Alumni Association Home > Minnesota Magazine > Past Issues > 2007 > May-June 2007

Fifty years ago this fall, University of Minnesota Television debuted on KTCA-TV, Channel 2, with “At Home with Music,” a showcase of University musicians and artists hosted by professor Norman Abelson. Airing from 9 to 10 p.m. on Monday, September 16, 1957, it was the first U of M program broadcast on the KTCA slot known as The University Hour. Other offerings that fall included “In Search of Science,” with Mark Graubard; “Our Changing Society,” with Roy Francis; “Minnesota’s Wildlife Resources,” with Walter Breckenridge (Ph.D. ’41); and “Town and Country,” hosted by Ray Wolf (B.S. ’42). University shows would fill the same hour of broadcast, Monday through Friday, on KTCA for nearly 20 years to come.

Shot in black-and-white on 16 millimeter film on studio sets enlivened by such props as a potted plant and a pair of stools, The University Hour generally consisted of straightforward discussions of college subjects. The ability to shoot close-ups of maps and other visual aids that would otherwise be hard for students in the back of the classroom to see was considered one of the great boons of early televised programs. The stars of the shows were University professors wearing jackets and ties, chewing on the stems of their dark-rimmed glasses as they spoke with an erudition rarely heard on modern television. Perhaps not surprisingly, television viewers of the day preferred Gunsmoke and Ed Sullivan.

Indeed, the promise that public television suggested to educators in the 1950s was never quite realized. Its first calling—as a new means to enlighten the masses—was undercut by the fact that so few people were interested in watching. Its second charge, at least in the eyes of educational administrators, was to relieve the enormous strain on classrooms of the endless stream of baby boomers seeking learning in the 1950s and ’60s. Here it did better, but educational television was eventually supplanted by more direct means of televised instruction.

The University of Minnesota was tied to the grand experiment in educational television from its earliest days. In April 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was faced with conflicting pressures from commercial broadcasters and educators. Broadcasters clamored for lucrative and limited channel space in the new medium of television; educators were interested in exploring the possibilities of television for instruction and enlightenment. The FCC gave its nod to education interests by designating more than 200 local airwave channels across the nation, including Channel 2 in the Twin Cities, for educational purposes.

Within a matter of weeks, the University of Minnesota announced that it was ready to explore the possibility of creating the state’s first educational television station. University president James Morrill cautioned that the project was too big and costly for the U to handle alone, but he anticipated the help of other colleges in the area, along with public school systems.

Money was only the first stumbling block in efforts to get the station on the air. The Minnesota State Legislature turned down as too steep a $2 million request for start-up funds in 1953. Soon after, the partnership that had gone to the state capitol with the proposal started to reassess its initial plan.

Because the University had taken the lead in promoting educational television to the legislature, it was assumed that the U would be the licensee for the proposed station. Now, however, it became politically advisable for educational television advocates to suggest a wider connection to the community. The revised plan established a nonprofit corporation to lead the station. The University, in conjunction with Minneapolis and St. Paul public school systems, would play a major role in organizing educational television and provide resources and programming; but educational television in the Twin Cities would not be run by, or licensed to, the University of Minnesota.

The new nonprofit entity also scaled back its initial estimate of start-up costs and began fund-raising toward a more reasonable goal of $300,000, primarily for station equipment. The legislature as a source of funding turned out to be a nonstarter, so initial funds came from the Hill Family Foundation, which provided the first grant to the new corporation ($40,000). The Ford Foundation, the primary funder of early educational television across the nation, offered another $100,000, and the prospect for Channel 2 in the Twin Cities grew brighter.

As the first money for the project came in, KTCA-TV, as it was now known, started to take shape. A station manager, John Schwartzwalder, who had headed the first-ever educational television station in the nation, in Houston, was hired in 1956 to lead the new channel. Staff, in the form of a couple of producers and editors, were also employed.

Outside of the nonprofit corporation itself, the University remained the principal player in the making of educational television in the Twin Cities. It provided temporary studios to KTCA on its St. Paul campus and also offered land on the University golf course for the broadcast tower and transmitter. U of M students were employed as production crews at the station, manning cameras and mikes and providing floor direction.

At the same time, the U of M set up its own studios in Eddy Hall, on the East Bank of the Minneapolis campus, where its programming for KTCA would be shot and transmitted via microwave to receivers at the station in St. Paul. The U also established a Department of Radio and Television within its Extension system. Burton Paulu (B.A. ’31, B.S. ’32, M.A. ’34), who had long managed KUOM, the U’s radio station, and who had pioneered educational radio broadcasting in the region, including the “Minnesota School of the Air,” was named as director of overall operations. Sheldon Goldstein (B.A. ’50) was given the helm for television programming. Both credit and noncredit courses would be aired on the planned University Hour, with professor Asher Christensen’s popular political science class, “Your Government,” tabbed as the first for-credit course to be televised over KTCA’s airwaves.

Other television programming on KTCA would be produced at the station studios in St. Paul and would include offerings from the public schools and Minnesota’s private colleges. Nonetheless, the links between the University and KTCA remained so close that, leading up to the September 1957 opening of the station, the U felt obliged to send out a press release clarifying to its own faculty and staff what its relationship was to the new educational television station. “It is important that University staff members understand that Channel Two is not owned by the University, nor is it a University station, nor are University funds being used for its establishment,” read the bulletin.

This distinction would grow more and more apparent in the years after KTCA’s founding. While the early educational television broadcasts proved an acceptable means of providing instruction to the general public, it turned out that they couldn’t do enough to alleviate the University of Minnesota’s continuing problems with finding ways to teach an ever-growing student population. Aside from campus crowding, the expanding Extension system also required more teachers and the means to deliver instruction to corners of the state beyond the Twin Cities.

The University’s answer to these difficulties was a call for increased use of its own broadcasting capabilities. University president O. Meredith Wilson announced a plan to expand the U’s closed-circuit television system in “an effort to make more effective the teaching programs at the University and help meet the problem of numbers.”

Paulu and Goldstein set about building the production capabilities of the U of M television system, and by the 1963–64 academic year, more than a dozen courses were being taught via closed-circuit television at the U. By the fall of 1964, the course load on closed-circuit TV would reach 19, and the following year, the U of M would approach the state legislature with a proposal to expand its closed-circuit capabilities even further.

KTCA, meanwhile, was less than enthused about the direction that educational television was taking at the University. Despite the fact that the U continued to broadcast its University Hour programs on Channel 2, continued to offer for-credit courses over the air, and continued to pay KTCA for the privilege of airing its programming, the station worried that its partnership with the University was diminishing. Any courses produced solely for the University of Minnesota within its own television studios and aired over its closed-circuit system were obviously productions not being done by or for KTCA, thus reducing streams of income to the station.

And the fact that the University went to the state in 1965, asking for funds to expand its system, only added to KTCA’s discomfort. The U of M wanted control of a statewide, multi-channel television network that could provide instruction to all state colleges and major school systems. Though the project was turned down at the capitol (this function would eventually be served by the state’s Higher Educational Coordinating Commission), KTCA saw its income, both real and potential, threatened by expanding television facilities at the U.

KTCA had other problems as well. The educational model for public television was simply not drawing enough viewers and members to pay the bills. In fact, in 1965, just 2.5 percent of the station’s budget was supplied by subscribers.

On a national level, public broadcasting was experiencing the same difficulty. Efforts to upgrade the quality of programming would begin in the mid- to late ’60s, and pioneering PBS figures like Mr. Rogers and Julia Child would find a growing audience of fans for themselves and the broadcast network. Educational television slowly began to change toward the modern public television model, in which enlightenment acknowledges the need to be entertaining. KTCA, however, was slow to make the shift and continued to cling to its status as a medium that, first and last, provided educational programming to the region.

This meant, among other things, that KTCA would continue to squabble with the University, while the U continued efforts to expand its television system.

By 1967, the University of Minnesota had established one of the major instructional television installations in the United States. It had four campus studios, eight videotape recorders, and a mobile recording unit. Its closed-circuit system operated seven channels, which fed instruction to 35 classrooms. In a typical week, 14,000 students were taught via the closed-circuit system, either through live or video-taped programming. In addition, and despite their other differences, the University’s Department of Radio and Television continued to oversee the five hours of programming that aired on KTCA nightly at 9 p.m.

Little had changed in The University Hour since its debut 10 years earlier, and little would change for several years to come. The five hours were still occupied by University professors offering instruction or leading discussions, usually on academic subjects. The most popular programs were the most accessible. Ray Wolf’s “Town and Country,” a garden and landscaping show, which had appeared in that first week of KTCA television in 1957, became the longest running program in educational television in 1970.

Meanwhile, a smattering of PBS broadcasts started to appear on KTCA (including Julia Child and Mr. Rogers), but criticisms of the station were widespread. Both Minneapolis papers, The Star and The Tribune, did lengthy series on the troubles at KTCA, detailing its low ratings and stodgy content. Fingers were pointed primarily at station manager John Schwartzwalder, who remained a diehard proponent of old-style educational television, until he was forced to resign in 1976.

His eventual replacement, Bill Kobin, stuck the remnants of U of M programming into nonprime- time slots. These programs had already been reduced to for-credit, independent study courses such as “Understanding Divorce,” which was now aired at 7 a.m. and enrolled just a handful of people.

Kobin, who had been hired to change the direction of the station toward the new public television model, was unapologetic about the move. “I don’t think we’re doing a service to the community by using up prime time for programs viewed by a couple hundred people,” he told The Minnesota Daily in October 1977.

Following the pattern of educational programming everywhere, efforts at creating more inviting, highly produced programming also began at the University. A half-hour, magazine-style program called “Matrix” was created in the mid-1970s, and, notably, was offered for a fee to all stations in the region, not just to KTCA.

Even closed-circuit television lectures were getting a facelift. The Minneapolis Tribune reported in 1972 that University professors, with the encouragement of the Department of Radio and Television, were trying to enliven their classes with Laugh-In-style humor. “Some of those programs were dull, let’s face it,” Sheldon Goldstein told the reporter. “And a dull lecture on TV is probably duller than a lecture face-to-face.”

In the world of television production, The University Hour already seemed like ancient history.

Tim Brady is a frequent contributor to Minnesota. He thanks Brendan Henehan, producer of TPT’s Almanac, for background and history on the relationship between KTCA and the University. TPT, formerly KTCA, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with special programming this year.