Celebrating 50 Years
Written and compiled by Scott Gowans, WOSU.TV
Fifty years of being on the air calls for a celebration — or perhaps just a moment to catch our breath, look back, and say, “How did we last this long?”
Nothing about television is easy. The struggle is more than the tangle of cables that wind behind the sets like black linguini; it is more than keeping track of the banks of flashing lights in the control room, like those on a spaceship in a bad science-fiction movie. And it is much more than asking for funds, adjusting programming schedules to keep viewers tuned in, or even fighting for survival amidst waves of unfriendly political wrangling.
No. The struggle is about dealing with roofers whose noisy machinery competes with our live on-air fundraisers, making it sound as though whale songs are piped in as background music.
It is about preparing for our first on-air auction twenty-some years ago, having two weeks of run-throughs so that the graphics people, master-control technicians, camera people, audio people, and dozens of on-air personalities would know what would happen every step of the way, only to suffer a switch malfunction during the first hour of auction that muted all of the sound.
Television is about missed time cues, lights that explode, animals that act too naturally, and a production van that caught fire hours before a production was to begin. Despite all of the unplanned, the unwanted, and the unknown, the television staff at WOSU forged on. They learned from mistakes, shrugged off problems that couldn’t be corrected, and learned to laugh.
The station’s journey is strewn with high points. Though it has faced constant budget pressures, WOSU has frequently been at the forefront of technological innovations. In 1958, we were among the first UHF stations in Ohio; we were the first station in Columbus to provide closed-captioning for our hearing-impaired viewers, and in 1973, WOSU-TV became the first broadcast operation in Columbus to produce stereo programming.
Ohio’s first videotape recorder was purchased by WOSU in 1959, through a grant from the Ford Foundation. In 1993, DVS (Descriptive Video Service) made selected public-television programs accessible to those with visual impairments; WOSU-TV was the only local station to offer DVS service at the time.
These wonders all sprouted from humble beginnings, in a modest building off of North Star Road; the antenna stood in a farm field. TV34’s 10-kilowatt signal could be received only within a 42-mile radius of the station, and then only if households had installed UHF converters in their sets. At the time of sign-on, perhaps 3,000 homes in WOSU’s viewing area were so equipped.
Both the WOSU radio stations and the television station were founded on lofty principles. In his opening remarks for the initial WOSU-TV broadcast February 20, 1956, Ohio State University Vice President Frederic Heimberger predicted that “from the seed that is planted here today there will surely come growth and productivity beyond our ability to foretell.”
And consider these words, from an editorial in the WOSU Program Bulletin, published in 1945: “Only by putting to worthy use the communication developments science has produced can a university hope to give leadership to a great people.”
While these sentiments are both sincere and insightful, they ignore the fact that before television could be expected to bring enlightenment and leadership to the masses, it first had to learn what it was meant to do. This new medium would suffer its share of growing pains.
For instance, the station, under full operating control of The Ohio State University, was not broadcasting at the frequency it had originally requested. In the early days of television, light years before cable television made the question of frequency moot, televisions were chiefly programmed to receive VHF (Very High Frequency) networks, those on the lower end of the dial. WOSU originally requested VHF channel 12, in its permit request submitted to the FCC July 8, 1950. It was turned down.
We tried again, resubmitting a permit in November 1951 that stated numerous reasons why it was important that channel 12 should be allotted — mostly for education purposes. The next April, the FCC responded, approving a station, but at UHF channel 34, not VHF 12.
By the time television signed on, WOSU’s AM station had been on the air for over 35 years. In March 1920, it began as an experimental station called 8XL. In April 1922, the call letters WEAO (Willing, Energetic, Athletic Ohio) were assigned to the station, and its power was raised to 100 watts, making it the first radio station in Columbus. Recorded music, news segments, and lots of sports broadcasting, including play-by-play coverage of Buckeye football games, filled the schedule. On Sept.1, 1933, WEAO became WOSU-AM. In addition to sports, the station began broadcasting courses for students unable to live on campus during the Depression. This approach was a resounding success, with more than 1,000 students enrolling for the first quarter.
In the 1950s, with PBS still over a decade away, original programming for television was scarce. The television history of WOSU can be roughly divided into two major eras: pre-CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and post-CPB. In the “post” era, programming supplied by the PBS yielded an impressive list of shows with staying power. Early efforts included Black Journal (now, Tony Brown’s Journal) and Washington Week in Review, in 1967; Sesame Street in 1969; and Masterpiece Theatre in 1971.
Before PBS, however, most of the programming on WOSU-TV was aimed at educational broadcasting. At first, Ohio State professors were reluctant to use television in their classrooms, allowing only one freshman mathematics class to use an open-circuit system, in 1958. By 1962, however, demand had increased to the point that the university installed a multi-channel, closed-circuit system. Over 27,000 students were learning through this system in the 1967-68 academic year.
On November 7, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, giving a boost to WOSU-TV and all educational stations across the country. The legislation was intended to create and fund “a strong and active nationwide alternative to commercial broadcasting.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was formed in 1968, and funding was provided for educational stations such as WOSU.
Sports continued to provide unique programming opportunities. WOSU’s first color broadcast was the 1968 Ohio State vs. Michigan football game. Few televisions at the time were capable of receiving a UHF signal, so announcements that the station would show the game set off a flurry of sales of UHF converters.
WOSU-TV played a role on the OSU campus during the riots and demonstrations of April/May 1970. Closed-circuit discussions between students, faculty, and administrators defused some tension, but on April 29, 1970, a group known as the Ad-Hoc Committee for Student Rights issued a list of 11 demands, which were turned down flat. The shootings at Kent State on May 4 further escalated tensions, prompting OSU President Novice Fawcett to use WOSU on May 6, 1970, to announce the closing of the university. TV34 signed off the air later that day, not to return until May 19.
In 1972, WOSU-TV joined the radio stations (WOSU-FM went on the air for the first time Dec. 13, 1949) by relocating to the Fawcett Center. The new facility was fully equipped for color transmission and featured two production studios, both larger than those at the station’s original location. In addition to better facilities, a new tower and transmitter allowed WOSU to reach a radius of 60 miles, serving 24 counties and two million people. WOSU-TV’s broadcast community grew in 1974 with the addition of WPBO-TV in Portsmouth.
The 1980s saw WOSU’s first live auction, which raised more than $200,000, and a professional exchange program with the Beijing Broadcasting Institute in the People’s Republic of China. But, perhaps most important, WOSU stopped simply covering events and started creating them.
Blacks and the Constitution was honored in 1987 when the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution acquired the award-winning production for its permanent archives. According to Ed Clay, who had become television’s station manager in 1981, “It was the first time we put together a special that wasn’t just coverage of an event.”
A string of station-produced documentaries and specials soon followed, including The Front Porch President (1988), on Warren G. Harding; Son of Heaven (1990), about the Chinese art exhibition; House of Glass (1992), on Franklin Park Conservatory; the four-part Jazz Voices (1996), about Ohio musicians; the 11-part Voices from the Village (1995), with black leaders talking about minority issues; Echoes Across the Oval (1996), a history of Ohio State; The Man Who Had Everything (1998), a look at the life of Louis Bromfield; The Birth of Ohio Stadium (1999); and Many Happy Returns to Lazarus (2004).
Crammed into this busy schedule were our regular productions: In the Know, Viewpoint, ArtZine, Auction34, teleconferences, smaller documentaries, uplinks and downlinks, sundry specials, and more pledge drives than we care to think about.
The station signed on for digital transmission January 22, 2004, and our new facility at COSI Columbus will open in 2006. (See Tom Rieland’s article more about the station’s future.)
Edward R. Murrow, born in 1908, was a revolutionary figure in radio and television, whose crusades against what he saw as wrong made sponsors queasy and gave his supervisors stomachaches. “I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald,” he reported on the radio in 1945. “I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry.”
Murrow understood better than most that televison, though still in its infancy, was capable of profound things, but only if certain conditions were met. One: Producers had to recognize its power and use it wisely; two: Corporate interests, known in the trade as advertisers, had to be pushed aside for the sake of content; and three: Televison had to demand that its audience be active watchers. “This instrument can teach,” he said, “it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”
For his impassioned rhetoric, especially during Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Red hunt, Murrow was evicted from his time slot and quickly sank into televison oblivion. He died in 1965 from lung cancer, two years before the Public Broadcasting System was born. If he had been in better health, he might have been—no, almost certainly would have been—a stalwart for PBS. His speech, delivered to the Radio-Television News Directors Association convention in 1958, could have been PBS’s:
“For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word ‘survive’ literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show.
Edward R. Murrow
“I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is—an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.
“To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.”
As a PBS station, we ask more from our viewers. We ask for their support and their attention. On our part, we promise to be responsible community citizens, to find stories worth telling and to tell them with as much impartiality as possible.
We promise to keep producing and airing great television if you promise to keep watching it.
Sources:
Shaull, Ron.
WOSU-TV Celebrates 30 Years of Progress. AirFare Magazine, Feb./March 1986.
Ewing, William. 1969-1970.
A Chronology of Important Developments in the History of Telecommunications at Ohio State University. AirFare Magazine, April 1982.