PHOTO BY SEAN COLLIER

After decades of providing independently created television for and by Pittsburghers, the public-access cable network Pittsburgh Community Television is going off the air.

The network, which first took the PCTV name in 1986, announced in late July that it would cease operations. A final day of programming is scheduled for Sept. 7.

John Patterson, executive director of PCTV for the past 15 years, has a one-word explanation for the station’s closure: “Funding.”

As a cable network, Patterson explains, their funding was based almost entirely on fees for cable carriers, which have dropped in recent years amid industry-wide shifts. “The fact is that the funding model was based on cable television, and we never found a way to fund it in other ways … There have been a number [of similar networks] that have closed in recent years.

“We tried to evolve, but we didn’t evolve enough to make it happen.”

For many budding media professionals, shows on PCTV served as a way to get early real-world experience in production. As digital tools became more prevalent, the demand for such services began to wane, Patterson says — a sharp contrast from the role that public-access stations played in the 1980s and ’90s.

“When this started in the ’80s, they didn’t have cameras. They didn’t have a way of distributing programming. Now, they carry all of that around in their pocket.”

For many, PCTV was a launching pad; Patterson cites the example of “Paul Eugene Fitness,” an exercise program that honed its style on PCTV before converting to digital. The channel now has more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube.

For others, however, PCTV was the only platform they needed. Pastor Frank Tillman first aired a religious show, “Swords of Light,” on PCTV in 1988; he has continued to appear on the network until today.

“The creativity of it and the varying levels of expertise — that’s what I loved about it,” Patterson says. “You didn’t have to be anybody super special to come here; it was open to everybody.”

PCTV is currently working to preserve their digital archives and materials from their vault; Patterson notes that Gladys Jelks, the station’s director of operations and programming and an employee for the entire lifetime of the network, is negotiating with representatives of the Heinz History Center to preserve parts of PCTV’s legacy. Studio equipment will go to the City of Pittsburgh.

A farewell party will take place from 4-8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5, at the station’s North Side studio.

While it may be easy for budding creators to make content for the internet, Patterson believes that something significant is lost as stations like PCTV fade away.

“[As] Pittsburgh’s local channel … it was serving locally, where YouTube is worldwide; your audience can be lost in that. People still loved being on local TV, it still holds meaning to people.”