A Year in the Life of MCPB

1975 was quite a year. Mood rings competed with Pet Rocks and Rubik’s Cubes for our attention. We wore hip-huggers, bellbottoms and leisure suits and weren’t embarrassed by our appearance. We munched on PEZ candy and had Magic 8-Balls tell our future. We listened to eight-track tapes and the latest in Disco and…oh, you get the idea!

By 1975 Sharon and I had been three years into what would become a five-year stint at MCPB. By the fall of 1977 I had moved on to another job and we returned to Minnesota. Camelot was no longer a part of our lives but it has always held a special place in my mind. As one of my favorite songs goes ‘There are Places We Remember’…

Of course, time has that ability to wash over the not-so-good times and sunlight-silhouette the good times. But even a non-partisan evaluation of that time couldn’t temper the good things that happened to us in Maryland.

As a struggling writer, it was for me taking those first tentative steps in novel writing and story-telling. Sharon began a lifetime of fund-raising and event organizing. I ran, or at least attempted to run, the JFK 50 miler. Our son, Brian, was born there and we made some lasting friendships that endure to this day. We grew as a couple and individually as did the station.

By 1975 the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting had moved up the ranks of public television stations around the country that was producing outstanding local and national programming. It was on an accelerated curve of creativity and innovation for everyone involved.

We really believed that ‘Love will keep us together’ (Captain and Tennille) and that it might not be safe to swim in the ocean (‘Jaws.’) ‘A Chorus Line’ was playing on Broadway and we couldn’t get enough of our favorite curmudgeon in ‘All in the family.’

For me it was acting the role of entrepreneur under the protective umbrella of MCPB. Sharon had a great job with the Baltimore County school system. Our lives were being enriched with a wealth of experiences that only the east coast could provide. It was a taste of what happens when good people get together for a common goal and shared vision of producing great television and expanding friendships.

Public broadcasting was born in Maryland in 1966 when the state’s Public Broadcasting Commission was formed. By 1975 Maryland’s public television outreach was impressive. The Maryland State Department of Education produced programs which were used by almost a half million youngsters across the state. Nearly two thousand Maryland students earned college credit through the Center’s College of the Air. Hundreds of company employees registered in the Center’s business training courses.

One of the highlights of the year was the activation of the Center’s fourth television station in Annapolis. WAPB had one of the two most powerful transmitters in the U.S at that time. Its signal doubled the population within the reach of MCPB’s signal.

1975 also marked the first full year of the operation of the Center’s Office of Tele-communications, one of the nation’s first efforts to catalog all of the telecommunications activities within the entire state.

There were other innovations I was only vaguely aware of at the time. For example, the FRU (field recording unit) expanded the possibilities of production far beyond the confines of the studio and in turn took audiences ‘in the field’ for pre-recorded as well as ‘live’ programming.

Membership week sought to acquire supporting members for the Center even though it was a state-funded entity. A full third of the Maryland public television programming schedule was produced by Center staff, either in the studios in Owings Mills or ‘on location’ through the FRU.

My own department of Program Distribution sought to expand the reach of our television programming to a much broader audience. By its second year of operation we had our own program catalog that attracted clients from colleges and universities, library systems, hospitals, and business and industry.

Some folks in the office were dabbling with their own Altair home computer kits and making their own personalized computers. Only the select among us had the newest Home videotape systems (VCRs) which freed them from only going to the movies in a theater. Two guys in California were making the news with something they called their ‘Apple 1 prototype.’

In retrospect it was a wonderful couple of years filling with new adventures.

We were young and free and the world was our playground. I left a great group of friends back there but meet new ones along the way. Our lives expanded and grew and were enriched by new friendships, our daughter being born and more travels. It was as the cliché goes ‘all good.’

Now with the benefit of time, reflective wisdom garnered over the years and wonderful hindsight I can look back at 1975 as a watershed period in our lives and the height of Camelot for the station. Memories are what often prompts a smile in one’s mind. MCPB did and still does that for me.

From the Shores of Camelot

‘There are Places We Remember…’

-Song by the Beatles

Memories have a strange way of playing tricks inside our head. We hold on to the good, distill the unpleasant until it becomes vague and vapid and we usually forget the bad entirely…over time. What remains at the bottom of that reflective memory pond is a residue of time well spent among family and friends, acquaintances and associates. We usually embellish the good times with a glossy coating that has come to define those unplanned, unexpected events that highlight a certain period in our lives.

Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting Headquarters circa 1970s

I’m not sure why it was that my time spent at the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting from roughly 1972 through 1977 turned out that way… a simmering cauldron of fleeting moments, events and faces that marked a very pleasant period in my life.

Coming off an unpleasant stretch down south at a very dysfunctional TV station, it was eye-opening and comforting to feel welcomed by so many initial strangers. There were certainly some good times before MCPB and even better times after it. But that particular time period will forever remain a smile on my face and a pleasant return journey inside my head.

What was it about the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting back in the 70s that many people remember so fondly after all these years? The list of outstanding programs and series could fill a volume of ‘How to do it right’ in terms of public television programming. From ground-breaking series such as ‘Wall Street Week,’ ‘Consumer Survival Kit,’ ‘Hodge Podge Lodge,’ ‘Maryland News wrap,’ and ‘Critics Place’ to regional hits like ‘Duck Carvers’ and historical dramas. ‘Love Letter to Maryland was one of my favorites.’

An article featuring myself

The list goes on and on. All done with creativity and dedication and a thirst for storytelling. That programming was unique among PTV stations and I was proud to be a small part of the action. My own Program Circulation Department was among the first of a long line of entrepreneurial endeavors that MCPB pursued.

Sharon and I in Annapolis

Bob Harrison and I

Sharon and I in D.C.

Sharon and I in D.C.

But for me MCPB was more than just television. It was discovering the narrow cobblestone back streets of Annapolis, the vast plains of undeveloped Westminster, the battlefields of Gettysburg, Intercourse, Pennsylvania, Amish cooking, the Smithsonian, the Capital mall, the Eastern Shore, Chesapeake Bay, Ocean City and all those various weekend jaunts up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Maryland was where my son, Brian, was born at GBMC along with two western novels that didn’t see a life of publication until some forty years later. Our home was the first of several real estate ventures. Maryland was where I began a lifetime of running (attempted the JFK 50 miler and only got half way) and writing and pondering and growing hungry. And I don’t think I was alone.

MCPB Group on Facebook

It’s become quite apparent that a number of alumni of MCPB feel the very same way. There’s a very popular Facebook group page for sharing memories. There are collectively quite a few.

On Location with FRU

Was it because of management? Most would agree that Dr. Frederick Breitenfeld, Jr. ran a tight ship but a good one. He created an atmosphere of creativity and exploration. There were new avenues to explore in public television production and programming and producers took advantage of many of them. Live drama, events in the field, environmental and consumer issues and craft projects were just the tip of the proverbial programming spear. Producers, directors and department heads weren’t afraid to try new things and found encouragement even after the occasional failure. It seemed to be the mantra of the times.

Back then I always felt as if I was living on the shores of Camelot. My job was to distribute the fine programming that others had created. I could only observe and envy the skill of the directors and conceptual visions of the producers. But living on the edge of all that creativity began to rub off in my own story-telling at night and wishful plans for my own production/distribution business in the future.

Like one of those spur of the moment gatherings; unplanned, unprovoked and unscripted, many of the events at MCPB just seemed to happen when creative people bumped into one another in the halls, at the local tavern or a friend’s house.

It was five years of unplanned, seldom solicited creativity slowly simmering far back in the recesses of my mind. It was concepts and images and ‘what if’s’ that gradually leached their way to the surface of my consciousness. Once back in the old familiar confines of Minnesota those ideas and concepts slowly began to take shape and blossom into fruition. I have the good folks at MCPB to thank for that.

I didn’t realize it back then but time spent at MCPB was my graduate education into a world of possibilities. Even today I’m still learning and growing and failing and starting up again. Just like all those folks I watched and envied and wanted to emulate as I stood on the shores of Camelot.