(CNN) -- For CNN, Tiananmen Square was a watershed story -- a seminal moment in the network's history.



Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy, producer Nancy Lane and Moscow bureau chief Steve Hurst



Only nine years old in 1989, CNN was the only 24-hour news station on the air at the time. But staffers say the network suffered an inferiority complex when comparing itself to the major players in American television, who had dismissed the new upstart for years as "Chicken Noodle News."



Enter Tiananmen Square. Change the face of television news. Take your place in the big leagues.  "It put CNN on the map," said Mike Chinoy, CNN's Beijing bureau chief during the crisis.



"It was the first time an upheaval in a previously isolated, distant, inaccessible location suddenly was available on television sets in living rooms and foreign ministries around the world. It was a pivotal moment for television."



And it was an accident too. Foreign reporters had flooded Beijing to cover the historic visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Suddenly, they found themselves covering a very different story.



For CNN, it all started in early April when Alec Miran, CNN's special events producer for the Gorbachev visit, went to Beijing to propose an "outlandish idea" to the Chinese authorities -- bringing in the network's own transmission equipment to beam live television pictures from China.



"It was unprecedented," said Miran. Before that, networks would feed their material from CCTV (Chinese Central Television), who would monitor -- and censor -- everything that was sent out.



"Our own transmission was a scary idea to them," said Miran. But he says he thinks the Chinese eventually agreed -- after much back and forth -- because, above all, they wanted international coverage of Gorbachev's visit.



The Chinese gave CNN permission to bring in their own "flyaway" satellite dish and additional microwave gear to be able to transmit live -- a permission unheard of at the time in closed, Communist China. CNN was granted exactly one week's permission, timed to coincide with the Soviet leader's visit.  See photos of the CNN team in Tiananmen Square in 1989 »



CBS was also granted permission to transmit live, but because CNN was on the air 24 hours a day, the permission it was granted turned out to be much more significant.



"On the first day of the Gorbachev visit, we not only had our own satellite transmission, we also had a live camera overlooking the square," said Miran. "We were really well set up."



But the situation was deteriorating rapidly for the Chinese leadership.



Huge groups of students demanding reform had occupied Tiananmen Square and had launched a hunger strike just days before the Soviet leader's visit was about to begin.



CNN's live camera, at the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking the square, showed the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in Tiananmen Square where Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was due to greet Gorbachev at the Great Hall of the People.



"On the day of the big meeting, we waited, and waited, and waited, watching the signal from CCTV," said Miran. "No picture. We called our contact at CCTV to see if there were technical problems. Nope."



"They couldn't take Gorbachev in the front door of the Great Hall of the People because there were more than a million people in the square asking for reform," said Cynde Strand, CNN's cameraperson in Beijing at the time. "The students upstaged Deng in one of his biggest moments, his big rapprochement with the Soviet Union."



And the massive crowd -- as well as the non-appearance of Deng welcoming Gorbachev at the Great Hall of the People -- was all captured live on CNN.



Soon afterwards, the Chinese informed CNN they could no longer maintain their live position overlooking the square, a position that had become vital for the network's coverage. Entire shows anchored by Bernard Shaw had been taped there.



Miran and Chinoy huddled and decided that although the Chinese
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