cloud data stored on servers at Iron Mountain in Colorado. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the matter as Iron Mountain wouldn’t say whether or not it had the data.
Legal action
First, Nine PBS had to take legal action against OSS and its new owner to get confirmation that the data was at Iron Mountain. Then the TV station had to go back to the courts again to get a judgement which said it had the rights to its own missing data. At this point Iron Mountain did admit to holding the files but still wouldn’t give Nine PBS access to them. As a result, the TV station had to undertake yet more legal action to ensure that the data wouldn’t be deleted.
A happy ending?
The matter finally appears to be drawing to a conclusion now, and it is good news for Nine PBS. A judge in Denver has now said that the TV station can retrieve its files from the Iron Mountain storage site. However, Nine PBS needs to pay the outstanding fees for storage. It also needs to recruit a former OSS employee to help find the files. In addition, the TV station needs to give assurances that it won’t access any other OSS data or impact on other files at Iron Mountain. Hopefully, there will be positive progress on the process by the middle of September.
What we think
Thankfully, it seems that Nine PBS is going to be able to retrieve its missing data. However, it does clearly illustrate why a properly managed backup system is so important. Cloud storage is very useful but should never be your only backup system. Even with the rising costs of hard drives, 50TB storage isn’t excessively expensive. Compared to the invaluable nature of the data and videos that could have been lost, it pales into insignificance. Hopefully Nine PBS will be more careful going forwards. It would have been a huge loss for the TV station and St. Louis area if these historically important files had been lost for good.
