Among the many programs broadcast on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) in
Among the many programs broadcast on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) in the late 1990s was a show hosted by a transgender African-American woman whose name, for reasons explained below, I won’t mention here. I don’t know too much about the show—not the timeslot in which it was presented, not the specific dates on which it was broadcast, not how many episodes aired in total. The little that I do know about this show I learned from my friend, Michael Grant—a moving image archivist who specializes in the preservation of magnetic media, especially VHS tapes.Grant discovered a rare recording of one of the show’s episodes earlier this year, while digitizing materials from the archival collections of the Educational Video Center (EVC). After working with a short documentary made by a group of youth media makers—which only took up a portion of the VHS tape on which it was recorded—Grant fast-forwarded to see if the cassette contained any additional material. The final section, he discovered, contained a full episode of this aforementioned public access television show. Previewing the material to gauge its suitability for digitization, Grant wondered how a recording of this show had ended up on a tape in EVC’s collections. As far as he could tell, it was unconnected to the work of the organization or its affiliates. Perhaps someone at EVC had recorded it off-air? This seemed unlikely, since the recording’s edges were neat: it began precisely at the start of the episode and ended precisely at its conclusion. Maybe MNN had given EVC the tape upon request? This was possible—but if so, how did an EVC program end up on the first half of the tape? Grant finally concluded that what had most likely happened was that a tape containing a recording of MNN productions had been acquired by EVC (possibly it was something that an EVC instructor had and brought in to show to students)—which had been subsequently recycled and taped-over by EVC’s producers. In any event, here it was. What to do with it?
On one hand, the video held undeniable historical significance. It was a rare example of a television program entirely written and produced by a transgender woman of color. This particular episode marked the season premiere of the show’s second season, and featured clips from each of the eight episodes that comprised the show’s first season. Organized largely around viewers calling in to ask questions, the show featured frank talk about the host’s gender identity, her efforts to secure gender-appropriate ID, her seropositive status, and a wide range of other topics related to life in queer 1990s-era New York City. The recording was, in Grant’s view, “really moving, and kind of beautifully awkward in the cable access way.” He knew that it would be of enormous value to a wide range of researchers—folks interested in queer and trans histories and the history of public access television, as well as AIDS activists, documentary filmmakers, and a range of other viewers.Bu