CCTV's Annual Backyard BBQ is just around the corner, on Thursday, Sept. 18th. In honor of our 20th anniversary, we will be recognizing a group of individuals who have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the mission of our organization, providing guidance, advice and advocating on behalf of CCTV. These individuals will be inducted to CCTV's first ever Honorary Board at the BBQ next month. A list of Honorary Board inductees can be found on this page along with more information about what's on tap for this year's BBQ fundraiser.

Help us celebrate these individuals and 20 years of free speech in Cambridge! Get your BBQ tickets today! (All proceeds will benefit CCTV's various special outreach programs.)

With profound pleasure, I announce the event below.

What: CCTV 20th Anniversary show
When: Saturday October 18, 2008 @ 830pm
Where: Middle East upstairs
Central Square, Cambridge

With:

Three Day Threshold
The Sift
Magic People
Big Digits
Kindergarten Killers
Project Documentary screening: "Nuclear on the Block: Inside MIT's Research Reactor" read more...

CCTV has come a long way since 1988, when our facilities were located at One Kendall Square. But the 80s weren't all that bad! Check out the video to watch our staff members' recent time warp -- and get ready to join the fun by marking your calendars for our next celebratory events:

• (In)Famous: 20 Years of CCTV's Most Talked About Programming
  Thursday, May 29, 8pm screening
  Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle Street, Harvard Square

  $2; $20 donation includes ticket and CCTV t-shirt
  Tickets available at cctvcambridge.org/stores or at the door

• 20-hour Team Production Marathon Screening
  Sunday, June 1, 8pm
  CCTV, 675 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA

  FREE

Controversial performance artist Karen Finley helped CCTV celebrate our 5th anniversary in 1992. She appeared in our studio over a chroma key of a billboard that was on display in North and East Cambridge. Finley was one of the NEA Four, four performance artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed in 1990 after Senator Jesse Helms railed about "decency" issues.

You may recognize the two men in this photo - the one on the left is a younger version of our own Frank Pasquarello, Public Information Officer for the Cambridge Police Department, who has been hosting a BeLive since the beginning (1995!). The guy on the right is outspoken attorney Allen Dershowitz. 1995 was the year of the OJ trial, and Dershowitz had made some negative comments about the LAPD and the police in general...so Frank invited him onto his show.

This post is part of CCTV's 20th Anniversary blog. Log in and check it out at http://www.cctvcambridge.org/20, and post your own CCTV memories.

On my BeLive, I have started asking historical CCTV trivia questions (winners receive a ticket to our annual Backyard BBQ in September!). My first query was the original channel numbers - and Robert Winters correctly answered. This is CCTV's first bumper sticker.

If you have bits of historical CCTV knowledge, please post here - or questions to ask!

I first became involved with CCTV in 1995. Rafael Medina, then CCTV’s Youth Coordinator, taught an after school video production class at the Cambridge Public Library. My friend Peter and I created a series of short animations called “SuperDork” (oh, how I wish I could find copies of these videos!) In 1996 CCTV was in the process of moving to Central Square, much closer to where me and my family lived. I registered for a joint workshop between that CCTV & the Cambridge Performance Project where kids learned both acting and studio production skills. Every Saturday morning I got to use the studio cameras, run the video switcher and direct a crew of my peers. I was hooked!

Here’s one of the videos that we produced in that class. I got to use the giant pink bird puppet. I still find this video kind of funny… read more...

While 2002 is considered "recent" in CCTV history, I still recall the archaic tasks assigned to cablecast interns of that era. Among them was having to hold up these cue cards to let BeLive producers know how many minutes were left for their live show. Nowadays, the cue cards have been replaced by a digital clock display and an auto timer message system. But I still get a kick out of seeing these cue cards tucked away in a corner of the cablecast room.

Another item in cablecast soon to be of a past era: Our clunky Tiltrac tape robot! Technology has changed things for the better at CCTV's programming department.

Well, to start things off - was anyone there at the Grand Opening celebration in 1988? This is the poster of the Grand Opening events.

This is a photo of the "new" CCTV in 1995 - before the buildout was finished.

In 1987, CCTV hired its first executive director, Irwin Hipsman...Irwin had been the ed at SCAT, and being offered the job starting CCTV (it was called CPAC then - Cambridge Public Access Corporation - still our legal name) was a big deal - very exciting to start a new access center, especially in a community like Cambridge.

Irwin's office was in One Kendall Square, in a large office space that housed some small businesses that only needed a desk and some support services - CCTV's facility was being built in building 600. In early 1988, he hired David Avellone as the technical manager - David and I had been working together at BNN in Boston. I was sorry to see him go, and I really, really wanted to work at CCTV, too, in MY community.

I was hired in March, 1988 as the Access Coordinator - I was ecstatic! more to come....