What Is Pittsfield Community Television (PCTV)?
Pittsfield Community Television is a community television station, operating Public, Educational, and Governmental Access Television (“PEG Access”) available to cable TV viewers on three channels in the Time Warner Cable service area, and serves people who live or work in the City of Pittsfield.
These three channels each serve our community in a unique way. Our Public Access, “AccessPittsfield” and seen on Channel 16, serves the public directly and allows anyone from the Pittsfield area access. “Pittsfield ETV,” the Education Access Channel on Channel 17, provides a link to our local schools and educators, giving them a distinct voice to help educate our community. Finally, our Governmental Access Channel “Citylink,” found on Channel 18, provides a vital connection between government and the people, most often through gavel-to-gavel coverage of local city meetings.
The nature of access television is to enable people with little or no television production experience to create and cablecast original, local television programming. One way PCTV accomplishes this goal is by training people in the use of production equipment and technique. In fact, this is a primary objective of our staff - to train and facilitate the use of the professional television equipment available to the people of Pittsfield through PCTV.
Once trained, PCTV members are able to utilize our production facilities available at PCTV. These include: a multi-camera television studio; a fully outfitted mobile production vehicle; two off-line editing suites; and portable video equipment which can be borrowed to create programming “on site.”
Pittsfield Community Television is paid for via a unique arrangement. Through a ten-year franchise agreement between Time Warner Cable and the City of Pittsfield , our station recieves 5% of Time Warner Cable’s revenues annually. Through this contract arrangement, the City of Pittsfield recieves a direct benefit from Time Warner Cable in the form of our facility. The funding we recieve is used for both operating expenses (salaries, utilities, rent, supplies, etc.) and for capital needs (purchase of equipment).
As an organization, Pittsfield Community Television is an independent, not-for-profit charitable organization recognized under Internal Revenue Service code, section 501 (c)(3), and recognized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a charity exempt from state sales and income taxes. We have a volunteer Board of Directors consisting of thirteen directors elected by the membership. Directors’ terms are for three years.
We currently have seven staff people: an Executive Director; a Channel Coordinator for each of the three access channels; two Production Technicians; and an Administrative Assistant.
Mission Statement
The mission of Pittsfield Community Television (PCTV) is: To provide access to the medium of television and related technologies, including training, production facilities, and cablecast time, to public, educational, and governmental constituencies located in and/or serving the City of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and to provide the Pittsfield community with local television programming.
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