About the Archives:

“My interest in CHTV’s history first began when I started producing my film, “The CHTV Archives” in November 2022. Going into the production process, not much was really known about CHTV’s past. Basic information about CHTV, such as the year it was started, wasn’t even available. So, I made it my mission to uncover CHTV’s history. I knew that CHTV has a long history of creating content, so I wanted to find it. I talked to many individuals from the program’s past, including its founder, Hal Espey. In talking to Mr. Espey, I learned that the majority of CHTV’s archives have been destroyed after he retired. I was devastated. Not only because that meant less B-Roll for my film, but also because it meant that a large portion of CHTV’s history was gone.

My film premiered on May 19, 2023. I was so excited to help encourage people to think more deeply about CHTV’s history. However, I was disappointed by CHTV’s lack of archives. So, I decided that, with what I had, I was going to curate CHTV’s digital archives. I decided that I was going to upload all of CHTV’s public YouTube videos onto our, at the time, new website. I decided to do this because I had a feeling that this website was going to be CHTV’s website for a very long time. So, I spent months uploading video after video to the site. First, it was all of the newscasts from CHTV’s old ‘CHTV99’ channel, then it was newscasts from our current channel, and then I scoured the internet to find any other CHTV newscasts that alumni had uploaded and added those to the site. Next, I uploaded the rest of the videos from the CHTV99 channel to the site. Then I did the same for CHTV’s current channel. And after months of work, CHTV had its digital archives.

Until September of 2023, when I got word that Mr. Espey had found a sizable amount of old CHTV content that he was willing to donate to CHTV. He brought boxes and boxes of content to the station. Full of VHSs and DVDs. We put the boxes away hoping to send them off somewhere to get digitized but unfortunately, that never happened.

Fast forward to the summer of 2024 and I realized that, if I didn’t take action, the boxes of content, were never going to get digitalized. So, I’m making it my mission to digitize CHTV’s archives so that everyone has an opportunity to see them and enjoy CHTV’s vast history.

The process will be a long one. However, it is expected to be completed in time for CHTV’s 50th anniversary in the 2028-2029 school year.

Until then, enjoy the archives that are below. These are the CHTV archives.”

– Jack Ringenberg, Head of Archival Research