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From the corner of 3rd and Broadway in downtown Wichita, this is the 1980 report to members of 8. Here is Channel 8's Director of Programming, Jim Lewis. Good afternoon. As you know, KPTS is a not-for-profit corporation, but just as a profit corporation reports annually to its stockholders on corporate activities, so do we at Channel 8 report to you the 15,905 members of 8 throughout the South Central Kansas region. In this program, we'll be reviewing some of the events of the past year and projecting some of our expectations for the coming year. Well, 1979-80 was a year of ups and downs for Channel 8.
A financial pinch in September necessitated the layoff of some station personnel and suspected moisture in the transmission line caused damage that resulted in several transmission outages during the year. On the positive side, however, January 5, 1980 marked our 10th anniversary, the 10th year of service by KPTS to the South Central Kansas region. April brought the return of Saturday Morning Adult Programming to Channel 8, as well as a general shake-up in Channel 8 Programming Scheduling and several new programs, including a country western and bluegrass music hour on Sundays at 6, old-time cowboy movies and film classics on the weekends. And finally, this spring also included the signing of a purchase agreement for a new office and studio facility, more about that later. But first, let me report to you about our primary product, programming. Each spring, we've conducted a program preference poll, distributing thousands of questionnaires
to a sample of our members of 8 and to the general public. We use the results of this poll, along with our ascertainment of area needs and problems, to help us select and schedule programming for the coming year. With the results of this year's surveys in hand, we've already begun to secure programming for this fall. Here are some of the familiar programs that we're purchasing again. In addition, we're acquiring some new programs that we're very excited about, programs that we feel you'll be delighted with, because they also relate to the results of our program
preference poll and our programming ascertainment. Here's a list of some of these new programs you'll be seeing this fall. The Paper Chase, the famed series on law students with John Hausman as Professor Kingsfield, Matteney at the Bijou, a new series recalling the Saturday movie programs of the 30s and 40s. The next page, a new entertainment and discussion magazine with Ruby D and Aussie Davis, Silver Star Profiles, 18 superlative and penetrating interviews with American celebrities about their lives and work, Botanic Man, 10 fascinating programs on plants, evolution, and mankind, on the record, 10 hard-hitting dramas from Canada, open mind, a new weekly discussion show, American perspectives, new documentaries on the peoples that make up America, faulty towers, a new series with the zanes of faulty towers resort hotel, chalk and cheese, an uproarious comedy series from England, to The Manor Born, another
laugh-filled British comedy series, I remember Harlem, an nostalgic look at a famous neighborhood from colonial times to the present, movie musicals, an exciting package of 26 classic Hollywood musicals, good in country, country western and bluegrass music the way you like it. These are some of the programs already purchased or in the process of being purchased, and we hope to have most of your preferences on the air this fall. And now I'd like to take advantage of being with you at this moment to report to you on what was perhaps the single most significant event in KPTS programming this year. I refer to the broadcast on Monday, May 12th of the special program, Death of a Princess. Both before and after the broadcast we received many many many calls and letters from you, the viewers of eight, both protesting and in favor of that program, and I'd like to give you a personal report on why we broadcast the show in the face of so many concerns by
you about the possibilities that might happen as a result of that broadcast. Well in the first place we put on Death of a Princess and we supported its broadcast because we felt that it was our obligation to you to provide you with a truthful, factual and substantively correct program about such an important area to the United States today, the Middle East. Furthermore we were very happy with the one hour broadcast after the program in which a live discussion of experts on Islamic religion, culture and politics as well as American foreign policy thoroughly discussed and presented many sides to the whole question. But perhaps even more important, the reason as to why we put that program on the air is because it is our obligation and our responsibility under the American Constitution to do exactly that. Failure to have broadcast the program would have perhaps posed an even greater risk to American security and American interests in that it would have perhaps set a precedent for foreign
intervention against the American right to free speech, one of our most precious freedoms of all. I'm very happy to say that the national press without exception from the New York Times to the Hutchinson News and the Wichita Eagle Beacon supported very strongly the right and the obligation of PBS and KPTS to broadcast that program. One final point, this was not just an isolated spectacular event, it's simply part of our overall commitment, which we've been pursuing long before this program went on the air to acquire programs and films that would help you. The viewers here in South Central Kansas learn more about this vital area of the world, both in terms of its religion, its culture, its politics, and its people, and we will continue to look for and acquire and present programs of this kind. Well, not all of channel eight's programming comes from national or even regional sources. We here at channel eight feel that is our responsibility to produce local programming designed to address local needs and interests.
We started this year with a continuation of our magazine Chronicle, perhaps you'll recall some of these segments from the Chronicle series. Chronicle, channel eight's My Weekly Public Affairs magazine. Karen Halverson is a former registered nurse and president of the Peace and Home Association. She conducts childbirth education classes in her home, Karen outlined the goals of peace and home. We have several goals, one is to support a bill which will legalize mid-wifery in Kansas. Another goal is to educate couples who want a family centered hospital experience, as well as couples who want a home birth experience. Redevelopment through Urban Renewal, a blessing or a curse.
These before and after slides show what the Urban Renewal Agency, URA, has accomplished in Wichita. They don't depict how an individual can be affected when property is condemned and taken through the power of eminent domain. Redevelopment may be a plus for the community as a whole, but for some it is a nightmare of bureaucratic hassling. The central issue is the power of the government to take private property for public use without the consent of the owner. This is eminent domain at its simplest. Well, one of the first contact is the relocation or the real estate officer called us and said that before we read it in the newspaper that the City Commission had designated this area for the administrative activities area center and that we would be taken out in so many words.
On almost any weekend you'll find racing enthusiasts arriving at Wichita's dirt track 81 Speedway. Some come to race. Many are there because they have a friend or relative who will compete that night. When a racing team changes tracks or travels, he takes his fans with him, creating a ready-made cheering section. Dirt tracks are more prevalent throughout the Midwest than the asphalt raceways. The reason seems to be cost. You can get into dirt racing at a fairly inexpensive level with a street stock car, a standard auto with all his glass removed. From there you can work your way at the ladder of higher-dollar autos to late model modifiers that may be custom-built cars that only vaguely resemble the production car that its exterior mimics. More than 50 people attended the Saturday morning public hearing held on the second floor of the Butler County Courthouse in El Dorado, Kansas. JCC Chairman Pete Locke, newly appointed commissioner Jane Roy, her testimony from almost two dozen witnesses during the three-hour hearing, most of whom urged the commission to deny the rate hike.
In October, our local production effort shifted gears from the magazine format of Chronicle to edited coverage of local events on Eyewitness 8. Eyewitness 8 brought to you a wide spectrum of events from speeches and hearings to musical and sporting events. You heard from such noted speakers as Dr. Walt Rostow, Senator Nancy Landon Casabum and Alger Hiss. You listened to great panther leader Maggie Cune and the former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Faradun Hoveeda. You attended public hearings before the Reno County Planning Commission, the National Commission on Alcohol Fuels, and the Kansas Corporation Commission. You were entertained by the music and performance of WSU Bandai and the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. In addition, you received a special report on the first and only presidential primary to be held in Kansas.
The 1980 Kansas presidential preference primary has begun across the state. Nine major candidates, a host of others, some 19 and all, are listed on the April 1st ballot. They are vying for the first vote of 37 Democratic and 32 Republican delegates to the respective national conventions. It's the state's first ever presidential preference primary, and at a cost of $1.1 million, it's also scheduled to be the last. In April, I witness a change its name and format to the public eye, and today the public eye has taken you to the grassroots conference on grass in Wellington, a town hall meeting with fourth district congressman Dan Glickman, and a seminar on international relations. A major new effort of local public affairs programming debuted on April 25th in the
form of Ask the Governor, a monthly hour of questions from the press and the public to Kansas Governor John Karla. A major question for viewers of the first program was the governor's veto of the death penalty. You're on the air with the governor. Okay, Governor Karla, I voted for you last election, I'd like you to know that, and part of the reason that, well, I agree with the spans you took, and one of the things you said that I supported was willingness to initiate the death penalty in Kansas. I agree with that too, although I'm not a birthday person, I think I know that I would have to be dead serious about putting a person to death, but I've seen things like this most recent incident here in Kansas where this girl was kidnapped, and she was put in a
bad situation and murdered, and I feel she is an example of Warren's death penalty, and I know there are other cases that are similar. Mr. Williams. I'm wondering how he would stand on that today having one supported to death penalty, and then to obtain after you were elected. Well, first of all, Mr. Simes, I've never supported the death penalty, and I think second, whether it's the death penalty or any law, you cannot take specific situations and try to write a law for that specific situation. You have to write something that will apply across the board, and the difficulty you run into the death penalty, for an example, and a couple of my major concerns, one, there's no way to correct a mistake, and two, we found no way with the death penalty to apply it equally.
Historically, it's the poor and the minorities who suffer capital punishment, and anytime you talk about a law, I think it's a concern to any responsible legislator or public official that a law or a program apply uniformly to all the people. Thank you, Mr. Simes. The next edition of Ask the Governor will be broadcast next Friday at 8 o'clock p.m. And of course, Channel 8's public affairs programming includes full live coverage of the Wichita City Commission meeting each Tuesday beginning at 9 o'clock in the morning. We joined Dr. Martin Bush at WSU's Edwin A. Ulrich Museum again this year, as he visited with special museum guests, Theodore Stamos, a pioneer abstract expressionist, and Edwin A. Ulrich himself, the man for whom the museum is named. And there's more local programming to come. Then Saturday, June 7th, Channel 8 will premiere a new weekly show called Down the Two But Eight.
The show will highlight programs on Channel 8's schedule for the coming week. It'll be light, informative, and very entertaining, and so we hope you'll watch the first program Saturday, June 7th at 8 o'clock p.m. Channel 8 also celebrated with you this year its 10th anniversary. Probably, public television is best known for its programming, and one program in particular. was the first program broadcast by KPTS, and set the tone for the whole of public broadcasting
industry with its quality. In 1969, The New York Times wrote, The new program called Sesame Street, understandably and deservedly has prompted cheers from the parents of preschool children. With high professional skill in using the techniques of television to woo youngsters into an awareness of the alphabet, numbers, healthy social relationships, lessons in logic and thoughtful behavior, the children's television workshop has embarked on a six month experiment that quite conceivably could have a larger influence on the home screen. All right, out of the way, L Gangway, Big Bird is here, out of the way, I'm going to be watching. I don't want to have to get me, you know.
Yeah, no more Mr. Nice Bird. Move away, I'm going to be first in line. Okay, Mr. Fluper. Whoopa. Whoopa. Listen, whatever it is, just give me a bag of bird seed and make it snappy. A bag of bird seed. Yeah. No, that wouldn't be a good idea. Why, I'd be acting like a bully doing that. But Sesame Street is just one of literally hundreds of hours of programming on Channel 8. Our affiliation with the Central Educational Network, the Eastern Educational Network, the PBS Satellite Interconnection, our own syndicated program purchases, provides a wide variety. Everything is they say for everyone. Okay.
Yes, Channel 8 signed on the air on January 8th, 2015. We signed on the air on January 5th, 1970, from its transmitter site East of Hutchinson. Over the past 10 years, we've lost the roof of the transmitter building to a tornado and to falling ice from the transmitter tower. And age has begun to take its toll. From the transmitter site in Hutchinson, here's Channel 8's Director of Engineering, Bob
Fulcerson, to report on our recent transmission problems and what has been done to rectify them. As Jim said, Channel 8 began broadcasting from this site 8.2 miles east of Hutchinson in January of 1970. All of their original equipment, which was part of that first broadcast in 1970, is still in place. All of it, that is, except for 700 feet of transmission line that was replaced in March of this year. As you members are no doubt aware, for the past year, Channel 8 has suffered numerous transmission outages due to faulty transmission line. The problem first appeared in March of 1979, in the form of a defective interconnector at the 600 foot level of the transmission line. Our transmission line is 700 feet long and is made up of 35 individual 20 foot sections. The transmission line itself has four basic parts, a copper interconductor, a tough
lawn insulator, spacer, connector, a copper outer conductor, and an exterior clamp to hold the sections together. The interconductor carries 22 to 24,000 watts of RF energy from the transmitter to the antenna at the top of our top. It is expected that moisture enter a connection point on the transmission line. This moisture caused a resistance build up to the flow of RF energy, and not ultimately led to the burnout of an interconductor connector similar to the one you see here. It took us nine hours to search out and replace that connector, and all indications were that the problem was solved, because we had no further trouble until October of 79. During that month more connectors began to burn out, and by the end of the month it was
decided to order 200 feet of interconductor connectors to replace part of the transmission line. That order was delivered to us in late December, meanwhile during December further problems developed and additional burnouts occurred, and the decision was reached to order the additional 500 feet of interconductor connectors to replace the total transmission line. The additional order was delivered in February of this year, and we announced plans that we would be off the air February 23rd and 24th to replace the old transmission line. The weather however didn't cooperate. We experienced wind chill factors of minus 30 degrees below zero, which made it impossible for the tar crew to work on the tar under such trying circumstances.
At that time it was delayed. At that time it was decided to delay the replacement of the transmission line until festival 80, our major membership drive of the air was complete. This time however the transmission line was unproperty, and we were knocked off the air once again on Friday March 14th. It soon became evident that nothing short of complete replacement would get us back on the air, so the tar crew was ordered in once again, and we were back on the air at full strength on the following Monday. We hope this explanation helps you to understand the nature of the problem and the steps that were taken to rectify, Jim. Thank you Bob for your report, and we hope that you can all see the improvement in channel
8 signal from the new transmission line. Well the transmission line is not all that's new around channel 8. We're about to have a new address too. For the past 10 years channel 8's offices and studios have been located at the corner of 3rd and Broadway in Wichita. During that time we've occupied most are all of the first floor of what used to be the old Derby building. We've arranged and rearranged the interior space several times in an attempt to suit our needs, but it has become more and more apparent that the building is simply inadequate as a broadcast facility. So continuing our ongoing search to upgrade our facilities and at the same time reduce operating costs, channel 8 began to look around. This spring we signed an agreement to purchase a building at the corner of 21st and Waco. As soon as the agreement was signed work began on remodeling the structure to serve the needs of a broadcast facility.
We've made special provision for our electronic equipment and that equipment will operate for the first time in an ideal controlled environment. The staff is currently making plans for the move which should be completed by June 30th. And now for some important information on corporate activities, here is President and General Manager Zoll Parento. Thank you Jim. First a report on next year's trustees, the nominating committee that was elected by the membership from the list of continuing trustees consisted of David Calvert and Jean Johnston and Harry Littlin from Wichita and a Yomke from North Newton and Harry Rutledge of Hutchinson. Ex officio members were Archbuth Chairman of the Board of Trustees and yours truly President and General Manager. Nominated and ratified by the board for three year terms are Tom Boshaw, Barbara Briggs, Barney Canceler, Bob Carroll, Charles Pearson, Darwin Roberts, and Cindy Rutherford all of Wichita, Shirley Hutchinson from Hutchinson, Deilo Smith from Hutchinson, and Norma Tucker from McPherson.
On the financial side, channel eight's income and sources for the first ten months of this fiscal year are as follows. 45% of our income was from members for $361,000, 24% was from federal sources, $193,000, 10% from program underwriting, $83,000, 5.5% from state grants of $45,000, and 15.5% from all other sources of $126,000 for a total of $808,000 in income for the first ten months, which is below income budget by about $20,000 or 2.5% year to date. Our membership growth in the past year has been somewhat disappointing. At the end of April a year ago, we had 15,384 members. In the past 12 months, we gained 5,177, but we lost 4,656 who did not renew. As of the end of this April, we have 15,905 members, slightly over 500 more members than last year.
Finally, we want to give special recognition and thanks to our chairman of the Board of Trustees for the past two years, Arch Booth, for his leadership and support during that period. We look forward to another year of serving you. We hope we will hear from you. Your comments are sincerely invited and eagerly received. Jim? Thank you, Zoll, and that brings to an end our 1979-80 report to members of 8. We hope you have enjoyed our review of this past broadcast year. For Channel 8, I'm Jim Lewis. Good afternoon.
Series
Members of 8
Episode
1980
Producing Organization
KPTS
Contributing Organization
PBS Kansas (Wichita, Kansas)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip-99939ba6b21
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip-99939ba6b21).
Description
Series Description
Annual report to the membership of the Sunflower Educational Television Corporation.
Created Date
1980-05-21
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Promo
News
Topics
Local Communities
News
Film and Television
Subjects
KPTS Annual Report
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:29:00.038
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: KPTS
AAPB Contributor Holdings
KPTS
Identifier: cpb-aacip-538baf4d024 (Filename)
Format: VHS
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Members of 8; 1980,” 1980-05-21, PBS Kansas, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-99939ba6b21.
MLA: “Members of 8; 1980.” 1980-05-21. PBS Kansas, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-99939ba6b21>.
APA: Members of 8; 1980. Boston, MA: PBS Kansas, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-99939ba6b21