CCTV began as channel 39 in February of 1991. An agreement between the City of Cadillac, Cadillac Area Public Schools, and Charter Communications established the Public, Education, and Government (or PEG) access station. The newly formed station was positioned in the A/V Department of Cadillac High School and ran a community bulletin board. In the latter part of 1991 the station was moved a location between Cadillac High School and the Junior High. Channel 39 became TV2 and Charter Communications granted channel 57 as another community television channel. TV2’s new production studio and control room were put to good use. The station now covered Cadillac Area Public Schools music concerts and began a weekly talk show called “Community Affairs.”
TV2’s first Director was Marland Ream, a retired speech instructor for Cadillac High School. He took the reins of TV2 and Channel 57 and worked to develop the channels into informational tools for the community. With the help of Television and Radio Production students, Marland Ream expanded the programming to include Cadillac City Council meetings, Vikings sports, local music concerts, and community affairs coverage. The new programming didn’t stop at the local level; the station added educational satellite programming as well. The most notable of this expanded programming was the Arts Channel.
Marland Ream resigned as Director in January 2002 and the TV2 Board of Directors created two positions to replace the station’s original Director. The task of running the growing station had increased beyond the scope of one single position. The newly created positions were Director and Program Coordinator. In May of 2002 TV2 became CCTV (Cadillac Community Television) and Charter Cable began to carry its services to the Lake City and Manton areas.
On August 1, 2006, the station changed its name once again to TV2&98, to reflect a change of its channel positions on Charter as the PEG station continued to expand.
In December of 2009, Charter announced a statewide rearrangement of its PEG channels, and channel 2 was moved to channel 97.
In an effort to name our facility with any possible future channel movements in mind, our facility was once again renamed CCTV.
Today, CCTV has expanded beyond our original allocation of cable TV channels to include live streaming of our programming on the internet, a Video On Demand archive of past Cadillac City Council Meetings as well as a Facebook page to keep Cadillac’s citizens in touch with CCTV staff and our programming.
CCTV now serves more than 5,000 households in the Cadillac area and hopes to continue to meet the needs of both our local TV viewers and the millions of people who have access to our programming on the internet.