glupson
... notice that tapes were not backed up to another tape but to entirely different (even allegedly inferior) format. That is saying somethingBacking up the tapes to digital makes perfect sense, because dubbing them onto another reel will only add noise.
Maybe 10 years ago ... I asked a person at the radio station to copy a reel of tape ... "Great, you came at the last moment. If you came five years from now, I probably could not do it. We have transferred all that we have into digital ... "In the US, broadcasting is a business, even for non-commercial stations. Analog tape is an inefficient, expensive, cumbersome format for radio, so of course most stations abandoned reel-to-reel. The industry has also mostly abandoned cart machines (remember them?) and analog tape for phone delay.
... it seems that they had, more or less, abandoned the format. By the way, it is a well-funded and quite serious radio station.