An Arlington resident since the fall of 1975, Glenn Koenig has had something to do with local video communications since he arrived in town.

Koenig’s introduction to the emerging portable video technology of the day was at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., back in 1973. Then limited to black and white, on a Sony reel-to-reel Port-a-pack, he didn’t let that restriction dampen his enthusiasm for chronicling the world of sight and sound. Even before officially graduating from Goddard, he settled in Arlington in the fall of 1975. Within a year, he had saved enough to purchase his own Sony reel-to-reel portable half-inch video camera and recorder.

 

Although he recorded a variety of subjects with the new machine, a good example of his interest in public video was his renting of a booth at Town Day in 1980 where, for 25 cents, you could have yourself recorded on video and then played back on the spot. At the end of the day, he grossed $25: 100 people had taken him up on his offer.

Around that time, Arlington was being wired for cable TV, one of the first communities — after Somerville and Lexington. In Somerville, Time-Warner was the cable trailblazer in the late 1960s. It offered the classic two-studio system for locally produced programs. Its local-origination studio was staffed with cable company employees, while their public-access studio was provided strictly for volunteers. 

But the employees had the latest color cameras and ¾-inch recorders to work with, while volunteers had only half-inch black-and-white machines available. Editing on these machines was not user-friendly, and so public-access productions appeared unprofessional. Although the cable company could not censor public-access program content, equipment glitches made it difficult to get programs produced and on the air.

Of course, most of the Arlington viewing public was interested in the arrival of cable TV as a longed-for improvement in signal quality. In East Arlington, where the land is relatively flat, TV reception was decent, but in the Heights, with its hilly terrain, the snowy, ghosty reception picked up with standard antennas left residents highly motivated for something better.

The town engaged a Cable Advisory Committee, which evaluated six cable companies and made its recommendation to the Board of Selectmen. When it came to local programming, Arlington was asking for better-than-second-class treatment for the public-access side of the equation. American Cable Systems, with its single-studio concept, emerged the winner. Employing three staffers, it hoped to make a showcase of Arlington’s operation in order to enhance its appeal to other local markets.

Now, with local origination and public access production combined in one studio, the ACS staff trained volunteers on the coveted ¾-inch color video equipment. The original staffers were Ed Fiddler, studio manager/IT specialist; Nancy Bicknell, program director; and Rika Welsh, production coordinator.

 

So it began — cable TV in Arlington.