Recently we were asked if had any information on Elkton’s first and only television station, CATV Channel 5. Here’s our response.
“Mary Maloney was worried about her lipstick, and Harry Shivery forgot to take the coffeepot off the burner, but otherwise things moved along just fine when local television came to Cecil County,” The News Journal reported on Sept. 5, 1973. Things went so well that it wasn’t a minute after the first local “telecast had become history that one of the county’s true celebrities, Rodeo Earl Smith, called in his congratulations.” Maloney, then the president of the Board of County Commissioners, “came off like an old pro on camera,” with Shivery introducing her “as the First Lady of Cecil County,” according to The News Journal.
The county’s first local television show, produced and aired by Head of Elk Productions Inc., was on the air from downtown Elkton one hour a day in black and white. But soon color was added and local programming increased.
Shivery was, according to Morning News reporter Robin Brown, a “television star; a newscaster; often a newsmaker; a scriptwriter; set designer and builder; ad salesman and producer; cameraman and crew; programmer; and handyman. He was everything a studio needed, but his versatility was a matter of necessity.”
The shows aired on channel 5 on Elkton’s first cable TV system, Madison Cablevision. Shivery got the idea after reading a local newspaper and thinking “that Elkton-area residents were missing something — a local television station,” Brown wrote in the Morning News in 1977.
Shivery’s visionary dream of bringing local television to the area came to an end in October 1977 when the broadcasts ceased.
For More on Elkton Televison see
The day television broadcasting came to Elkton, an album of additional photos on Cecil County History on Facebook.