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Nine PBS in St. Louis lost access to more than 50TB of archival and programming data spanning roughly 70 years after its contracted cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), apparently ceased operations and stopped responding. The broadcaster said OSS's website disappeared and the company was listed as delinquent with the Colorado Secretary of State, leaving Nine PBS unable to retrieve decades of television history and organizational records.
Court filings cited by reports say the data was being hosted by Iron Mountain on OSS's behalf, but Iron Mountain refused to release the archive on the grounds that OSS owned the stored materials. A court ruled that Nine PBS has the right to access its data and that OSS should facilitate transfer to a new vendor, yet the broadcaster is now also pursuing action against Iron Mountain to prevent deletion and recover the archive. Discussion of the case has also highlighted the operational risk of relying on a single third-party storage provider without accessible backup paths.
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On August 12, 2026, a Denver judge ruled that Nine PBS may retrieve its 50TB of archival data from Iron Mountain through a controlled process using a third-party vendor. The order required Nine PBS to pay current and overdue storage fees, avoid accessing other former OSS client data, and provide a progress update by September 14.
On July 28, Nine PBS filed suit against Iron Mountain Data Centers in Denver District Court seeking access to roughly 50TB of archival and programming data allegedly stored at Iron Mountain's Denver facility after OSS became unresponsive. The suit says most of the more than 11,000 files are unique and irreplaceable.
Nine PBS intended to renew its contract with OSS on March 6 of this year, but OSS did not respond and cut off the station’s access to more than 50TB of stored archival and programming data. Nine PBS said it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.
Nine PBS decided it also must sue Iron Mountain to ensure the archival data is not deleted, amid concern that OSS may no longer be paying the data center bills.
After being informed of the pending Colorado case, Iron Mountain admitted it was holding Nine PBS’ data and initially agreed to turn it over. It later reversed course and claimed OSS owned the stored data.
A court ruled that Nine PBS had the right to access its data stored with OSS and that OSS should facilitate transfer of the data to a new vendor.
James Tramel told Nine PBS that he had been defrauded into acquiring OSS and that ownership and operations had reverted to the previous owners. Nine PBS later received an automated reply stating he was no longer connected with OSS.
A person named James Tramel contacted Nine PBS claiming to be the managing partner of the group that had officially acquired OSS. He communicated with the broadcaster for about a month before contact ended abruptly.
Nine PBS filed suit against OSS and its leadership after losing access to its stored data.
Nine PBS determined that OSS was using Iron Mountain’s services to store the broadcaster’s data and sent Iron Mountain a demand letter seeking preservation of the records and offering to pay reasonable associated costs.
After losing access, Nine PBS found that the OSS website no longer existed and that OSS was listed as delinquent with the Colorado Secretary of State.
Nine PBS had used Open Source Storage and its predecessor for cloud storage services starting in 2019.
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