Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) and his opponent, Elizabeth Warren (D), squared off last night in their first televised debate, hosted by Boston CBS O&O WBZ.

The debate, moderated by WBZ political analyst Jon Keller, aired live on WBZ and WBZ Newsradio. It was also streamed live on the station’s website.

Brown and Warren debated tax cuts and oil subsidies during the hourlong debate, which Politico described as “testy.” The pair have three more debates before Election Day, including one hosted by Boston’s public television station WGBH on October 30.

Video of the debate is after the jump. Read more

A recent report from WBZ, the CBS O&O in Boston, was the subject of a “Beat the Press” panel this weekend on WGBH, Boston’s public television station.

The report in question was an investigation of private businesses freeloading off public land by WBZ reporter Joe Shortsleeve (watch inside). Colman Herman, a contributing writer for CommonWealth magazine, wrote about the same topic in a series of articles that were published earlier this year. The WBZ report made no mention of Herman’s reporting, despite the fact that both reports cited the same problematic leases as evidence. Read more

Four Boston stations returned to the air this afternoon, following an antenna malfunction that occurred on Sunday night.

CBS-owned WBZ, and its MyNetworkTV sister station WSBK, ABC-affiliate WCVB, and PBS station WGBX were all knocked off the air around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday after a technical malfunction occurred at the broadcast tower they all share.

WCVB was able to quickly switch to an auxiliary antenna, and the station has been broadcasting at reduced power since Sunday night.

In order to return all of the stations to the air, technicians moved their signals to the tower of PBS station WGBH and transferred WGBH’s programming to WCVB’s auxiliary antenna. Read more

Boston’s WGBH has more than 750,000 hours of historical footage in an archives vault — everything from visits to the city by Fidel Castro and Martin Luther King, Jr., to protest footage of President Barack Obama outside Harvard University in 1990.

Now, the area PBS station has begun the ambitious project of digitizing some of its most famous clips, taking the footage from their current format of tapes and film canisters — which deteriorate over time — and putting the collection online, The Boston Globe reports. The finished product will include historical footage from several other Boston stations, including WCVB, the area ABC affiliate, and WHDH, the area NBC affiliate.

WGBH did not get the collections directly from the stations — instead, the PBS station obtained them from non-profit groups that have housed archival film from WHDH and WCVB. “When we proposed the project, the only historical collections known were the WHDH, WCVB, and WGBH materials,’’ said Karen Cariani, director of WGBH media library and archives. “We thought it made sense to start with those, and then expand to include the other stations as interest in the project grew.”

After the jump, sample video clips from WGBH.

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