The Early Years

Today the fancy word is ‘start up.’ It’s that crazy, chaotic period when time and talent and money are on the line to begin a new venture. Each new generation thinks it’s discovered the holy grail of venture-taking for the first time. Only later, do they discover that established companies, organizations and some individuals all went through this initial period of growth, and for some, their demise.

The early years are usually meant to describe that period when ventures first begin with a clear or at least rudimentary idea of what they want to accomplish. As time passes, reality sets in and the goals and objectives may change or be adjusted or adapted to changing times. It’s during those first baby steps toward establishment that mistakes are made, failures pile up and lessons are learned. From that comes success to some and failure to many others.

This weeding out process can be applied to groups, institutions or individuals equally. If they can get past those first timid steps toward something concrete, an established entity may finally form and only then slowly begin to grow into something much bigger.

I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced two distinct early periods in the evolution of non-commercial television. Twin Cities Public Television and the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting were both evolving and morphing into something greater when I climbed onboard for that proverbial ride of a lifetime.

There are a lot of other examples of those ‘early years’ for organizations and individuals that have been of great interest to me.

Motown, from its beginning until roughly 1964, was a musical cauldron of immense talent and lyrical exploration.  As author David Maraniss wrote in his book about Detroit, ‘Once Upon a Great City.’ “Roughly 1962 to 1964 were the last days of Motown’s magical early period, before the debilitating addictions of success and envy and ambition took hold and things and people began to fall apart.”

MTV (Music Television) in its outstanding series: ‘Behind the Music’ documented many rock bands who struggled for many years, forming a cohesive sound and creating great work, before success ultimately led to their demise or breakup.

The same can be said for individuals and groups from Bob Dylan to the Beatles.

Dinky town, The Ten O’clock scholar, and Café Extempore were all local performance venues for Bob Dylan back in the early 60s. This was before he headed for New York City and his breakthrough recordings with Columbia records. By 1965, he had gone electric and his early years were truly over.

The Beatles started their climb to fame in The Cavern Club, a Liverpool cellar club then graduated to nightclubs in Hamburg, Germany before hooking up Brian Epstein as their manager. Their arrival in 1964, on that Pam Am flight, bound for the Ed Sullivan show officially ended their early years.

Twin Cities Public Television, from roughly 1966 through 1972, was evolving from an educational/instructional television station to becoming an affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System. But that was really its second phase of those ‘early years.’

There was another incubation period from its beginning in 1957 in Quonset huts on the University of Minnesota, St. Paul Campus, until its move to its own building on Como Avenue. During that time, it was almost strictly a broadcasting arm of local schools and colleges with few of their own productions.

When I joined the station as a studio volunteer in the winter of 1967, it was nearing the tail end of its life as an instructional television station. I was fortunate enough to watch and experience the evolution of its own line-up of programming outside of the realm of education and instruction. Entertainment became a seldom talked about but often whispered ingredient we wanted to put in our shows.

I’ve tried to capture that excitement and my own experiences in one of my plays entitled: PTV. It’s an honest, abet a bit exaggerated account, of the craziness of a television station filled with dope-smoking crew members, amorous young women, ambitious young men and the old guard trying hard to hold back the evolution of this new communications medium that was crying out for more… of everything.

After leaving KTCA in the spring of 1972, I went to Chattanooga, Tennessee for eleven months as Production Manager at an educational station down there. Then I was offered a brand new kind of job at a fledgling station up North in Maryland.

That new job was with the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting. Formed in 1969 in downtown Baltimore, MCPB was the state’s first venture into public television. The first fledgling station was located in an outlying suburb called Owings Mills. In its first five years, the station had begun to gain a nationwide reputation for outstanding and innovative programing on a local and national scale.

I was hired as one of the first persons to take the station in an entirely new direction; commercial sales of its television products and services. That early period, from roughly 1969 through most of the 70s, has come to be known affectionately by us old-timers as that Camelot period.

Farewell Party

It was a time of venturing out in new directions with an attitude of ‘we can’t fail.’ We had a brilliant leader by the name of Dr. Rick Breitenfeld. Through his initiative and imagination, the station branched out in dozens of new directions and areas. I found myself negotiating with HBO and other brand new cable systems for sales of our programs. Our program catalog was distributed nationwide and enjoyed sales in most of the fifty states. It was pretty heady stuff.

Those early years are gone now. Both stations have along since matured into solid reliable purveyors of outstanding television programming. I’ve also moved on, but every once in a while, I catch myself thinking back to those early years when we were all young and dumb and full of adventures. I’m very lucky. That’s a nice legacy to fall back upon.