Butte College Television (BCTV)

History

Butte College owes its existence to a dream made back in 1962. That dream was to extend the educational opportunities for the local residents and form the first community college in Butte County. By November of 1966, a successful ballot measure was passed and the first five-member board of trustees was elected. The Durham Unified School District then provided a temporary home for the college at its former high school site on the Midway near the center of town.

Classes first started at that site on September 23, 1968 with 1,994 students.

The present site at Clark and Pentz Roads was selected in 1972, and was designated a wildlife refuge in 1973. First classes opened at the present campus on September 23, 1974 with 5,831 students. The original Durham site was torn down to make way for a community recreation center. A swimming pool now marks the spot where the old original Durham High main building once stood.

Butte's first application to the FCC for an ITFS television station was filed in early 1986 for two channels of service. By August 1987, Butte College Television was on the air using ITFS channels A-1 and A-2. At the same time, both State TV Cable (Chico) and Viacom Cable (Oroville) had included BCTV in their channel line up for subscriber viewing. Viacom Cable has since been owned by TCI and now COMCAST.

Only a few years later it was discovered that the class loads offered for students far outstripped the available broadcast facilities. In September 1991, another application was filed with the FCC, this time for two additional channels of broadcast spectrum. Computerized automation made its first appearance on January 6, 1992 and remained on-line for over a decade. By March 1993, BCTV had four independent channels of educational programming, with three of them under complete computer control. The channels of operation are A-1 thru A-4.

During the summer of 1994, the Chico Center on Cohassett Road was re-modeled to support a number of student carols for enhanced ITFS distance television learning. By fall 1994, return video from each carol was installed to provide individual student video back to the main campus supplied by ISDN phone line. Return video and audio from the Willows location in Glenn County was finished by summer 1996.

On March 27, 1997 BCTV instituted Precision Frequency Control for the first time with both phase and frequency lock using the Global Positioning System on all four broadcast channels.

On June 1, 2000 the Glenn County Center moved from its downtown Willows location to their new building at 604 East Walker Street in Orland. For the first time, student return video and audio was transported back to the Main Campus classrooms using network facilities on the campus WAN, instead of the older ISDN telephone technology.

The grand opening of the new Chico Center on Forest Avenue near Highway 99 on December 4, 2004 continued the trend of technology upgrades for Distance Learning. Where previously there were two streams of ISDN return video back to the main campus, BCTV now operates four separate network WAN links back to the originating studios. No ISDN lines are being used.