This is Arkansas week, Arkansas's only statewide in-depth news analysis program, so we've been around through celebrations and scandals and the workaday business of government for four decades.

The important reporting.

The reporting about social events, cultural events, economics and politics.

Were being handled by all print outlets.

I thought it would be helpful to have a weekly coalescing broadcast so that the viewer had a place she or he could go weekly and get the broad perspective.

To give credit where credit is due, you've got to turn to the man, Bill Clinton, and say that he is masterful at cultivating individual reporters.

He's been doing it for years.

During the Clinton's first term, all of these big.

National stories were at their heart.

Arkansas Stories, Arkansas Whitewater, that's an Arkansas story.

That was an Arkansas land deal.

Hello again, everybody.

Welcome back to Arkansas week, another week in which there has been no verdict in the Whitewater trial.

I think we're at week 12 now, but maybe we can work that out in the next few minutes.

And so stories that were dominating the national news and that you would see talked about on Washington week would of course be talked about on Arkansas Week because at their heart.

Again, they were Arkansas stories.

It's already this jury has taken a lot longer to deliberate than the defense took to present its case.

When I came to the program, it was a panel of three or four journalists, Arkansas journalists, who were hands on in terms of politics and public policy.

You stay, Governor Tucker was told to July 15th.

Make all the appointments you want to, hand out all the grants you want to, and then you move on.

And we will.

Accept that.

And when this informal settlement was broken, when Tucker changed his mind, that is when all the legal doubts suddenly sprang up again and one of the attorney general was able to file suit.

For me, it was always a good way to to learn from, from the experts what was happening in the world of politics in a way that was, you know, more conversational, more.

Analytical than just reading news stories.

And when it was discovered that one of his yes votes had left the chambers and he had sent the police after them.

Oh, it's all very exciting.

Over the decades we have had so many of Arkansas's best, and I would say all of Arkansas's best and brightest journalists have been regulars on the panel or have been on the panel at one time or another.

These funding cuts are entirely at the discretion of the governor under the law.

As as it properly are, and that's where it has always been at least since the 40s.

And it turns out they had called Hugh Patterson, the publisher of The Gazette and said we want somebody from their Gazette to be on Arkansas weekly show.

It is Ernie Dumas will do that.

So I didn't want to be on television.

I didn't think I was cut out for television and still don't.

But anyway, so I felt like I had no, no, no choice about the matter.

So I showed up up here to to record the first show I would have come on at the start of 91 when I went back to journalism again.

And at that time you had like a regular cast.

And so did it at that point almost every week for the next 5 1/2 years.

Well, he's he's ready to have some fun.

And I think he deserves too.

Goodness sakes, after three.

And 1/2 decades in elected office.

And the seat was his, obviously, for as long as he wanted it.

Had David Pryor run again next year, he would have had, if any democratic opposition token at best.

Well, Steve Barnes obviously was the host even back then, and then the other regulars were Joan Duffy and Max Brantley.

It's going to be even more difficult for the Democrats to regain any kind of control in the Senate.

Max and Joan naturally leaned a little bit more.

To the left and the I did.

I probably played further to the right that I am from time to time for good television.

But we would get tickled because Joan would travel the state and she would have ******** people.

For more the left side of the spectrum come up and say, boy, don't you just hate that Rex Nelson?

Don't you just want to punch him?

And I would have people from the more conservative right side of the spectrum come up and say, boy, don't you get sick of that Joan Duffy.

But they didn't realize is Joan and I drove together to Conway every week.

I would pick her up at her house, so we would get a great kick out of that since we accompanied each other over for the taping every week.

It was as tumultuous a Monday as one could imagine.

Several hours of chaos followed by some much appreciated calm.

From its origin Arkansas Week has been about perspective and analysis long form of the interview that need not be compressed into 40 seconds or less.

We have a very poisoned atmosphere in Washington these days and the the way the election aftermath has transpired has has not helped that atmosphere.

Arkansas week so unique in the way it brought the state together that across multiple television markets.

He he is tried to say that he thinks that teacher salaries can be increased and so forth without the new taxes.

If you wanted to have a discussion or try to get an understanding of what was going on behind the scenes in Arkansas politics and business, you turned Arkansas week on Friday nights.

There's time to reflect, time to produce, time to assess, time to share with an audience what you cannot share simply from the virtue of you have having more time.

What, you can't share on a regular news broadcast.

We thank you for joining us.

We'll do this again soon.

Thank you for watching.

Goodnight.