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Written by jay
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Friday, 05 September 2008 04:50 |
An archive of historical gay video footage belonging to Gay Cable Network pioneer and sex club entrepreneur Lou Maletta--much of it in VHS format--sits uncatalogued and quickly deteriorating in a Manhattan storage room, the Boston Edge reports. Maletta began the "Gay Cable News" show, hosted by Andy Humm and Anne Northrup (pictured) as well as a gay porn review show called "Men on Film" back in 1982 on New York City public access Channel 35, which was also host to the famous Robin Byrd Show. The tens of thousands of hours of video and DAT tapes includes footage from the Continental Baths in the 70s of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, a comment made by Dick Cheney about gay marriage back in 1984, and some of the earliest coverage of AIDS within the gay community of New York. Gay Cable News was the first news show of any kind to broadcast a picture of a Karposi's sarcoma lesion, and that clip is now preserved by the Museum of Broadcasting.
It seems that academic institutions like the City University of New York and Yale's Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian & Gay Studies have shied away from purchasing the archive either because they don't have the budgets to do so, or because of Maletta's connections to the worlds of porn and sex clubs--we previously reported on the NYC Health Department's recent inspections of Maletta's long-running sex club The Studio.
We actually think it sounds pretty awesome.
RELATED:
Possible Increase in Barebacking Seen in NY Sex Club Inspections
An Unwanted But Essential Gay Archive Deteriorates (Boston Edge)
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