KENW-TV 10th Anniversary Special

Hello there. This is K-E-N-W-T-V Channel 3, Portellus, New Mexico, beginning its very first broadcast day. Won't you join us? K-E-N-W-T-V is owned by Eastern New Mexico University and broadcasts on an assigned television frequency of Channel 3 with an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts. Transmitter located 15 miles north of Caprop, New Mexico. Video transmitter link, WAC 268, WQC 20. We invite you to join us this day and every day for the finest in public broadcasting

or the high-plane. From K-E-N-W-T-V 3, Portellus, New Mexico, broadcasting from the campus of Eastern New Mexico University. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is the beginning of a new public broadcast station for Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. All of us here are extremely excited about the prospects of this new station. We say it's a beginning because, though we've worked hard thus far to establish the station, the real challenge and the real art comes now and using this tremendous medium to benefit all of the people living in the Eastern part of New Mexico and West Texas. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome.

What you just saw was a videotape clip 10 years ago at 5 p.m. on September 1, 1974, K-E-N-W-T-V signed on with the logo that you saw on the screen, the windmill, with high hopes for creating a fine regional public television station. I'm Duane Ryan, Director of Broadcasting for Eastern New Mexico University and I welcome you here this evening to commemorate the 10th anniversary of K-E-N-W-T-V and the 5th anniversary of K-E-N-W-F-M. We welcome those of you in the television audience and we're grateful to have people who have come to the station this night to help us celebrate the 10th anniversary and 5th anniversary. With me tonight, President Robert Mathini and Gary Robbins, and we'll be talking to those gentlemen in just a moment. Lots of people help make the station a reality and continue to make it a reality that serves

what we hope to be the needs of people here on the high plains of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. One of, in 1973, when we were attempting to get funding for the station, Harold Reynolds, who was our congressman in Washington, was one of the ones instrumental in getting the federal grant that made this station possible. We journeyed a few weeks ago to Lovington and Don Chris and Mary Thompson took a camera down there to interview Harold Reynolds Widow, Dorothy Reynolds. This is what she had to say about public television. I'm Dorothy Reynolds and it's indeed a pleasure for me to be with you at this time in celebration of this very eventful happening that took place 10 years ago. And I'm also pleased to say I was here 10 years ago with my husband. In fact, when this bill came up before the state legislature, it's the only bill I ever

lobbied for and I know that if Harold were here today, he'd say he's happy that he had a small part in it. I'm happy to say that the next thing you will see is the dedication tape that Harold made 10 years ago. Thank you, Dr. Meister. Let me say that the work that I did was just one of many. You had local legislators from this area that was working very hard to make this a reality. I even had my wife and others that was in Santa Fe helping to do the work to get the appropriations from a state level because the federal government had already made a commitment. And I'll say that Senator Aubrey Dunn and Senator Bob Wood and others did their homework and we were just happy to do it and, you know, coming from Lovington, I've said for many years that Southeast New Mexico is normally forgotten and neglected.

But this, I believe, will be real fine for all of the citizens of Southeast New Mexico and also parts of West Texas and I'm just happy to have played a part in it, Dr. Meister. We're grateful to everyone, to you out there who've made our first 10 years very successful to all of the people in businesses and government and the University administration both 10 years ago and through the years who have continued to support public television and make it what it is today on the high plains and we'll get to speaking with Dr. Mathini in just a few moments. We would like to reminisce, though, we call this program 10 years, seeing as believing. And we'd like to look backwards at some of the programs that were produced in the early days. Now, this is just a small sampling. There's lots of them we didn't have time to include. But we thought we'd like to go back down memory lane and look at some of the early Channel 3 television programs.

Billy, the kid was a kind of a Robin Hood to most of the Spanish-speaking people in this area. The part I play, my grandmother was about 12 years old when she, during the Lincoln County War, there was so much fighting and her father, Hamilton Mills, the sheriff, had abandoned them and he had left the country. It had been so hard. He married a Mexican, which in those days was a no-no. This country was settled the wrong way, I think. Brady, then, and his deputy George Brestole started down the street to the courthouse and the kid was hiding behind a wall here. And when they got right out here, even with the courthouse, the kid shot both of them from the back. And my family, and the kids, you know, he pissed off all of them before returning to

that way today. And now our guest is Jaguar's. I want to thank all of you, gentlemen, for being here. It's interesting I could go on talking to you for a long time. I want to say that I did take classes under Dr. Williamson. I think that it's a tremendous advantage for us to have had him here at Eastern Mexico University. I think he's probably one of the best things that ever happened to the University. We're proud to have had him associated with us here and we are proud to have him still associated with us in the terms that he is. We wish him a lot of luck in the future,

hope that his new novel is out soon, so that I have a chance to read it. Thank you very much for watching. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Behind me is Victoria O'Peak, a mountain that's surrounded with legend, mystery.

They say there's a lot of gold under there and the people have certainly shown up to see if it's there. Norman Scott, the leader of Expeditions Unlimited, has come with advanced electronic equipment to look inside the mountain with him, have come droves of other claimants who say it's their gold and following all of them has been scores of reporters. At the end of 10 days, we're going to see if there's gold in them hills. Among the many programs Comfire has undertaken is one called Red Flag Alert. A plan established for the Ruidoso area through Comfire and the Assistive Court Group, New Mexico Division of Forestry, the USDA Forest Service, the Ruidoso Fire Department, and the Benito Volunteer Fire Department. Watch is the first stage of the Red Flag Plan.

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque continually observes developing climactic conditions. The forecasts which are made with the observed data are screened for several significant factors. These are increases in the winds, decreases in the relative humidity, and rising temperatures. Those are clips from some early programs that we did. First was Lincoln, the people in the pageant, a story about Billy the Kid from the Capitan area. A tribute to Jack Williamson, an emeritus professor here at the University. I'm alive and it's a real program that was done for rehabilitation in Roswell, the Operation Gold Finder, and finally the Red Flag Alert. The thing I think you can see from all of those clips, some of the film was a little scratchy.

We went from the days of film really into where everything now is shot on videotape. But what you can see is that those programs are about people and programs in our own area, and that's what we believe Channel 3 should be about, producing unique things for the people of our service area. I'd like to visit now just briefly, because any program that continues to be successful has to be helped from the top, and the top here at Eastern Mexico University at the present time is Dr. Muthini. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Duane. Channel 3 is a public service arm of the University as is KENWFM, and the new station we'll talk about a little later to be built at Mall Jamar, later this year. Can you tell us in your opinion how the Broadcast Center fits into the total service scheme of the University? I certainly can. I appreciate the opportunity to come and be here tonight primarily, because first I'd like to congratulate you and your staff on the 10th anniversary,

certainly appropriate, the 50th anniversary of the University. And I'm pleased to be able to say to you and your staff that this is from my perspective the best program in the country. I think that that's due to your leadership as director. You've built this from virtually nothing, and I remember that, because I was watching it in the early days as a member of the faculty. And it's a very significant thing, not only to the University, but also to the surrounding country, Eastern of Mexico University in particular, has benefited from KENW, because it's a workshop for our students. They get academic as well as technical training here. They have the opportunity to work in your lab in such a way that when they leave here, it's possible for them to go directly into very good jobs, and we have, as you know, many of our students have gone to very good jobs throughout the country.

And so that reputation of excellence is one that we appreciate, Duane, and I want you to know that and your staff to know it, because you've hired very good people, very professional people to help you with the station. I think the future of KENW is obviously very bright. It seems to me that things are coming together very well, with the building of the new FM tower, which you indicated we'd talk about a little bit later. It seems to me that our program in MASSCOM and radio are certainly on the increase, and so it looks excellent. With the help of our legislative contingent, and the good people out there who have been very supportive and generous with this program, we're starting to look forward to improving and continuing the excellence that you established here. Well, thank you for that kind words, and for the nice lead-in to our next guest seated by you. It does take a great deal of support

from the legislature to make this program go. Just for everybody's information, we get about 50% of our support from the state of New Mexico as a line item from the legislature, and we're very grateful to them for that. It can be proud of the support that they give public broadcasting, though we may be down low in per capita income, we're very near the top of the list when it comes to support that public television receives on a per capita basis from state government. Our guest with us today is Gary Robbins, and he's been a very fine friend of the station over the years. Gary, we appreciate you're taking the time to come this afternoon. Thank you. That's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. And Dr. Matini mentioned the staff. We're very, I'm, it's like a family, and I'm very proud of each and every one of them. We started with about 10 people on the staff in 1974, and all of those 10 people,

seven of them are still with us today, and we appreciate their hard work and dedication, and those who came after, we have about 25 full-time people working at the broadcast center now in both KENWFM and TV, and we need to remember it is the fifth anniversary of KENW Radio, so we're celebrating two particular events today. I also would like to mention just briefly in recapitulating the history of the program here, in 1968, October 1st. It doesn't fit in with the September date, but October 1st of 1968. We started broadcasting with a small 10 watt FM station from what we called the tower room of the administration building. It was really the attic, but we felt that the tower room was much more glamorous, and we called it the tower room of the administration building. At the same time, we went on cable from about five every evening until nine on the Portellus cable in glorious black and white. Monday through Friday,

we presented programs that one was a focus on Eastern type of program, and one was called the Princess and the Magic Mirror, a daily 15-minute program, done by the students here at the university. From that, we've grown, of course, in 74, the television station came along, and at that time, we were able to move into broadcast journalism in a much bigger way than we ever could afford to before, because our budget in 1968 was $2,500. The university gave us each and every year. That's what we built the entire 10 watt station on. We had a lot of donations from radio stations around the state, particularly Darrell Burns at Los Alamos was a very fine contributor and helpful person, and the wheel seems to turn in circles. Darrell Burns now has purchased the commercial station here in Portellus, so he's been a good friend of the station for many years.

I have KICA, KCLB, donated equipment in the early days, and we certainly appreciate them for that. In 74, though, we were able finally to have a budget. It was $125,000, and after $2,500, $125,000, we just couldn't imagine ever needing anything more than that. And over the years, we'd like to see you to see how our news program, which we're very proud of, because this is where students get real experience in broadcast journalism, how it's kind of changed its look over the years. We have a clip now to show you. This was our early set. The boxes look little boxy, and that's kind of what they were, just boxes. This was the High Plains report. Lauren Nan Carroll, the man that was sitting there on the right, is currently anchoring a newscast in San Diego, California doing very well. And Dr. Bradshaw joined us on the academic side.

John Ballas, by the way, was our first news director, and our second news director is the current news director, Gary Keishi. He's the one that trains the students over 40 different students, as you can see, even in, you can see all those names. 40 different students help produce each one of these newscasts. Seated on the left is Dr. Bradshaw, and Scott Staten is on the right. That was the current set that was used last year. We're proud of the work they do. We have lots of people working all over the country, not only in news, but in advertising agencies and public relations firms in industry, lots of industry using training films and public relation pieces. We'd like to just, we mentioned a moment ago, that it was the fifth anniversary of KENWFM, and we were going to simulcast this program with the FM station, but we were right at this moment

in the middle of Prairie Home Companion. And Prairie Home Companion is not a program we felt that we could interrupt to bring this little simulcast. So the folks listening, the FM station right now are listening to Prairie Home Companion, but we would like to show you what it looked like five years ago when we signed KENWFM on the air on September 1st of 1979. I guess we're going to go. We're coming to you live from KENWTV in Portalis, New Mexico, and this is a very special occasion for us. We're celebrating two events. One five years old is KENWTV. This is coming up at 5 p.m., in just a few moments. And we're also going to put on KENWFM in just a few moments. In fact, the President, President Armstrong of Eastern New Mexico University and our chief engineer, Director of Broadcasting Larry Ulstrom, are standing by in the transmitter room and they will turn the transmitter on at five o'clock

for the FM station. We welcome you here who are in the audience and we also welcome those of you who are joining us on television. If you turn your FM set on to 89.5, if you live in Clovis and Portalis, you can hear us on radio. We go to the transmitter room for the activation of KENWFM. This is KENWFM, Portalis, New Mexico, public radio for the high planes, beginning its very first broadcast day. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, both in the television and radio audience. That was the scene some five years ago. We had hoped, I had hoped, and many of us had hoped, that we could turn on the Malajamar station that we told you we'd talk about a little later in the program. But it looks like it's going to be later this year

before we can pull that all together. But that will enable those of you living in the Roswell Hobbes, Artisia Carlsbad, Loveington, Jowl, Hagerman, all those areas down south of us in our television viewing area to receive public radio for the first time, from a new station that we haven't picked the target date yet because we've signed on two stations. Well, three, if you count the 10 watt station, and we've been able to hit our target date every single time, so we don't want to spoil our record. So we haven't set a date yet. But we think that it will be near the end of the year and we'll be letting you know about that before too long. That will enable you to listen to Simon Castes from KENWTV and of course find classical music, as well as public affairs from National Public Radio and the program that's on right now, a Prairie Home Companion. In talking about expansion, the year after we put the radio station on the air in September of 1980,

we were preparing to put three translators on the air. One in Carlsbad, one in Ragland, and one in Tukum Carey. A translator picks up a television signal off the air and retransmit it on a higher frequency. In the case of the Carlsbad translator, I believe I may get these wrong, but I think it's 69 down in Carlsbad, 65 at Ragland and 63, channel 63. I may have those reversed. Nevertheless, the Ragland signal kind of leapfrogs it onto Tukum Carey Mountain. And we have some footage here. We had to put the one on Tukum Carey Mountain up with a helicopter. So it's right up on top of the mountain, where the old FAA tower was with the light on it. There you see this is right on top of Tukum Carey Mountain. We strapped the translator there. That's the rack strapped to the side of the helicopter. We strapped it on down the low

and then lifted it up to the top. This made the people in Carlsbad for the first time to be able to pick up our signal because they're kind of down in the valley. And the one up in Tukum Carey on top of the mountain made it possible for us to be seen there for the first time. Just a little skiff of snow was on the top of the mountain. I remember that day. It's very pretty up there. It's flat. It makes you think that you're on flat land when you get to the top. It's a very, very steep climb up. It takes us about half an hour to 45 minutes to climb at the top. The young girl a little faster than that. So that's what it looked like in 1980 when we put the translators

on the air. We're looking forward during this next ten years for K&W TV and five years for K&W FM to a new FM station, KMTH, which will be coming to you. The station will be located just up on the cap rock above the town of Malgemar, New Mexico. The transmitter will be located on a 600-foot tower or rather the antenna on a 600-foot tower with the transmitter at the base of it. Our television transmitter for those of you who live in the portals area, a lot of people say I live right next to the station and I can't even pick up the signal. Well, our transmitting station is actually 46 miles to the southwest. We have a thousand-foot tower there with an 88-foot antenna on top of that, so we cover a wide area. We look forward with great anticipation to the next years of service. Thanks for all your help. I particularly would like to thank Keith Cobb,

who is directing this program today in Don Chris, who dug up all the footage for their help. Keith is going to be moving on to a new job, but he was one of the people who started with us at Los Alamos. We'll miss him. He's done a fine job, and we thank him. As I thank all of the staff, as I thank you for your support, whether you're a private individual or a business person, thank you for helping support public television. Thank you very much, Dr. Muthini, on behalf of all of us here at the Broadcast Center for the All You Do For Us at the University. And thank you, Mr. Robbins, Gary, for coming to be with us. Thank you, and we look forward to the next 10 years with great anticipation. The following scenes are from some other, what we consider to be rather spectacular shots that have been taken over the years by the cameras of KENW TV, public television for the high planes of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas coming to you from the Broadcast Center at Eastern New Mexico University in Portalos, New Mexico.

Thank you, Dr. Muthini. Thank you, Dr. Muthini. Thank you, Dr. Muthini. Right. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Muthini. Hello, I'm Roy Underhill, and welcome to the Woodwright Shop. Let's eye on how it is. It's nothing harder in life than trying to get along without a good can't hook and a throw that you can depend on. Now, these are relatively simple blacksmithing jobs. There's something, well, we could do it right here in the shop, but let's take a bit.