Were coming to you live from our very own facility for the first time Live from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Welcome to Matters of the Mind Id rather be alone than with the wrong man Healthline here on PBS Fort Wayne ♪ Were 39 TV Worth Watching Hi!

Welcome to Sesame Street Im certainly glad you could join us today I suppose the thing Id like most to be able to give you is hope.

Youre watching W F W A PBS Fort Wayne ♪ [beeping sound effects] This is PBS The Public Broadcasting Service Its always on in our house It's always been on in our house I grew up with Mister Rogers Neighborhood, with Sesame Street.

I was born and raised in Fort Wayne.

So PBS Fort Wayne, WFWA, PBS 39 is what rings in my ear from being a kid.

Even before I started working here at PBS, I watched a lot of PBS.

I am still a regular viewer of Masterpiece.

I love Masterpiece watch it every week.

All Creatures Great and Small.

Nova has been one of my favorites for forever.

Historical documentaries, the American Experiences those are the ones that Probably, my favorite, of course, was Downton Abbey.

My daughters watched PBS extensively back in the 1980s.

Elmo: Hi, Sesame Street was something that they watched on a regular basis.

And of course, they did watch Mister Rogers on a regular basis as well.

And I'd sit there right with him and watch it, Listening to Mister Rogers and seeing a show and just you know, it's like he was talking to you as a kid.

I always thought that was really cool.

He really taught kindness.

he was groundbreaking in the things that he did.

I mean, before you even said diversity, equity and inclusion, he was trying to create that on Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

For my kids, Daniel Tiger is is a big deal because he is, you know, giving them those tools.

What Mister Rogers was doing when I was a kid is the same giving us those emotional tools.

How are you doing with your tying?

Took me a long time..

It may be hard to imagine a time when there wasn't public broadcasting.

Public broadcasting first came to Fort Wayne on January 11th, 1975, thanks to the efforts of a few individuals who had the vision and the passion to bring a new kind of television programing to the area.

PBS can trace its roots back to an early movement to offer not-for-profit educational television as an alternative to the formulaic and predictable programming of commercial network television ♪ Oh, were the men of Texaco ♪ We work from Maine to Mexico.

♪ ♪ There's nothing like this Texaco of ours.

♪ ♪ ♪ Our show tonight is powerful, well wow you with an hour ♪ ♪ full of howls from a shower full of stars ♪ The Carnegie commission was tasked with finding a solution and released its report to Lyndon B Johnson in 1967 recommending the creation of a public television service.

This resulted in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The CPB would be a private, nonprofit corporation whose function would be to distribute government funding to public broadcasting stations and producers nationwide.

One of its first official acts would be to create the Public Broadcasting service PBS, ♪ Tonight is what you make so make it good ♪ ♪ Look for something special on your Public TV Station ♪ One of the most iconic PBS shows Mister Rogers Neighborhood began national broadcast distribution in the US in 1968 ♪ Its a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪ ♪ a beautiful day for a neighbor would you be mine?

♪ In 1969 Wally Fosnight moved his family back to his native Fort Wayne, from Pittsburg.

His daughters were very disappointed when they discovered they could no longer watch Mister Rogers Neighborhood in their new city.

He had a little girl who cried because when she moved from Pittsburgh to Fort Wayne, she couldn't see Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

And Wally, who was such a good father, decided to do something about it.

And he wrote a letter.

As I understand it.

And the reply came back, well you have to have public television.

I just, personally bonded with him he was not, the kind of individual who took no for an answer.

He would always say, well, we've got to find a way to do this.

I want this for my kids, my grandkids, and, you know, if you live in other communities our size, I think we may have been the last community of our size, our market size, in the country to actually get public television or one of the last.

And that didn't sit well with Wally.

He said, we're going to get this done.

You want your children to have the best of everything.

And, there was a way it would be public television.

Others were experiencing the same void when moving to the Summit City.

In 1970, we moved from Skokie, Illinois, where I've been teaching, with a young family and, got to Fort Wayne to, take a position at the new Homestead High School.

very quickly, we realized that there wasn't any Sesame Street for the young kids.

No, no public broadcasting.

And, and we were surprised that a lot of people didn't know what it was because it was a fairly new, broadcast, medium in the United States.

This new kind of broadcasting service offered programing for children and adults that stood apart from the formula driven programing of commercial television.

It offered the finest and the best.

In many subject areas history, drama.

It's educational and it's also newsworthy.

And also entertaining.

And we didn't have it here in, Northeast Indiana.

We missed it when we got here.

And so that that was part of the drive for getting involved with, an effort to, somehow bring that to Fort Wayne.

More and more people in Fort Wayne were becoming aware of the absence of PBS in their city, but it would be an unexpected proponent of public broadcasting from a local commercial station.

Reid Chapman, who would act as a lightning rod to bring a group of like minded individuals together.

Reid was the general manager of Wayne TV, but he was also one of the most, civically minded people that I certainly encountered in my, young, early political life and community life.

He could see the larger picture that we needed public television in this community, and he wrote five very fine editorials, and he was right on target with all of them.

ReId Chapman took advantage of his position at WANE TV to broadcast his ideas in August of 1970.

He invited anyone who was interested in getting involved in the effort to bring public broadcasting to Fort Wayne to attend a luncheon and get organized.

And he did not see public television as a direct competitor.

He saw beyond the narrow interests of his own broadcasting company and really wanted to embrace, a way for public television to come to Fort Wayne.

so he was a good strategic advisor, not an adversary.

One result of that early meeting was to form a committee to gauge interest, raise awareness, and come up with a plan of action to get PBS into the homes of Allen County residents.

Members of that first four person committee were Suzanne Hall, Wally Fosnight, Don Dillion and legendary broadcaster Hilliard Gates.

we were kind of isolated.

I didn't feel the community as a whole was interested at all because I didn't know about it.

Once they became informed, then they became interested.

There were some meetings at the library, and I, I went, I showed up and I think there were probably a couple of rows of seats of people there.

with all kinds of interests.

And I think a lot of them were people who had been places where they had been exposed to public broadcasting.

And, so when the word went out, they showed up.

As the number of supporters grew, it became apparent that a formal organization was needed to lead the effort and receive the funds being raised.

The nonprofit, formed on January 21st, 1972, would become known as Fort Wayne Public Television Incorporated.

attorney James Prickett, donated his services to charter the organization, Wally Fosnight was president.

Suzanne Hall, vice president.

And Julia Oldenkamp from Lincoln National Bank, treasurer.

Julia's role was kind of as our, our heart and soul, complimenting Wally and and me.

I was kind of a young guy.

Go go go go you know.

Let's go get this done.

Let's do do it.

And you know, she was the person then.

Well, let's consider this.

Let's consider that.

Let's.. which was very important One of Fort Wayne Public Television's first official acts would be to hire Princeton graduate Graham Richard.

This was two and a half decades before he would be elected as mayor of Fort Wayne.

I was retained as a, consultant to help figure out how to bring the wonderful programing that many of the families wanted, including my own.

and then, that led to the discussion about a full fledged campaign for fundraising.

And so we reached out to many of the existing educational broadcasting, television, radio and had some visits made a lot of phone calls and then also talked with funders.

We have some generous individuals in our community who gave a lot of money to get us off and going.

Many times.

It was mom's who, They visited their family, in Indianapolis and, well, they, they get Sesame Street, why can't we?

So it was leveraging that small dollar contributions.

But the, the bulk of it, we raised from individuals, families of significant means who wanted to make this happen.

The newly formed Fort Wayne Public Television was working diligently to raise awareness and money to bring public broadcasting to the city.

At the same time, local PBS enthusiasts were using their best rooftop TV antennas to pull in the faint fuzzy signals being broadcast from distant cities.

I picked up channel 57 out of Bowling Green, Ohio.

I got a couple of my friends at Magnavox two of my engineer friends, a fellow by the name of, Fred Billman and, Bob Hudson.

And we lived in different parts of town, and we would build and buy antennas and try them out to see which ones were the best for picking up channel 57.

And I built a, a Yagi cut to, channel 57's wavelength.

The Bowling Green signal was, they had just recently upgraded.

Was, was, the reason why suddenly we were being bathed with a fairly strong signal.

people over in eastern, Allen County would be able to pick them up easily.

if you lived in the city here, it would be more of a task.

They were experimenting and trying to find the strongest signal that they could bring in because people wanted, public broadcasting.

They wanted to, you know, get the programming.

Another Magnavox engineer who was also tuning in to the PBS programing coming from Bowling Green, was senior staff engineer Walter Dean.

He advised Fort Wayne Public Television that it might be feasible to receive the signal from WBGU, channel 57, and rebroadcast the programing locally using a translator, which would amplify the signal on a different channel, making it possible for viewers in Northeast Indiana to watch PBS.

The first step would be to test for the best broadcast reception Going up the top of the Indiana Bank building with, two other people holding an antenna and a field strength meter just to see what we could, pick up from Bowling Green.

How strong and how how steady it was.

That was, of course, the answer we needed.

if we were going to do a translator That turned out to be the most economical and for our purposes, by far the speediest.

The translator, I think, had a fairly low dollar figure associated with it.

So you could you could put one of those in for a lot less.

It was much reduced red tape, if you will, and the time frame for raising the money, building the translator tower, getting the translator up.

All of that was one of the reasons we really wanted to use the translator approach, do a translator first to expose people to what public broadcasting is as an entree to, having a full fledged station themselves someday.

We chose to do that to get the service in the community, even though some of the programing was going to be Bowling Green, Bowling Green State University related, and that didn't sit well with some of our and that didn't sit well with some of our folks in Fort Wayne who were saying, wait, that's over in Ohio, and it's not even close.

Despite some reservations, the group forged ahead.

A fundraising goal was first set at $63,000 to build the translator and tower.

The goal was later increased to $80,000 to purchase a more powerful transmitter, which would carry the broadcast signal farther, reaching more homes in the city and surrounding community.

The first major donation to the project came from Lincoln National Bank.

In this picture, President Robert Morrow presents a $10,000 pledge to Suzanne Hall and Julia Oldenkamp to help kick off the fundraising campaign.

The goal was met in 1974.

The permit for constructing the tower was approved, and the FCC granted Fort Wayne Public Television a license to broadcast on channel 39.

Local TV station WPTA offered to lease the land where a broadcast tower could be built near its facilities on Butler Road.

And work soon began on a modest facility.

They had to build a little hut to put this thing in and, put a tower behind it.

Not much.

Look at just a box with a translator inside and an air conditioner heater in the wall.

Science teacher Alan Kent joined a small group of Magnavox engineers who would provide the technical knowhow under the leadership of Walter Dean.

He was very helpful.

He'd climb up the tower and fix things.

He'd climb up the tower and fix things.

It's beyond my comprehension.

First, to climb up that tower and then to fix things.

He put in hours and hours of work.

Everybody was a volunteer.

Walter Dean from Magnavox and Jim Mast from Magnavox, and myself.

Once the 350ft tower was constructed and all the technical equipment had been installed, low power broadcast testing began in January of 1975.

Finally, on Saturday, January 11th at 11:35 a.m., the 1000 watt transmitter was turned on at full power and Fort Wayne residents were now able to receive their PBS programing on the new channel 39.

I can't tell you how thrilling that was, because I.

It had happened.

Oh, that was great.

That's all good.

That, was a good solid signal, technically.

And, there was the program that we wanted for everybody.

Great.

Because it was clear I was so excited about the having a very good picture that was not, subject to the weather.

When we saw that programing, and we talked to families and friends who were getting the programing.

it was a very, warm, a feeling of accomplishment that we not that the job was done, but we felt like, okay, our goal was to get Public Broadcasting Service programing and we've got it.

And that was a very good feeling.

Now that his mission was accomplished, Wally Fosnights daughters would once again be able to watch Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Eager to share the news, he sent a letter to the producers of the show letting them know Channel 39 was now on the air.

A short time later, he received this response: “Dear Mr. Fosnight, it was good to hear from you again.

You're continuing support of our work is important to us.

We are deeply grateful for all your efforts in making Mister Rogers Neighborhood available to the families in your area.

How fortunate we in public television are to have people like you who are dedicated to the task of offering meaningful television programming to your community.

We wish you the best at Channel 39.

Sincerely, Fred Rogers” ♪ Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

♪ ♪ Wont you be my neighbor?

Now that PBS had hit the airwaves, The next goal was to get people to tune in.

You can be sure everyone in our family was, by golly, they're gonna watch this.

When PBS signed on.

the one thing I can remember is you heard about it, but nobody really.

There wasn't a real huge awareness about it.

Like, hey, we got a PBS station, but, people kind of found it by accident.

One of my buddies at Magnavox, he was, you know, I was telling him about this, and, he wasn't to too excited about it.

I said, well, you know, just just try and see what what you get.

Well, he he got on the night that they were running Monty Python and he became a member right away.

That definitely was my gateway into PBS.

So watching Monty Python, it just got funnier each time.

REG: I don't know.

Mr. Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all.

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

♪ XIMINEZ: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

This is the time when there were three channels.

There wasn't even a channel 55 here back then.

And so the fact that there was a fourth channel and there was some some new kind of programing on and it was supposed to be really funny.

And I remember the first time I watched it, I got it.

I mean, it was funny and different and I think one of the attractions too, is my dad's kind of standing over my shoulders and he's, you know, he's got a cup of coffee and he's going, “What, what are you watching here?” And I go, “It's Monty Python's Flying Circus.

And he just kind of goes, “Huh.

It's weird.” And then he went down to the basement.

♪ I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay ♪ ♪ I sleep all night, Monty Python was a half hour, and then they would go into promos for like, the next show.

And I think immediately after Monty Python was Nova.

And, the thing that got me was you were watching an entire hour of television without commercial interruption.

The quality of the presentation and things that we did not otherwise see.

I flipped on the television and the show came on.

Called in performance at Wolf Trap.

And, completely unexpected.

In the middle of an afternoon in the summer.

And the artists they had on was John Prine.

During the daytime, they offered, programs for schools to use.

And a lot of those were for the younger, children.

And so our kids could see those shows.

Even though they weren't using them in school, they were still educational programs that, stood on their own We had, schools all over, within the broadcast range of channel 39 joining us.

Viewers continued to tune in PBS programing on channel 39.

In 1984, a new transmitter site building was built with a 749ft tower near the intersection of Hillegas and Butler Roads.

In 1985, a change was made to receive a microwave signal from WFYI in Indianapolis instead of WBGU in Bowling Green.

The station received its call letters in March of 1985 under the leadership of Executive Director Adam Oxley.

one of our great supporters who traveled a lot and suggested we use the call letters for Fort Wayne and known all over the world in aviation, you know, FWA.

Howard Chapman came up with those letters W F W A Not satisfied with repeating programing originating from another city.

The leadership at Fort Wayne Public Television continued to raise money to build and fully equip a local studio.

In 1987, the first show produced locally by channel 39 was Eye on the Arts, featuring the Fort Wayne Art scene.

Hello, Im Kathy Nadolny and Im Jim Sack.

And welcome to the March edition of Eye on the Arts.

A building expansion began in 1988, adding offices and a studio space.

On October 1st, 1989, NWA began broadcasting as an official independent full power public broadcasting television station.

Good morning Northeast Indiana, Im Jim Milner, general manager of TV 39.

And were setting history this morning Were coming to you live from our very own facility for the first time as a PBS station in the nationwide PBS system.

All programing would now be acquired and scheduled locally.

The dream, inspired by people like Reid Chapman and Wally Fosnight of having a PBS station in Fort Wayne, had finally come to fruition.

There arent words in English to adequately describe the feeling of awe and gratitude that we finally are having this.

Going back to the work of all the wonderful folks that we've been talking about, led by Wally, and Julia Oldencamp, and Suzanne, and our engineering friends from Magnavox.

I feel very good about where the community came together.

It wasn't just one very wealthy person who said, I'm giving you all the money.

Here it is.

You know, and it was a progression of collaboration that makes me feel good.

Wally may well have thought, initially, I have taken care of my daughter's needs.

I am a good dad, you know, but he is taking care of, the community's needs writ large by the incubation and the growth of what has been, come to be known as PBS Fort Wayne.

that's that's why we, owe a great debt of gratitude and a personal sense of we can't let this guy down.

We need to keep the good thing going.

♪♪ WFWA TV channel 39 Fort Wayne is owned and operated by Fort Wayne Public Television, Incorporated, and transmits on channel 39 as assigned by the Federal Communications Commission Now there was a fully functional broadcast station.

The studio could be put to good use, producing weekly shows that were broadcast live out of the new but modest Butler Road facilities.

When I started with PBS 39, we were still out at Butler Road, which really felt like working in a bunker.

It was very dark and sort of old and a little dingy at the time, and small When you would pull up, you would never think that was a television station.

It was a small cinder block type building.

The master control was, I don't know, maybe 20ft by eight feet, something like that.

Very small, filled with what seemed like to me at the time, a million tape decks.

And we were sort of in cramped spaces, particularly related to the studio work, not being able to have multiple sets up at one time, having to break them down and build them up every time.

We wanted to do a different show.

We lacked many, many things, including editing rooms and sound booths.

so if we wanted to lay down voice overs, we had to take a curtain, sort of pull it around, hold it while simultaneously try to read your script.

And you'd have your copy on a music stand.

You'd hold a maglite over your shoulder because there wasn't a light on the actual music stand.

And then you used to have to hold the music stand because the sound of your voice would make it vibrate.

The studio was very small by modern standards, only 34ft by 36ft.

The enclosed space paired with high wattage heat producing lighting instruments yielded room temperatures that were less than ideal.

Any time you're under a lot of lights, it can be very hot.

but the fact that the air conditioning HVAC system at Butler Road wasn't that great.

it could be very hot in the studios.

And there was the sound of them, being on that required us sometimes, even though it was extremely hot.

Not to turn them on because you could actually hear it.

Had to be over a hundred degrees when the lights were on.

It was a small, tight studio such that when I had guests on my original program, Modern Parenting, I'd be wiping my head with a towel when the shot was on the guests.

It was so hot and so cramped in there.

Funding for coming by air has been provided by one of the nation's leading insurance and investment management companies, Lincoln National Corporation.

WFWA Channel 39 was expanding its list of local shows and also producing documentaries.

The first of these local productions, coming by Air, had its broadcast debut in 1991, and was soon followed by more documentaries focused on Fort Wayne history and nostalgia.

Each window with an animated scene featuring tiny elves, animals and people.

Magnavox moved to Fort Wayne in 1929, and within the next year invented the first stereophonic dual speaker system.

Don't forget the Daisies.

They were winners, too, and provided a lot of exciting baseball, especially during World War Two.

When I started here, I heard the phrase PBS Fort Wayne is the area's unofficial historian helping to tell Fort Wayne's story, which is maybe, perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we have been doing it.

Then we continue to do that now, telling those stories so preserved for all time.

Fort Wayne Firsts and Fort Wayne On The Air.

Fort Wayne Firsts and Fort Wayne On The Air.

Claudia Johnson was the producer at the time for, for these, documentaries.

for these, documentaries.

And we had a series of the 40s, 50s, 60s of, Fort Wayne history by decade.

And those had been perennial favorites.

And also for the home for the holiday shows.

Show me more photos of the old Wolf and Dessaur building.

The great Christmas gift shop of all northern Indiana.

And with good reason.

You could find just about anything there for anyone on your list.

Boy, does this program bring back memories.

I remember growing up.

It was a tradition in our family to watch Andy Williams every single Christmas And here, PBS 39, we are under 30 seconds to go.

Remember, we only have five, so you better call right now.

Tracy, how are the phones doing?

When I first started, almost every pledge show that was on the air, had live breaks.

So if you had, let's say, 60 shows in a week, you were live 60 times.

So that was a huge amount of labor, a huge effort.

And every time the pledge drives rolled around, it was like, okay, this is going to be crazy for a week or two.

We could start early on a weekend morning with the how to's and having to do the pledge breaks.

for those and go all the way at night to practically midnight, doing pledge shows on a weekend, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, Friday night before.

and so the crew would be pretty tired.

We had done some pledging around the Red Green show, so we dressed up like the Red Green characters and kind of tried to make it amusing for the viewers.

so it wasn't just the same old please give us money.

We would have the musicians.

Come on, who were the live acts of shows that we were helping to bring to the area and have them as guests on the pledge shows.

We had Dennis De young, we had Jim Brickman, we had guests from Celtic Woman.

Straight No Chaser.

We had, Trans-Siberian and the list goes on and we can connect people with the live performances.

When you've got somebody in the studio that you know from, you know, the radio, for instance, that can be a lot of fun.

And I think it's interesting to viewers too.

Peter Yarrow, from Peter, Paul and Mary fame, the initial set up of his appearance excluded him from playing an instrument.

He wasn't going to do that.

There were certain constrictions, and Peter showed up and did everything.

You know, that he had his guitar.

He, he sang, he moved around the room.

It was just great.

And it worked.

People called.

The viewers were really responsive to that show and called in.

so the station made a lot of money during that show.

but it was, an interesting live televised event for sure.

Give us a call, You can see the number right there on the screen.

Give me a call!

You'll have to call up, call up.

And then there would be all the crazy things that would happen where pieces of the set would fall down, or you'd have a technical difficulty or hosts who were scheduled for later in the day.

Don't show up.

So you're on the air for 16 hours, or your mic would die in the middle of the show, so you would have somebody crawling around underneath you, trying to change out your mic while you're still talking and are on the air.

I've gone out to fix various mics and earpieces, you know, hoping that the host stays on the host camera and I'll fix one of the guests mics or whatnot.

I have been caught on camera once.

coming out from behind the desk here.

He took the wide shot right as I'm crawling out from behind the set.

That's what made being an employee at PBS 39 so fun was the things that happened behind the scenes, the relationships we had, how fun it was to be part of the crew and to do our shows.

And that's part of the joy of public television in the fact that you're doing something good for the community.

You are creating quality television and hopefully having fun at the same time while you're doing.

You are watching viewer supported WFWA 39 Fort Wayne The Fort Wayne PBS station was producing more and more content.

These ambitious projects placed a greater demand on the meager facilities, creating a longing for a new space that would meet their future needs.

We knew for a long time that we were going to have to build a new Teleplex, because the old station was incapable technologically of bringing us to four channels, as well as the fact that it was outdated and we needed more space to be able to do the wonderful things that we wanted to do.

We wanted to have a studio that was big enough that we could leave, set pieces up, and would be flexible and usable.

In 2000 an 8.5 million dollar capital campaign was announced for the construction of a new Teleflex.

The community responded and soon the goal was met.

In 2001, ground was broken for a new building near the intersection of Coliseum and Crescent.

On November 15th, 2002, a new Teleflex was opened with a much larger studio, updated production and master control facilities, and more office space for staff members.

On hand for the ribbon cutting that day was Graham Richard, who had worked so hard to help the station get its start.

He was now mayor of Fort Wayne.

And I was just delighted to see it.

The young child had gone on to become a very successful adult.

Fantastic story that this has grown to be a first class facility.

PBS's Fort Wayne has the largest single studio in Indiana, with 5,400 square feet of usable space.

Multiple modular sets remain ready for weekly broadcasts, but can be moved and reconfigured for every production need.

We've got a studio right now with a ceiling.

It's about three times higher than what we had over on Hillegas and Butler Road.

The entire original building would fit inside of our current studio alone.

We have such a massive studio.

Even anytime we have guests come in, they're going, oh my gosh, look at the studio.

We are so fortunate.

The first thing I felt when I came into the bigger studio here was the air conditioning.

And I love it when we keep it nice and cold in here.

The lights aren't nearly as hot as they used to be 25 years ago.

The new, larger studio allowed the production team the flexibility to have several shows a week.

Hello, Im Jennifer Blomquist, I hope you'll make it a point to join us this coming Tuesday evening for our next edition of Healthline.

Live from Fort Wayne, Indiana, welcome to Matters of the Mind PBS Fort Wayne currently produces six weekly shows, and four of those are live programs that take calls from viewers.

It has not only been extremely important to have those shows, those local points of connection, but it's also proved itself to be rather unique within public television nationwide.

Most stations are lucky to do one, maybe two live shows a week.

I was an on air host here at PBS 39 from 2001 to 2008, I hosted Healthline, Prime Time 39 Senior Spotlight, A Closer Look.

They've been an important part of our identity, because we don't have a nightly news.

So this is the way that we can interact directly with our viewers in the community.

The opportunity for live call-ins are so different than just hearing news snippets and soundbites that only last a few seconds long, in news shows.

Being able to break that fourth wall and allow viewers in, to feel participants in a show like Primetime, that's huge.

We are here for the viewers As a host of Healthline, I consider myself a ringmaster of a three ring circus.

And the reason why I say that is because I have a guest I have to accommodate.

I have to pay attention to.

I have to ask questions, get the answers I'm looking for.

I'm also at the same time watching the teleprompter, giving me the signal that we have people on our telephones.

And the nice thing about the live call-ins, I don't know what the topic is going to be.

I always say I allow the caller to choose the topic for discussion, and we'll go from topic to topic to topic on Monday evenings on Matters of the Mind, and it'll be an exciting program.

Then the phone rings and it's a caller asking question four on your list.

And you were still on question two, or brought up a totally different topic.

And the next thing you know, you're in a different space.

It can totally change the direction of the show.

we may be having a certain topic.

Maybe we're talking about, oh, for example, estate planning, and then somebody will call in and say, well, I had a traffic accident eight years ago.

Do you think I can still get some money back?

It is kind of interesting.

And that's okay.

It is live.

There's a couple of second delay, but sometimes things slip through regardless, and you're having to react to whatever happened in that regard.

And sometimes it could be funny.

sometimes what they said might be obscene.

We have a screener and the phone calls come in.

It was always interesting talking to the different people calling in for the different shows, trying to read if they were going to get upset on air.

I've had people get through before, you know, as a phone screener where they've, I call it, duped me.

You know, they had a legitimate question and I get them out on the air and they ask their question.

And then all of a sudden something happened.

My responsibility is to monitor, what's being said.

if any of the naughty words come across, if any of the naughty words come across, then it's my job to, cut the audio.

then it's my job to, cut the audio.

Sometimes we hit hot buttons among our viewers.

I mean, the phones look like they're light, and then all of a sudden, a subject comes up and then they're ringing off the hook.

Thanks for your call.

Let's go to next caller.

Hello, Dale, welcome to Matters of the Mind.

Ann, are you still on the line?

I sure am.

Oh, thank you for waiting.

We want to talk to you.

We want you to be the star of the show.

That partnership with the viewership.

is is everything.

It would only be half a conversation if they weren't here.

Senator Holdman, Representative Heine, Travis, Dave, thanks for joining us I think the most volatile show in regards to having live call-ins, of course, was always Primetime 39, since that was a political program and people feel passionately about their politics.

It's not Crossfire.

It's not Face the Nation.

You know, you're your intention is not to, incite but inform.

And if you can have it be expositional.

So you're the sponsor of Bill one, two, three.

Tell us about.

That.

We have the ability to really be able to talk about topics with substance versus just skimming the surface of it.

I think that was the success of it in many ways, is helping viewers understand as best as possible from the authors and lawmakers themselves.

The contents of the stuff that they were passing.

And what is that going to mean?

the, you know, so many months after the session ends, when any of those proposed bills become law.

The Republicans and the Democrats, both parties felt very comfortable being on the program because they knew that we were non-biased.

There are no gotchas.

and even, as as phone calls come in where we're monitoring to ensure that, it's, it's, civility, of which there's precious little and thankfully, public television has good stock of that.

Matters of the Mind is a live call-in program where you have the chance to choose the topic for discussion Matters of the Mind is an opportunity for anybody in the general public to either just listen to a psychiatrist talk informally and casually.

And that's what you're trying to increase with the treatment of ADHD.

I was asked back in 1998 to host a series on PBS called Modern Parenting, and it was a 13 week episode where I'd bring on local therapists as guests, and we'd take calls from people having parenting issues.

Well, from there, Claudia suggested that I just do a Psychiatrically based program, and I was thrilled to do that.

We did about six months worth of very specific topics like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, eating disorders.

And after doing that for about six months, the question was, well, you know, why don't we just start doing a live call in?

So the live calling is what really took off and continued over the course of the subsequent 26 years.

Some of them do get across the blood/brain barrier and they can cause you to have some memory disturbance.

I had some well-meaning colleagues back then, they told me, you have no business going into broadcasting and doing a live program where you get real calls.

What's the matter with you?

They're going to call about all sorts of things.

You're going to lose your credibility.

You're going to be embarrassed on the air.

You you can't do a live call in with a psychiatric topic.

I said, well, you know, I'll give it a try.

Back in the 1990s, when I started matters of the mind, there was a tremendous amount of misperception about what psychiatrist did.

There's a lot of mystique to what psychiatrists did.

Think about mental illness as being something that affects this brain of ours, in a similar way that, heart disease affects the heart.

I began it with this model of the brain.

a mental health issue, a psychiatric condition, is related to a brain abnormality.

That's where it starts.

So I talk about generalities concerning, well, what somebody might be enduring with or silent suffering of a psychiatric condition.

And I try to let people know there's hope for treatments, and I try to allow people to understand that they're not alone the purpose of this program is to not try to diagnose or give definitive treatment to any one individual.

I can't diagnose somebody in 2 or 3 minutes and just hearing their stories, It's a very informal type of discussion.

I'm not talking to them as I talk to doctors.

I don't talk to them necessarily as I would somebody in my office setting.

I am not talking to them as a patient.

I have a footstool.

And the reason I have that footstool there, I have my feet propped up.

People might not notice it until they see the final shot at the end of the show, but I my feet propped up the whole program.

I do that to remind myself I'm not in a clinical setting.

This is like somebody coming to my living room and just having a discussion Lets go to our next caller.

Hello, Greg, welcome to Matters of Mind.

People will ask me: “What's in the cup?” I use the cup not only as a prop, but I will use the cup.

I, I've used it historically as a signal to change camera angles.

In the cup, it used to be coffee 25-26 years ago because I was tired.

I had worked a whole day and here I'm coming into a live studio and I was tired.

Over the course of the years, it changed over to the point where now it's it's diet soda But originally, my biggest apprehension was starting that program on time and ending the program on time.

Can I tell you it's anxiety provoking to have that countdown; Five, four, three, two, one and you feel like you're in the space shuttle and you're getting ready to take off.

I used to have palpitations when I was first starting the program.

Now I'm so relaxed I have to have some caffeine ♪ Hi.

I'm Sandy Thomson, your host of Senior Spotlight Senior spotlight was an opportunity for us to really have seniors be able to zero in on a topic that was of interest to them.

It might be about their health or managing their economic situation or transferring from the home they currently live in to a senior living environment.

to a senior living environment.

And then we went through the whole changeover of changing the name from Senior Spotlight to Life Ahead.

For good reason.

We wanted to make it more available to a wider age range.

We can tell that we have younger viewers now by the callers, In 1995, Liz Schatzlein and Kathy Nadolny created "Healthline", also produced and hosted by Liz.

Good evening, Im Liz Schatzlein Welcome..

I started as a guest on Healthline periodically.

Where theyd have a psychiatric topic.

And Liz Schatzlein would invite me on.

Any time I do a show like this, I learn so much.

That can be caused by many things it can be caused from certain medications.

The guests you see on PBS Fort Wayne are not paid.

The experts in their field, again, whether it's medical, legal or whatever, you know, they know their topic.

Who come in on their own time to share their knowledge with our public.

The gratification I get out of doing Healthline is knowing, A) that we help a lot of people, if not them themselves, somebody they care about.

There's one particular experience I remember early in matters of the mind, where a man called in and he said that in one of his eyes it appeared as if a curtain was falling and it was getting darker and darker over one of his eyes.

I said, you need to get the emergency room right away.

As a psychiatrist yeah, we're trained as physicians first and foremost.

I went to medical school, but he was describing a retinal detachment.

It was.

Yeah.

His retina was literally falling off the back of his eyeball.

He goes, the emergency room.

He did call me the next week on the air and say, I had a retina, retinal detachment.

You saved my eye.

I've actually had people come up to me.

Hey, you're the guy on TV.

You did a topic on colon cancer, and I'm so glad you did because it convinced my father to get checked out.

And I think your show saved his life.

♪ [TENSE MUSIC] ♪ On Wednesday of this week the United States surpassed 100,000 deaths attributable to the Coronavirus pandemic.

In the Spring of 2020, PBS Fort Wayne stepped up with all of its resources to be a broadcast hub for information on the Covid crisis.

Round up all the credible sources and find a way to have them in the room, not only to provide.

The right information, but to distill it because this thing was changing daily.

Just getting to the bottom of this thing, because we had an hour, we seized an hour every week to bring people up to date, right now, the recommendation is open your mail as usual, and just wash your hands after you open it.

and we had so many experts in the studio, doctors, people from the boards of health.

The head of the Allen County Health Department, bringing, folks from the major hospital groups together, everyone dropping the pretenses, getting in there.

Here's the information.

And filling the phone bank with medical personnel We expanded Jay Fawver's presence through the week to discuss mental health as well as physical health.

you know, trying to differentiate between a common cough, and something that could be stronger.

everyone was still trying to analyze the enigma of what this pandemic was, and we were able to literally live that in real time.

So the whole place, it was so great.

We are at our best when we are broadcasting.

♪ Welcome to arts IN focus.

Im Emilie Henry Arts IN focus has really been a common calling card of using the arts to really demonstrate how rich a region we have.

So I went to school for biology.

And though I had an early career in wildlife biology, and then I still kept art as one of the things I did.

I feel like a show that's devoted to artists.

it cuts out all the noise.

I am just always attracted to the light.

We did a lot of work, a lot of experimentation.

♪ [playing the viola]♪ We don't have to focus on anything else.

you know, the news, especially now, is is polarizing.

And, so even if you add in an arts piece to the news, people feel a kind of way when they are watching the news.

So to have a half hour that's devoted to to creativity and to expression and to all different types of art is I think it's a relief.

I think that it's, a safe space for people.

♪[dramatic theme music] Welcome to Subterranean Cinema For years we had had people asking, why don't you guys do a classic movie series?

And we looked around, shopped around for one, and they were all really expensive.

And then Lakeshore Public Television had sent out a notice that they had acquired a classic movie series, and now they were licensing that classic movie series.

and it was a whole lot less expensive than any thing that we had shopped around with before.

♪ Whos that coming down the thoroughfare?♪ Medallion there be.

But medallion I aint got, nor knows where.

So we thought this would be the time to finally do that classic movie series.

And then we thought, well, while we're doing this and going to all this effort, we may as well shoot little intros and outros.

So we try to make, you know, make it fun and make it light for the viewers.

And it's kind of a description of what the movie is all about.

But we're not too serious about it.

Tonight I am joined by none other than Logan Nickloy.

Or as I like to call him, Pirate Steve.

And that film was, of course, the critically acclaimed PSYCHO [thunderclap and a scream] You're watching Subterranean Cinema only on PBS Fort Wayne.

BAH humbug.

You know, it's Christmas time, right?

Yeah, yea ♪[orchestral string music]♪ ♪[violin solo] ♪[fast paced piano music]♪ In addition to the weekly shows, PBS Fort Wayne has invested in the technology to record events on location, with the production crew using a mobile control room and cameras, giving our community access to political debates and musical performances.

One annual favorite is the holiday concert at Purdue Fort Wayne.

♪ [orchestral music] ♪[upbeat music] Fort Wayne is a truck town.

PBS Fort Wayne continues to bring history to life through its award- winning documentaries.

Can Build upon our new arts and cultural scene and create something special for this community.

Realizing the magnitude and significance of this project community leaders hired world- renowned architect Louis Kahn to design the center.

The mentally ill in the United States have largely been viewed as a social and economic issue, more than a medical problem.

The solution was basically the same; House them together, separate from everyone else, to be forgotten.

There's never a dull moment in this house.

Not all of the programing is produced locally, of course.

Much of the iconic PBS series and specials come from a variety of different sources.

PBS doesn't make any programing per se, they contract with other member stations.

They work with independent producers all over the country, all over the world really.

Every local PBS station is responsible for buying its own programing.

Programing is roughly $600,000 a year.

part of that is what we have to pay the PBS parent company, and then all of those the PBS parent company, and then all of those independent producers like the BBC.

PBS for Wayne has always relied on member support for the majority of its funding and now our reliance on your generous support is greater than ever.

People have a misunderstanding about the level of government support that goes to public television stations.

We do get some federal funding.

We get funding from our underwriters.

But an extremely important part of that whole thing is the viewers that make those phone calls and donate their financial support to the station.

And when we say we couldn't do it without them, it's literally true.

If you watch us for free and you'll like us for free, how about, you know, on pennies on the day for watching, can you monetize that?

Call it a pledge and let someone know.

I'm grateful for the generosity of my friends and other individuals I don't know, and businesses who've made all this possible.

My grandpa, my dad's dad, was, huge proponent of public broadcasting.

And he always said, if you consume it, then you have to contribute.

Youre watching viewer supported WFWA 39 Fort Wayne.

♪[sliding across piano keys] ♪[upbeat music] Youre watching WFWA PBS Fort Wayne.

I can't wait to see what the next 50 years is going to be like.

You know, I cant imagine, TV, you know, a TV or a media universe without PBS in it and and without our station locally in it.

I think it's so great we have such an institution as public television for the country.

To have a PBS Fort Wayne and to have now multiple versions of a PBS Fort Wayne.

Well, I think it's important because it's it's the last locally owned television station in any in any state.

your PBS station is the only station that you can call them up and talk to somebody that makes decisions.

We're working for our viewers.

We're not working for corporate stockholders.

We're not working for, you know, and anybody else pulling the strings.

It is very hard in this day and age to have credible journalism that is unbiased, that is nonpartisan, and that truly tells you as it is.

That's very important today.

Maybe more important than in any time in the history of broadcasting.

Public television.

is one way of keeping you a thinking person.

To me, it represents, a place where you can see the arts.

You can be connected.

We have the local programing that PBS Fort Wayne has.

We have masterpiece.

We have Ken Burns series.

I don't care what religion you are, what political affiliation you are.

You're always going to find something on PBS and PBS Fort Wayne.

The success of this place, is a shared success because somebody cared.

And that caring.

That's the prescription for a strong station in the years to come.