“I broke two prosthetic devices carrying TVs,” she says. “I dedicated my time, my money, my body to public access.” – Virginia Brookbush, Seattle Times

Channel 29, Seattle’s first public access channel, was introduced in 1983 as part of an agreement between the city of Seattle and cable provider Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI). TCI owned the channel and funded the Northwest Access and Production Center on Aurora, where citizens could learn to operate and rent TV production equipment and record TV programs of their own design.

Virginia Brookbush was one such citizen, and absolutely a cut above the rest. After graduating Idaho State University at age 52, the “matron saint of Seattle public-access TV” moved to Seattle in 1970, and promptly began laying the foundation for her Community Television Agency (CTA), an organization dedicated to helping amateurs access the communicative potential of television. Brookbush’s staunch commitment to uncensored freedom of speech and information was infectious, and the community she created through her work was highly productive. By the late 1970s, CTA was producing as many as seven half-hour public-access programs a week; predominantly volunteer productions that were financed by Brookbush herself.

This program is a selection of excerpts from CTA shows, digitized from 3/4″ U-matic videotapes donated to Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry in 2021 by Derek Creisler, who trained as a videographer through CTA. The tapes tell the story of CTA’s origins, then vault through a gamut of topics – local, international, artistic, spiritual, historical, political – that emphasize the inclusion of perspectives that are unlikely to be heard from in mass media. (View the collection online at MOHAI’s Internet Archive page!)

Addendum: There is an interesting continuity from the CTA-era Seattle Public Access Network, to Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN), to SCCtv’s reiteration of SCAN as Seattle Community Media, to 911 Media Arts, Reel Grrls, and finally Northwest Film Forum. A media literacy lineage is clearly visible, rooted in the “each one teach one” mantra, in all of these nonprofits and collectives who have dedicated themselves to increasing and broadening access to media and helping to dissipate the firehose of the mainstream. From this screening forward, we intend to celebrate that legacy on January 10th: Virginia Brookbush Public Access Day, as declared by Seattle Mayor Charles Royer in 1983.