Illustrated Daily; 3128; 25 Years of Channel Five

You I feel like that these were the the seeds the early beginnings of of it certainly instructional television of course public television has gone way beyond that into deep educational values and attainment values and where's your reindeer where's Dasher and dancer and comedy and diva and Donner and Blitz and a sleepy and dopey and doc I don't know about sleepy and dopey but I sure could use a doc reindeer reindeer reindeer reindeer oh my god it's a running game

the illustrated daily managing editor how roads hello this is where it all began a quarter of a century ago a converted sorority house which today headquarters the speech communications department at the University of New Mexico but on May 1st 1958 at 6.35 p.m. from the world's highest transmitter a top-sandia peak with one watt of audio and two watts of video it was here that

KNME made its premier broadcast and educational television later to become public television came to New Mexico the occasion of an anniversary is always time for reminiscing but when the anniversary is silver memories come rushing back we had a tryouts that we had to do so my first impression was to absolute panic in a sense because I had never done any television work before and was requested to come down and among or along with about 15 other teachers to to teach a lesson on television and I came in with my little script my many script in my hand and I thought gosh I don't think I really want to do this I don't know anything about television I had been on television one time in my life and that was when they needed somebody to represent the student teachers or something and I had been in front of a television camera one time I knew absolutely nothing about camera technique about scripting well I thought I had

nothing to lose and it sounded like fun and I went down there and tried out and I said George I think I'm gonna go in and tell Virginia I don't want to do this there was already somebody in their auditioning and he said Kathleen and he really you know he talked to me the way George can talk to you quite seriously it's a wonderful human being what did you say wonderful human being I heard that go and say that again you Bob White wonderful human being oh yes we can do anything a ball and I went down there and tried out and lo and behold they asked me if I would take this teaching position on television and you know that's what I did why you got an answer for that there was a lot of fun in in channel five and in the camaraderie of a little tiny building the building that's now 1801 Roma is it a speech building now I think there was a lot of fun and comradeship there well what did we learn there wonderful human being no the production that we went through and getting ready to set up and do a

program was just wild and those days we had the black and white cameras everything was live we stood all three of us started at the piano and then we walked down from one chart to the other why at the beginning we had no audio room and we had on on recorder a tape recorder on the set and it was considered somewhat innovative the day we rolled Maggie into the studio Maggie being what we called the old real-to-real audio tape with pre-recorded music on it so that we could have our own accompaniment without playing it always live on the piano and also have a voice track there so that you could sing with yourself and create harmony parts and then we would have to punch the play and the stop before and after each song that we sang and we would sing like six five or six songs so as we progressed down the set the further away we were from that tape recorder and we would try to program into it a long

introduction and a long conclusion to that audio music recording so that we could have time to run down and punch the button and run back up to get to the next chart that tape recorder had its own little personality and if you happen to punch the button the play button at the same time that you might gesture and touch somewhere close your microphone it had a way of creating a circuit through your whole body that was most interesting except for the differences in size and shape the two are very much alike very much alike and remember those were those were the days of live television so you kept right ongoing no matter if you're a microphone cord wrapped itself around the piano legs or whatever and I'm sure you're able to tell that dog gun it I'm hung up on this chair just a minute here you know that's one thing about having a microphone on if you get wound up in a chair you're done now I'm back also I remember quite vividly the time that we first decided to

put the audio tape into the the booth and have it played from the booth and the technician got the cuts mixed up at monosumma school and every time I would set up a a particular song or a particular activity to be used with that musical cut it was the wrong one all right let's see if you can do that with me and we'll keep the beat to a Hawaiian song here is your pitch ready thing thank you for doing that and if we could have Shalom Havardim I'll sing it we'll try to sing it as a round okay you should hear the introduction first well as you can tell we're having our troubles shall we give it another try or shall I just go on the maca that we had borrowed from one of our local pit

stores and beautiful bird and and he was allowed to sit on my shoulder well what are you doing there okay up on my okay Caesar and he stayed I guess I'm gonna have to spend the rest of school today with a maca on my shoulder he stayed all during the program on my shoulder on it he wouldn't get off or we'll always remember this day is the day Mrs. Marin taught school with a parent on her shoulder oh it's not so bad you're supposed to just put your finger up like this or a stick I'd forgotten you had pretty heavy birds he wouldn't get off he just stayed on my shoulder I was afraid with the back of me was going to look like we're gonna have to decide how to get one maca off Mrs. Marin shoulder say your claws are sharp he was gonna come over and take my

nose but the maca just stayed there I'm afraid now you always recognize me as I go down the street I'm the teacher with the maca on her shoulder I guess it's better to have a maca on your shoulder than a a voucher or a hawker something like that is this a fun program it is to me I'd dearly love birds well I want a disgusting person you know the the run-throughs were the fun we really fun and we'd have with Kathleen or Nancy we'd have the puppets would have to answer questions you know on the and of course they were the teachers were there to teach and we were there to help but we weren't real helpful during their run-throughs well now hey did you just make a pass at me sweetheart she touched me Zelda she touched my virgin body now she's always interrupted take away Nancy if you've got a talk talk Daniel's personal Daniel's a little white puppy dog and he's definitely was adopted from the pound because he

had no pedigrees here and Daniel talks up high like this and Daniel is his hormone level is let us say is out of sight I went little girl doggies come into play so does Daniel you know what I mean now I have with me a young man what's your name sir Ronald that's a nice name yeah would you mind taking your shirt off sir oh this is falling apart oh that's nasty this is a killer you know you tell me about swing choirs and being mid school in high school not can you teach me about puberty yeah we the run-throughs for the game shows I I know probably weren't worth the effort the Kathleen they were sure fun Dr. Bundy was such a help and counselor to to me and to all of the television teachers and from then on I have a fourth person who was very instrumental in

that was Wayne Bundy who gave me continued support it was very nice to talk with Dr. Bundy at any time but after a while you learned that if you had a live program coming on say at three o'clock or nine o'clock when mine could have been live you didn't stop by and visit with Dr. Bundy before when you had a schedule to meet you'd stop by afterwards and we call him and we met at Howard Johnson's for coffee at like eight thirty in the morning at like cordial twelve we were still drinking coffee we had more coffee than it's humanly possible and he talked about it do you remember why we know we had a long long morning of coffee with with Bundy but it was fun he was wonderful Dr. Bundy has a wonderful I as has a wonderful gift of of talking he can convince an elephant it's yellow I'm convinced and Daniel now he would say one

things Alda he would say Dr. Bundy has been around almost as long as you have a kid you know he dates back to the iconoscope and very few of us know what that is I sure what would you say well I just like to say that if Mr. Bundy Dr. Bundy Dr. Bundy would like to have a little coffee with me I'm always available well the legendary Dr. Wayne Bundy we've just been hearing about was the first full-time production manager and long-time program director at K&ME today he is the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Corporation for public broadcasting Dr. Bundy along with John Cooper join us now for a retro-spective on the first 25 years at Channel 5 as well as look down the

road at the next 25 John Cooper of course today is general manager at K&ME TV and he has been since September of 1979 and gentleman good evening and congratulations to both of you well an introduction like that I'm in trouble Wayne I've got to confess we set you up there in collecting some of that footage and talking to some of your old colleagues from the beginnings here at Channel 5 it is clear they look back on the origins with the great deal of affection I suspect you do too but I've often wondered had you any idea at the origins that there would come a time when Channel 5 would become one of the most widely viewed public television stations in the entire system at least in terms of its market size did you know what you were doing it's why I guess we didn't know what we were doing but as a matter of fact it became one of the most widely viewed very quickly Joyce Marons TV tender garden and its first or second year was out dry in all three commercial

networks at 9 30 in the morning I mean the audience for it was greater than the other three stations had so I guess it wasn't a surprise in terms of the audience that developed for people like Joyce and for George of course who is one of a kind Joyce Marons TV kindergarten was in fact the only kindergarten in all of New Mexico at the time as I understand that was before there was public kindergarten there were some but only about 10% of the preschoolers in the state had access to those private schools yes private or in some cases on there were some Indian ones there were a few others but in general 90% of the preschoolers had no kindergarten you know she still teaches kindergarten today and does a first-rate job but when we went out together that footage enjoyed watching her do her magic with those young stars and she still is gifted as always well Joyce was fantastic when she came into addition and she had been a romper room girl and she had all of the old

production techniques of the romper room in mind and we said to her in a Joyce you don't have a crowd you don't have any kids with you there's you and there's that one child watching and we talked about eye contact and one-on-one and all of those good things and got through and I said you understand what we can you do that and she says gee I don't know whether I can do it nobody ever said that to me before but I understand it and I want to try it and I'll go in there and do it and she went in and the very first time she tried on addition and she had that incredible one-on-one capability and of course even the theme song just you and me and the whole pitch and I didn't contrast every other pre-stual program on the air was the notion of one child watching and Mrs. Marin on the other end and within three years that thing was running I think in the 75 markets around the country we never set out to distribute it but

Austin, Texas and St. Paul, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon said how can we get it and we started taping and shipping out tapes and two of them would go to St. Paul and they would run and be dubbed and four of them would go in a different direction and we finally had I think seven circuits being bycettled around the country and each of it was just word of mouth John you know the best television very well and the responsibility is for building on the on the first 25 belong to you now as general manager at Channel 5 what is there is you look back at the stories of the Wayne Bundy tale about the origins of at Channel 5 that suggests to you that that reputation you got very early on for being one of the most widely viewed stations in the system add up to well somehow this station when it first started attracted a very loyal audience and I suspect it's what Wayne was talking about and that was

working with with the audience as if they were individuals so it created a very loyal audience and that has grown over the last 25 years and that's exactly what we're trying to maintain now and expand that that audience tell me something let me ask you a question a lot of people ask me the evolution of public television out of educational television what are the mechanics of that and how do you explain that to people I'm not sure that it was planned it it simply grew when stations first were licensed and began operation they had a much narrower view of what their role was going to be at least a large majority of them and over the years they added more programs to their schedule and those programs tended to become designed for general audiences and by 1967 Wayne wouldn't you say most of the stations in the country were doing programs for the classroom of course but they were also doing a

reasonable percentage of programs for the general audience and in 67 it was finally recognized that describing it as educational television was was certainly describing it for what it was but it was something more than that it was it was something that reached out to the public with a with a wide variety of program types and so the the the term public television was calling the term evolution is a good way to characterize what I certainly have but let's talk about the next 25 years first of all can we look forward to another 25 years of public television you were quoted in the paper though just what on Friday local newspaper as saying and I want to quote it exactly we are in a difficult time right now probably the most difficult time in the last ten years or so state funding is flat federal funding is cut viewer contributions short of the goal the last time out I mean that obviously raises a question are we dealing here with public television as an endangered species well I think we've got some serious problems and the the only way we're going to solve

those is to become extremely creative in how we go about raising funds for public broadcasting this station over the last three and a half or four years has expanded its revenue base tremendously and other stations around the country are doing the same thing we can look for only so much support from the federal government because they have a great many other things to support and the economy is tight the same problem exists at the state level so we have to do our very best with federal and state funding and certainly work on that because it it certainly is a good use of tax funds but we also have to concentrate on new and innovative ways to raise funds from the community now our community here in particular has been very responsive to that we've asked them to do an awful lot in a short period of time I'm afraid we're going to have to continue asking them and I think it's incumbent on the staff here to also look for for those ways that we can generate other sources of income

through contract work for various organizations looking into doing teleconferencing work for business and industry and education and and just seeing how many ways we can expand the services that we that we potentially can offer way you know the system very well throughout the system notably throughout the Rocky Mountain system with which you're terribly familiar is that generally true as well I mean can we look forward to another 25 years oh yes I think so the intriguing thing about this system is that it's a partnership hell and it is a good working partnership between the federal government and the Congress and its appropriations and the response of the states particularly in our region the legislative response and then coupled with the public itself through direct contribution and with the private sector in terms of underwriting and other kinds of support without any one of these then the answer would be different two years ago when it looked like the federal funding was

definitely going to be worse than it actually has turned out to be this was a more serious problem the history of the thing if you go back to 67 and the act of it however is that each time any administration recommends a level the Congress does what it wants to do and this has been true no matter whose administration it was or who was in charge of OMB and in general the Congress particularly the people from our states out here in the Rocky Mountain country are strong supporters of public broadcasting the end of the facilities grants our own delegation from New Mexico has been unanimously supported throughout this period of time and I think we've now hit the low period in fact just last week there was a slight increase a good deal of time being the eyes and ears of public television notably western public television in Washington that and zeal what just two years ago year ago to do very serious cuts in the the federal contribution to

diminish federal support for public it is not as great today I gather I hear you saying as it was even a year ago well the feeling was and John will remember his idea of the meeting where we went on and on with all of the managers here in the state position essentially was to say that we had taken our cut there's never been any reason to say public broadcasting should not have taken a cut if in a period when you're cutting out all expenditures and reducing them a fair reduction was never anything that we argued against but a greater reduction was something that we argued against and the fight against that greater rescission was led by people like Jack Schmidt and Pete Domenici Senator Hatch up in Utah I saw them about a McLora and Idaho decency in Arizona actually the hard line support in the Senate has pretty much come from our own Rocky Mountain region and the reason is that without exception those people are proud of their local stations what is there about what is there about now you

you have a lot of your roots run deep in the Rocky Mountain system Colorado Arizona New Mexico what is there about the Rocky Mountain system that that somehow finds an affection with its audience and its political constituency more perhaps effectively than elsewhere do you have any insights into that this region of the country is is especially populated compared to other parts of the country so public broadcasting serves a very important part of people's lives in this in this part of the country we have large areas of rural population we we have vast areas where people they're only regular contact with the rest of the country may very well be through television and they rely on public television to to give them some sense of what's going on and give them some some program material that has a certain cultural and informational educational value I've actually encountered that where we've had

translators of our own going right chasing stories in New Mexico I go into communities I think they couldn't possibly know who we are and I'm very often surprised that they watch us they know what we're doing the answers probably the distance as much as anything else because in contrast to other more constant-fated sections of the country and many of these states out here you're a hundred miles minimum of any one population center of any size from another population center of significant size the greatest letter I ever got in the old days that we were lucky enough to begin with was from a man in Pekis and he said I know you hear from a lot of people that you cannot imagine what it means in the isolation of the small town parentheses 230 people to have nightly regular access to the finest in music performance arts public affairs all the rest of it the instructional lectures you name it and I think that is the answer there's an isolation and yet at the same time there's a sense of

community in these states that I don't really think applies in the rest of the country and you very well know that if if you need something done in Lee County far away as it is you either know somebody in that county or you know somebody who does know somebody in that county and there is a common community of the people in each one of our states which helps to bridge that gap but then the mechanism the media itself provides the bridge which didn't exist otherwise it's crucial John in the first 25 years public television evolved out of educational television your prognosis the next 25 years what what are we evolving into well I think we'll continue to see a cultural and informational service that that has already started there was even a year two years ago some great deal of press as a matter of fact that public televisions role was disappearing the reason for that was the the the the advent of several cable

services the CBS cable the RCA channel both of which intended to provide a cultural service in a pay cable mechanism well both of those have have gone away they they found that it just wasn't financially viable to provide that kind of service and I think what we're seeing is that people look for and and relish the opportunity to have cultural and informational programming but as a commercial venture it's very hard to support and I think public television the way we're structured the way we're funded and the mechanisms that we have put together to create the programming that we do will still remain to be a vital part of people's lives for many many years to come and I think we'll expand on that exactly 30 seconds I want your prognosis in 30 seconds 30

seconds don't tell me an elephant yellow I should tell you the elephant yellow and some the stakeable at the difference between instruction education public are all surfaces people will watch what is of interest and value to them and this range of things in arts and humanities in public affairs the kind of service this series gives the service which legislative coverage gives bring people closer to government that audience is going to be there and the details may change but the basic function well not and I think it'll be alive and well on after any of us are gentlemen I hope 25 years now we're all sitting here gossiping about the last the first the first half century thank you very much for coming the illustrated daily sharing this with us see me to you I'm afraid that's it for night please join us tomorrow for a look at the Stern Report recently released by the National Commission on Excellence in Education on Hand for the Occasion Albuquerque Public School Superintendent Frank Sanchez a member of that commission in the meantime thanks for joining us

I'm Hal Rhodes good night Adios Mochachos Mochachas Algonne we'll see you soon I'm Rod Geering this is you and him reports be back after the next of 1973 be back after 1973 just be back that was the wrong line you could be on your way out and sleepy and opian duck I don't know about dovey and dark but I could use a sleazy end of program this is a K&M presentation