WUNC Goodmon Building Dedication

Good afternoon. I think somebody got that good afternoon. Thanks to all of you for coming out on this absolutely glorious evening. We were worried about the weather, but it's just as beautiful and evening as you can possibly imagine. Before we begin our formal comments, I would like to extend greetings from two families that were not able to join us this evening. The first Kevin and his wife Susan send their greetings from Arizona where Susan is making an important presentation to a national conference on pain management. Second Ron Strom, the chair of the WNC Capital Campaign, sends his thanks to all of you who joined with him to make this building possible. One is with his family on a long planned vacation, but he wants you to know that he and his family are with us in spirit this evening.

Now for the formal part of tonight's ceremony, I'm honored to introduce to you Richard T. Stick Williams representing the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. Thank you Bill and thank you and you probably shouldn't clamp for me until you hear me speak. That's always a good warning for folks. But on behalf of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am honored to welcome all of you to this dedication service for such a fine new facility and to pay tribute to an outstanding public radio station and of course, most of all, to express our gratitude to Jim Goodman for his dedication to public service broadcasting and for his general support of WNC. First of all, though, I get the opportunity to make a few introductions. So if there are any of these members in the audience, I would greatly appreciate it if

you would stand and be recognized. Fellow members of the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, so I knew it. I knew once they heard I was speaking, they wouldn't show up. Didn't want to be embarrassed. Now I'll represent them all, that is scared of living daylights out of them. Members of WNC's administrative board, stand and be recognized. Raleigh? Raleigh's carrying the banner. Members of WNC's Community Advisory Council, if you would stand and be recognized. I know members of the AJ Fletcher Foundation, if you would stand and be recognized. Great. Thank you. You will hear a lot this afternoon about public service.

We know that UNC Chapel Hill was the first public university in the world, but I think that a lot of people forget the fact that public service is a significant part of the mission of this university in addition to education and research. Our late Chancellor, Michael Hooker, spoke often in that length about the importance of public service and about our mission to serve all of the people of this great state of North Carolina. WNC is the audible expression of this university's commitment to public service. Each week nearly 200,000 people listen to WNC, the location of the station audience stretches from the outer banks to Winston-Salem from South Hill, Virginia to the San Hills of North Carolina, so many different communities, so many different challenges, so many different people listening to WNC for entertainment, insight, analysis, education, and even yes,

those crazy card talk guys for entertainment. I hope you will join with me and all the members of the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees in thanking all of the UNC staff and volunteers, past and present, and I know that there are a number of volunteers here, and I have seen the impact on this station of a dedicated committee group of volunteers, and I hope you will join me in thanking them. They have joined with the station staff to help this university fulfill this mission of public service. Now, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Bill McCoy, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and if you will allow me to take one liberty, Bill McCoy stepped in at two critical junctures in the life of this university.

He brought tremendous talent, dedication, commitment, and it took a lot of guts if you will allow me to use that terminology to step in when he did to provide the leadership in the direction, and wherewithal to make certain that this great university didn't skip a beat during the time that we searched for permanent chancellor, so Chancellor McCoy. Thank you, thank you, stick, for those very generous comments. It's great to be with you tonight. I'm just pleased to be with all of you as we dedicate this building on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, how proud we are of WNC, how proud we are. Let me just make one comment about my tire. Someone indicated that I'm dressed this way because of a tight schedule, and I want you to know that's not true.

I'm dressed this way because I knew how important this event is, and I want to put an exclamation point on it, but I do want to thank all of you and all of the other thousands who made contributions to WNC's capital campaign. I am particularly pleased that we're dedicating this building in honor of James F. Goodman, Public Service and Broadcasting, or Jim Goodman's Birthright. As President and CEO of Capital Broadcasting, Jim has set a standard of public service which few, if any, broadcasters can match. W-R-A-L-T-V is widely regarded as one of the final stations for local television news anywhere in the country. A station that has avoided the if it bleeds, it leads formula, opting instead to provide a substantial local public service, and for that we're most appreciative. This dedication then to public service comes directly from Jim Goodman, at a time when

other commercial broadcasters have lobbied Congress to relax public service requirements for stations, Jim Goodman has called for public service requirements to be increased. At a time when other commercial broadcasters are slashing the budgets of local news operations, Jim Goodman is expanding his station's commitment to local news and public affairs. Jim Goodman's dedication to public service journalism is underscored by his election to the UNC Journalism School Hall of Fame. Jim has been a pioneer in the digital broadcasting revolution in what a big event that really is. W-R-A-L was the first television station in the country to broadcast using the new digital transmission technology. At a time when other broadcasters were unwilling to accept the new digital technology, Jim embraced it, realizing that the digital revolution would profoundly affect the way Americans receive

their news, their information, and their entertainment. One testament of Jim's leadership in new technology is that no less an authority than the magazine broadcasting and cable, the leading industry publication named Jim V. Digital Pioneer. Finally, Jim has been a loyal and generous supporter of public broadcasting and of this university. Jim's generous support of the UNC Center for Public Television made it possible for UNC TV to move into its new facility several years ago. Jim has been a strong advocate for state funding to assist public television in making the transition to digital transmission. You may have read some of Jim's recent editorials on the subject in the News and Observer. Jim has also been a generous supporter of UNC Chapel Hill's Music Department, the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the Communications Studies Department, and of

course W-U-N-C. Jim has also supported other public radio stations throughout the state. Throughout the AJ Fletcher Foundation, Jim has supported WCPE in Wake Forest, W-D-A-V and Davidson, Western Carolinas, Public Radio and Asheville, and Gateway Public Radio in Rocky Mountain. I personally am honored to dedicate this building to Jim in Jim Government's name, knowing that in doing so we will commit this station and this university to higher levels of public service for generations to come. Now, by the power vested in me, by the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, I hereby dedicate the James F. Goodman Public Radio Building. Let's give a big round of applause. Now, I think you see how much we all appreciate you, Jim. So if you will come back up here, we would like you to receive a small token of W-U-N-C

and all of our appreciation for your generous leadership. That doesn't look like a digital radio. No, it is not. Oh, how much. That's great. This is an operational, it's a replica of a 1939 Crosley Ruby vintage radio, and it is tunable. Now we just break it and keep it just in 91.5, but I think you might be able to pick up 101.5 or some other station as well. And we have one other thing. Oh, really? Our next presentation is, as W-U-N-C is a public radio station, we didn't really know what we could get that Jim couldn't get on his own.

So what we did was we have a W-U-N-C t-shirt signed by all the W-U-N-C staff, and we hope that this will be a set of small tokens of our appreciation for all you've done for us. We appreciate it. Thank you. This is fun. There's one other thing that Bill Davis told me I could do in honor of this event, and that is change one program in the schedule one day. So tomorrow, the people's pharmacy will be on at 9 o'clock when it should be on. Okay. Just one day.

I know. I'll stay out of programming. There are two things I want to mention about public broadcasting that I think are really important. Remember that we are free over the air broadcasting. You don't have to get a satellite dish, you don't have to subscribe to cable. All you have to do is get a radio and you get free over the air service. And the second thing that I think is really important is that we're local. That this radio station is run by people who live here and work here in this community and it's run for us and our community and our state. I used to really like George Will, until I read a column that he had. You might have seen it about a month or so ago in which he said there shouldn't be any funding, shouldn't be any federal funding for public broadcasting. He was talking about television, but he was talking about public broadcasting.

And he said because we don't need to do that because we have the arts and entertainment and we have the history channel and we have all these cable channels so we don't need public broadcasting. And I thought about that, you know, he doesn't get it. And he doesn't understand that the essential, the most fundamental thing about what we are is that we're local. We're local broadcasting on the history channel, local programming on arts and entertainment. The key here is that our system of broadcasting, we have all of these stations, all of the country that are operated locally. And I think the key to our remaining successful is our emphasis on local programming. So I'm looking for a lot of great local programming out of this great studio facility and back to the grades, I'm going to mention I really love public broadcasting.

I think it's important that I was trying to think of how I could describe how I feel about it. And I thought back to people's pharmacy program in which they had a hearing expert who mentioned that today's 25-year-old has the hearing of a 65-year-old person 25 years ago because of all the noise. Because of all the noise and that noise is something we worry about in broadcasting. We talk about the signal to noise ratio, we talk about how strong is our signal relative to the noise that's out there. And our commercial media and our commercial driven society has a very low signal to noise ratio, a whole lot more noise than signal, a whole lot more noise than signal. Public radio has a very high signal to noise ratio.

There's a lot of meaning there, there's a lot of signal, there's a lot of information that you can use. That it celebrates our diversity, it celebrates our community, and it's quiet. It's not noisy. So I'm looking forward to a lot of high signal to noise, local programming from the James F. Goodman, public radio building here, Bill. We'll try to be less noisy and more signal, but just in closing, I have a few remarks. And a couple of weeks ago, I ran into an old friend who I hadn't seen in more than a year.

And this guy said, you know, Bill, I think you've grown in the past year or so. And I was kind of puzzled by this, I hadn't done it, if anything I've gotten smaller. And then it suddenly occurred to me that now that I'm over in the Goodman building, I don't have to duck my head and walk around like, you know, I gore. And you don't have to worry about bumping my head in the basement of Swain Hall. And so consequently, my posture has improved. And Jim, I just want you to know my mom cannot thank you enough. So she was after me for years about that. But actually there is one way that I think all of the WNC staff can thank you, Jim, and all of the thousands of others who made it possible to build this building. And that is to actually improve the quality of the programs and services that we provide

to the communities that we reach. Back was right, you've heard a lot about public services this evening, and I'm going to give you a little bit more. The WNC has a rich tradition of public service. As a college station in the 1950s and 60s, WNC nurtured such broadcasting talents as Carl Castle and Charles Coralt. When the station came back on the air in 1976 as a professionally staff station, three men set it on its current course as a public service of this great university. And I'd like to recognize those three here tonight. One is here. The other two unfortunately could not make it. They are Bill Little, Raleigh Tillman, and Wesley Wallace. In the age before Federal Express, Bill Little actually drove the FCC application up to Washington because if we mailed it, we weren't going to meet the deadline.

So he drove it up to Washington, and we were able to get the station on as 100,000 watt station and then begin to provide the service that has grown into WNC today. But these men recognize that as a public service, WNC's program schedule would change as the needs of the communities changed. They realize that WNC was not a news station, not a classical music station, not any other kind of format-specific station. Rather WNC was, is, and always will be, a public service. And this means that schedules will change, that certain programs will come and go. And that to paraphrase Heracolitis, you can never listen to WNC twice. Because the station has changed and because you have changed, just by listening to it. Now, WNC, since those three sort of set the foundation, has been fortunate that virtually everyone who worked at the station has changed it for the better.

Some like Craig Curtis, Sheila Ru, Adam Hochberg, Melinda Pankava, and Dean Olscher have continued their good work at National Public Radio and at other public radio stations around the country. Here's like Jean Phillips, Shirley Robinson, and Diane Toomey have continued to support public radio even as their careers have taken them in new directions. Some like Don Trap and Carol Bornoens are no longer with us. But fortunately, many of them are here tonight, with us tonight, and at this point, I would like all the WNC staffers present and past to stand and be recognized. It's difficult to single out one person in such a talented and hard working group. But I would like to do that at this point and David Wright, if you could just come forward a little bit.

Now, Mr. Goodman, this building may have your name on it, but it literally has David's soul in it. As this building was being constructed, David had a little camper out on the back where he slept at night, not only through rain, et cetera, but through, I think, several calls from his wife to a divorce attorney. But he was there throughout the process. I think they had to pour the footings twice or three times, just twice, because they didn't measure up to his standard of excellence. But David, thank you for making this building what it is. Now you might have noticed that the WNC staff is awfully young.

When I started here more than a decade ago, I had a lot more hair and a lot less gray. But not so anymore, but the WNC staff here, most of them, are at the very beginnings of their careers. And they're going to improve the station and they're going to change the station in ways that I haven't begun to imagine that any of you, I don't think, have begun to imagine and the kids over in the daycare center over here are going to enjoy in years to come. So WNC will continue to change as the needs of the communities change, but that change will always be informed by this imperative, that we will produce and broadcast higher quality programs that provide higher levels of public service to more citizens throughout the state of North Carolina. In doing so, we will stay true to the course set by Mr. Little Tillman and Wallace. We will honor the name of James F. Goodman and his family.

And we will help the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fulfill its mission of public service in this new millennium. Members of the Board of Trustees, Chancellor McCoy, Mr. Goodman, and all of you here present on behalf of WNC staff, I thank you for your generous support of WNC and for your commitment to public service. Now I would like to invite you all to come back in to tour the station for those of you who haven't had the opportunity. I would also like for you to accept the invitation tomorrow we're having an open house for all of the public that will run from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. and we will have station tours, book readings, and even a performance by Mr. Rainbow the Crown, who by the way is a WNC donor. Finally, one note of local public service, I hope that all of you will listen and contribute this Sunday as WNC will join with radio and television stations throughout the state

to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Floyd. Your generosity has helped build this building and your generosity will help those communities recover and rebuild themselves. Thank you very much.