[bright music] - [Narrator] Sending pictures through the air.

From the moment 13-year-old James Fletcher Goodmon witnessed the first WRAL broadcast signal in 1956 the notion has filled him with wonder, but passion for communication is something that runs through Mr. Goodmon's family tree with roots firmly set by his grandfather A.J.

Fletcher who founded the Capitol Broadcasting Company in 1937.

Four decades later, his grandson and successor, James Fletcher Goodmon, turned the company into one of the nation's most visionary corporations.

First to market on new technologies, Mr. Goodmon has also delved into the business of sports franchises, and urban development, revitalizing Durham and the entire Triangle region.

In the meantime, the A.J.

Fletcher Foundation with Barbara Goodmon at the helm has endowed North Carolina with an abundance of arts, and education programs, institutes, and opportunities.

With two sons continuing the family traditions of innovation and generosity, the Goodmon family propels and inspires their home state.

Tonight in his own words first to market on new technologies, his commitment to news and documentaries, revitalizing Durham, and redefining the Triangle region through investments, and urban planning, and reflections on his own legacy as problem solver, philanthropist, citizen, and leader.

- [Narrator] Funding for this series of "Biographical Conversations" was made possible by support provided by Frank Daniels, Jr. And by contributions from UNC-TV viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.

[dramatic music] - Hello, and welcome to the final part of our series of "Biographical Conversations" with Jim Goodmon.

I'm Shannon Vickery, thanks for joining us.

And Mr. Goodmon, let's pick up where we left off last time.

In 1983 you created the Carolina News Network.

Tell us about this project.

- Well, we had done the North Carolina News Network, which was a radio network.

We fed news to 50 stations every hour, and we wanted to move that to the idea of let's get a television station in every market and share stories, and work together, and we did that.

- In 1987 the FCC eliminated the fairness doctrine, which had been in place since 1949.

- They did, yes, big, big, huge as it relates to how we run our stations.

The rule was that if somebody, if you have this point of view presented on your station, and you the station, and the station could decide this, if you think, well, that's an important issue, then you had an affirmative obligation to get the other side.

Okay, that's not equal time.

That's not equal time for candidates.

That's another whole list out of here.

This is sort of equal time for ideas.

That was a tough proposition for us in that so here this statement is made on the news, or somewhere about this issue.

And so we would have to decide now is this a fairness doctrine issue?

And should we get the other side of this and stuff?

I agreed that it was very clumsy in how we had to do it, and I was hoping that there would be a different way to do it, but, no, that's gone.

- Have there been efforts to restore it?

- People have talked about it.

Nobody's come up with a really good way to do it.

What we hope happens is that the operation the news operation, the content people will do that anyhow.

We need to build this park slide, there's we don't need to build this park slide, and we have an obligation, sort of self-directed obligation to do that.

- Overall, how do you think that the broadcast industry, and broadcast news in particular has changed since the fairness doctrine was lifted?

- We talk about that a lot.

I don't think that the broadcast news, I don't think NBC, ABC, CBS evening news has changed.

I don't think local television news has changed.

All of the slanted pointed news in one direction is on cable, is on these cable channels.

And they have been that's where that is.

That's not in broadcast.

So I don't think it's changed broadcast news.

Now, I'll remind you that CNN maybe averages a one rating, 1.5 rating, that any of our local newscasts will do nines and 10s.

I mean, I'm just...

I'm sticking up for local broadcasting is what I'm doing.

- In 1981 high-definition television was first developed in Japan.

- Yes, and I saw that at a demonstration in Washington.

Actually, I think it was in one of the congressional office buildings.

NHK the Japanese network had it set up, and I couldn't believe it.

It was analog, it wasn't digital like ours, but after I saw that, wow.

- After seeing the first demonstration of high-definition television in 1981, how soon did you start advocating that WRAL start utilizing this technology?

- Right away, see, and we were right next day almost.

So we were a CBS affiliate, and the director of engineering, there were a couple of senior engineers there that were industry leaders in high-definition.

CBS was very supportive in getting us on the air with the experimental station lobbying to make sure we got the first Sony camera, and we got the first that.

So CBS really helped us with that.

They were leaders in that.

It took a long time, but as soon as we were able we put on an experimental station.

I believe we were about the first at all of that.

I do know that the equipment we have from Japan is serial number one.

So we were really excited about it.

We invested in it.

We learned about it early, and we got on the air with it as soon as we could.

- In 1996 WRAL-TV became the first television station to be granted an experimental high-definition television license by the FCC.

What was the process like to get this license?

- The commission was very supportive.

What had to happen is somebody had to try this.

Somebody had to do this and see how it works.

They were very happy to issue the experimental license.

All of the equipment manufacturers came in.

Everybody wanted to test their version of high-definition, their version of the equipment including a good bit of it from Japan.

I have the instruction manual for our first encoder.

It's in Japanese, but it was just for people to do it.

You can't beat doing it.

You can talk about it all you want to, but we got to do it.

See what coverage is like, measure the signal.

Picked up a lot of things about the signal, and what's going on and the industry made improvements.

It was a lot of fun.

We'd gotten cameras, high-definition cameras, and tried to think of, well, what would be a good, what should we be shooting?

And one of the first things we did was the movement of the Hatteras lighthouse.

We had rented a home there.

We would send a reporter in for a week, and they would shoot every move of that lighthouse.

And so that's our first big high-definition production.

I still like looking at it.

- Why was it important to you for WRAL to be a pioneer in high-definition television?

- Well, sometimes I'll give a list of things and people will say, well, now what's the most important?

I would say all of them.

I think there was, first of all this idea that we're gonna really improve our product.

We're gonna be much, much better.

And then the notion that the sooner we figure out how to do it, and the sooner we do it the better for our company, and our long-term brand.

And I always add it's fun.

What I mean it's really interesting to do.

I met a lot of great folks, a lot of great people.

- High-definition television became the industry standard.

Do you think it was inevitable for this to happen?

- Oh yeah, yes, yes, I believe that it was inevitable.

We were already behind.

Japan had already done it.

And at the same time all over the world countries were trying to decide what standard.

There's several ways you can do what standard to adopt.

So we had a big fuss in the United States about what standard to adopt, but we eventually adopted one and got on with it.

- Running almost parallel to the transition to digital television we had the growth of the internet.

When did you first notice the internet, and the power that it could also have for media?

- Yeah, before that we had bulletin boards.

You'd dial-up and there were all these dial-up services, first class and some other things we were looking at the bulletin boards.

We had some really remarkable technical people at the company.

And one of our engineers had been at Microspace stopped by one day, his name is Charley Bratton, and said, "I think we need to talk about the internet."

Okay, why don't we talking about the internet.

There's a coffee shop next to the TV station Cup-A-Joe's.

I want to tell you about that name.

Cup-Of-Joe's, and I noticed one day there was a sign, a neon sign in the window of Cup-Of-Joe's that said Nando.net.

Nando.net.

"The News & Observer" had really gotten into the internet.

And they had this service called Nando.net.

Well, that did it.

So I called Charley and we really went after it, and ended up being an internet service provider.

I had a large client base.

Eventually sold that to CP&L.

That's sort of the technology of moving information around for other people.

And then at the same time we started trying to build what is our website gonna to be like, right?

We were doing that before there were browsers, before Netscape, right?

When you had to enter.

It was Charley Bratton's interest in it, and my seeing that Nando.net sign next door that really got us interested in it.

And the more we got into it, the more we wanted to do it.

- Tell us about wral.com, which was launched in 1996, and became the most popular website in the Raleigh-Durham market.

- Well, the notion is the internet had developed, and with the browsers, and everything that was going on on the web, that it's a very logical, another platform on which we can put our content.

I mean, if you said, Jim, what's really been going on the last 50 years?

I would say, well, we're getting the same content, we're a local television station, we're into local news, but now we have lots of different platforms on which to put our content, and we need to modify our content to some extent for the different platforms, but, basically, we're doing the same stuff on a different platform.

And this was a really exciting platform.

We could do audio, we could do video, we do all kinds of graphics.

You were connected to the world.

And so there was the next, the next location for our content.

I initially viewed it 100% as a way to promote WRAL-TV news.

I didn't say to myself, okay, here's a new business, business-business, but this is what we're going to do is we're gonna really promote our local news.

And on our news we're gonna say if you want more information about this look at the website, and on our web we're gonna say make sure you watch this tonight on the six o'clock news.

And it's sort of for marketing and only later, well, as I said the initial idea for the internet was not we're gonna put all these commercials on it.

It has become a very important part of our business.

And we have really worked it.

Put an awful lot of resources in it because that's a big... We have to have our content on that platform is what I'm trying to say.

- And when did you see that shift going from?

- Four or five years in I think.

Everybody was doing that and it was becoming something else.

As the relationship between local television stations, and their networks, ABC, NBC, CBS/Fox was changing the networks were not paying the stations.

We were looking for other revenue sources where else can we sell advertising?

Then we begin to look at it as a business.

- You grew up working at the station in many capacities.

- [Jim] Yes.

- Did your own children follow in your footsteps working at the station?

- You know, I shouldn't have done this, but I always assumed that Jimmy would work at the station.

I was lucky, fortunate, that he was interested in it, and, yes, he started working there in high school.

He ran camera on the morning news.

He'd get up before high school, and run camera on the morning news.

So early on he understood how the place works, which is really good, so, yes, he's interested in it, and is now the president of the company.

He's come along, he moved along fine, didn't he?

[laughs] He had a good trajectory, yeah.

- And when did you recognize that Jimmy would succeed you?

- When did I?

Well, he didn't have any choice.

I don't mean it like that.

I mean that he needed to do the things in order to build his skillset and his capabilities in order to be president.

And we needed to work in various parts of the company.

He wanted to do it.

I don't mean that he had to do it, but it was kind of the natural order of things.

And he was very comfortable with that natural order.

There was no sort of notion that Michael, Jimmy's brother would be part of Capitol Broadcasting.

That was something that I worked on.

I really didn't know what Michael wanted to do.

I was talking about coincidences, and how somebody introduces you, and certain things just sort of happen that aren't planned at all.

We ended up making a significant investment in real estate in Durham.

Michael really took to that.

He loves doing that, and he's really good at it.

He's senior vice president of Capitol Broadcasting, works for Jimmy, and that's worked out fine.

That was not planned.

Isn't that good?

That's great.

How many people get to go to work and work with their boys?

You might not want to ask them what they think of it, but I like it.

No, we all have a good time, we have a good time.

- And what are your current goals for the company?

- So the competitive environment has really changed.

I have a rating book from the '60s Nielsen.

There are three stations in it.

We have 1,000 channels on cable, and more than that on the internet.

So where does the local broadcaster fit into that?

The part that I like about this is local news ratings are going up.

Local news is local news, right?

And doing a good job with that I think will keep us in good stead.

So how do we improve local news?

How do we improve our local news on the internet?

We decided that we should.

Okay, real estate was a big diversification.

Everything had been broadcasting.

Then we get into real estate, and part of that was baseball.

And we made a conscious decision to purchase controlling interest in PBS, Professional Building Supplies, a large supplier of home building stuff.

So that's another thing to kind of spread out the company.

Okay, so if you cut me open TV sets are gonna fall out of something.

I'm a broadcaster through and through.

The company is gonna diversify more, but in all cases, I think it will be local.

I want to get us to the new technology.

Now we have a new system.

The next version of digital called ATSC 3.0 has been approved.

WRAL is operating an experimental ATSC 3.0 station now.

I recited that because we just have more throughput.

We can run three or four TV stations.

It's internet-based, internet protocol so it's all internet.

It's new, it's gonna be the new golden age of broadcasting if we can ever figure out how to get to it, and get all those sets in people's homes.

- You have also had a tradition of documentaries on WRAL.

Starting in around 2004, you started a regular documentary unit to look at community issues.

- [Jim] Yes.

- Why was it important to have this type of in-depth coverage?

- Everybody wants to do documentaries.

The difficulty in doing documentaries is that you also have to do the news every day, right?

What we have to do today, a documentary you've got to do research, we've got to do all that stuff.

So we set up a separate unit.

So that's all they do.

Clay Johnson has been doing that for us for a long time, does a very good job.

So it gives us time to think through this topic, and do a program.

I'm very proud of that series.

Think we ought to do more of it.

Everybody ought to do more.

And I'm glad we supplied the resources.

- You told an interviewer once that one of your business philosophies is first to market.

- [Jim] Yeah.

- Tell us what that means and how you applied that to your tenure at Capitol Broadcasting?

- All right.

So you sit around and you think about your brand.

So if I said WRAL to you you think of something.

There's something that first comes to your mind.

I think a great positioning for an organization is innovation, creativity, and part of that to me is first to market.

I've been on boards of lots of organizations, and have heard lots of philosophies about this, and understand everybody's philosophy.

One is here's this new thing.

Well, there'll be a group that say, okay, we need to do this, we need to try this.

And then there'll be a group on the board probably larger that say, wait a minute.

That's gonna cost a lot of money.

It might not work.

Let's just sort of wait and see.

Let's wait and see if people like this high-definition, right?

Let's wait and see at this helicopter news gathering.

Let's wait and sort of see before we take the risk and spend the money.

I'll argue either one of those, whichever one you want me to argue, but my own notion is that establishing the concept that you're first to market, and you will take chances is a really good differentiation for your brand and your... And if it improves your product then you ought to give it a go.

Fun, there's that fun word again, but it is.

- Did you inherit this philosophy from your grandpa?

- You know, no, I don't know, I don't think so.

I will say that I'm in my 30s, and he's in his 90s, and I would argue that he was one of the youngest guys in the company.

He really liked new ideas.

He wasn't into the financial risk business, but if there was some way to sort of moderate that.

That's why you notice I'd say we didn't do anything that would break the bank.

Get started, build it, and move along a little bit every day.

- How about your son, Jimmy?

Has he learned the lessons first to market from you?

- Yes, he has a similar interest in how can we use technology to improve our product, or gain some advantage in our competitive marketplace.

I have to watch it a little bit, or he'll take off.

He's very interested in it.

- And it sounds like you're excited of what's ahead for Jimmy.

- I'm excited for him, yeah.

- What do you want your legacy to be?

- Okay, so if you said, Jim, tell me about your body of work working for Capital Broadcasting Company for 50 years, I just passed my 50 year mark, and for a good part of that running it, WRAL-TV how would you sum that up?

I would sum it up as what a great opportunity to do that.

I worked with great people.

I'm very proud of our emphasis on localism, and all of the public service, and public affairs programming we've done.

I think that we've always realized who we are, and what we're supposed to do.

You remember, we don't own that license.

We get that license from the government for free, and we put the station on the air.

So there's a connection that we know who we are, and we know what we're supposed to do.

We've had a group of people that have worked really hard to do it.

And I'm very proud of all of them.

I want to mention 25 people, I can't do that, but I've worked with some great people.

I'm very proud of their body of work over the last...

I can mention that we've had the highest rated newscasts in the country, that we're the first at this, and all these sort of wonderful look at how good we are things, but the good we are is how we fit in the community, and who works there, and how our families have done.

So I'm checking this off on WRAL, Jim, good job, check.

- Let's talk about Durham's history as a tobacco town.

- General Johnston's Confederate troops are here.

Sherman's troops are here, two big armies.

They're negotiating the surrender.

And one night the Union and Confederate troops got together in downtown Durham, and broke into a tobacco warehouse, and stole all the tobacco in pouches.

Okay, so then there's a surrender and everybody goes home.

And the troops started writing to the Durham post office, which was at the Durham station, the railroad station.

The land was given by Mr. Durham for the railroad station.

And so the tobacco business started growing in Durham, and was huge, okay?

The American Tobacco.

That was owned.

It wasn't American Tobacco at the time, but the one building it was one building, and the name of their product was America's best Spanish flavored smoking tobacco.

Not a very good name to advertise.

It was Mr. Green who owned the company.

They went downtown at lunch and they ate oysters.

And at that time they would put powdered mustard on their oysters, and they used Colman's Mustard, which you can still buy, made in England, red can, and on the front of the Colman Mustard's can is a bull.

So they're sitting there talking about what can we name our product?

And one of them looks at it and bull, there's a bull, bull, bull, Durham.

It became Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco.

If you ever read any of Mr. Duke's papers, he would say often we cannot beat the Bull.

And what he meant was Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco.

They were very successful.

Along comes Mr. Blackwell.

As a matter of fact, it's Blackwell Street right there by American Tobacco.

Mr. Blackwell is very interested in advertising.

And if you study advertising the retail advertising of cigarettes was one of the first big advertising pushes.

They were giving away things, and pictures, and posters, and all sorts of... To promote their cigarettes to promote their brand.

Mr. Blackwell did two things.

He hired a team of painters, and they just fanned out around the country.

And if they could find a barn, or a building, they would paint the bull on that building.

We have one of those in the stadium in the club there in the stadium.

The other thing he did was he hired a team of carpenters, and they fanned out around the United States, and they would go to local ballparks, and they would cut out a bull out of wood, and put it down in the right hand corner, a big bull, for the Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco thus the phrase in baseball the bullpen.

The manager would say, go warm up under the bull.

And it eventually became the bullpen.

At one time Durham was larger than Raleigh.

Durham's run in tobacco, and Black Wall Street, Durham really took off.

- Today we think of the Raleigh-Durham area as one large region, but at that time was it more separate between the two cities?

- Yeah, we were very separate.

Something I've worked on as long as I can remember is the notion that we really are one community, and that people work one place, and live another place, go out in other places that we're a metropolitan area made up of all these centers.

- You received an honorary degree from Duke University.

What did this mean to you?

- I did, it's one of the nicest things that ever happened.

I was honored and very happy about that.

And by the way, we wouldn't have had American Tobacco without Duke.

So when we did American Tobacco I got the option.

I started working with the city and the county about if we get this done will you build the decks, and determined that I needed to have some tenants before we actually started the project.

Duke was the first organization to commit for space.

That kept me going.

Nan Keohane's commitment, and later President Brodhead's commitment.

- Another organization that you have long supported is public radio, WUNC FM.

And they now have their newsroom in Durham.

Tell us about this.

- By the way, WUNC FM normally has the highest rated morning radio show in the Triangle.

I'm not supposed to like them.

They're pretty rough competition.

When we did American Tobacco we had supported the building over by the Friday Center the home of public radio.

At the time we were doing American Tobacco I became aware that they were thinking about an addition.

They needed more space, so we were gonna put it over by the Friday Center.

And I started thinking about how interesting it would be to have their news operation in American Tobacco.

We have our Bay 7 event area with a big glass window, and you can look in and see their noon program.

So that's a really good presence.

A lot of people are there see the studios, and I think they've got really good facilities.

- Let's talk about some of the other efforts that you have had over the years to support young people, and, especially, young people who are pursuing careers in broadcasting.

- There's so many organizations.

They all deserve support.

Always get back to Scouts, Boy Scouts.

Always get back to the Y.

Now we've had a long association with Scouts.

We have two Explorer posts, Post five, and Post 50.

The WRAL Post Five is one of the oldest posts in the country.

And the members of that post learn broadcasting.

It's at the station, and they produce technology, the whole thing, writing, create their own product.

And Post 50 is at the Durham Bulls, and that group actually televises the Durham Bulls game.

You would think it's ESPN, they're good.

And when they finish by the end of the season you really would think they're operating for the network.

And the Y has a terrific program.

Well, by the way, the Y is a Triangle organization now.

All the Y's have merged.

Doug McMillan and the leadership at the Y, they do a great job.

- We talked about the development of American Tobacco.

What is the vision for the project today?

- Well, that's a good question.

Jim, are you finished with American Tobacco?

The answer is, no, we're not even close to being finished.

The Ford dealership next to American Tobacco is moving.

Going out on 15-501, and we acquired those 11 acres.

So there's 11 acres next to American Tobacco that we're gonna make part of American Tobacco.

Now that will be different.

Now that's gonna be new constructions, and sort of a new idea about downtown development.

- Are you still focused on regionalism?

And is that still important do you think for the whole Triangle area?

- Yeah, you remember when Durham agreed to build the ballpark for the Durham Bulls, this idea of Triangle central park sort of flew the coop, but my idea about the region is very important, the total being a lot more than the sum of the parts.

I like to tell this story about the Triangle.

I'm in my office in Raleigh.

I get a phone call from a young man who says he works for the "Durham Herald" the Durham newspaper in their Cary office.

And he wants to talk to me.

I'm in Raleigh about our baseball team that's in Durham.

So I asked him to drop by.

He dropped by that afternoon.

And we spent a good bit of time talking about how much he enjoyed living in Chapel Hill.

That's the way the Triangle is now.

It's not that way to people like me who've been here a long time and lived, but to people that have come to the Triangle, and they're more people that have moved in in the last 10 years.

That's how they view this.

This is one place, we live one place, work another place, go out to go to the ball game another place.

- Looking not only at the Triangle region, but North Carolina as a state, what do you think are the most pressing issues that we still need to address?

- Again, I think they're the same ones.

We can look up the 10 and 20 years ago list.

If we try to measure ourselves on the 10 and 20 year ago list we're just not making the progress we need to make.

Number one, we don't need any more studies.

Please don't study anything else.

We know exactly where we need to make investments, and what we need to emphasize.

And that starts with public education, and that starts with the notion that our rural counties do not have the money to supplement their public education system.

like you can in Wake, and these other places.

So we got to work on that allocation of funds for public.

We got to get that working.

We got to stay with our community colleges.

Life doesn't work if you don't have health insurance.

You might think it does, but it doesn't.

Number one reason for personal bankruptcies.

Lives are ruined in this state because you don't have insurance.

I can't deal with the notion of not expanding Medicaid, right?

Everybody's got to have health insurance, but we just keep plugging.

There isn't a silver bullet.

There isn't some new way to do anything other than make the investments, set the standards, and improve the things that we need to improve.

- According to our research, 25% of North Carolinians live in poverty.

This is an issue you've been working on for a long time.

Do you see a solution on the horizon?

- Well, I always say I still have confidence in this.

I've been a little shaky on it, but I'm back.

I'm back to fully confident with public education is the key to everything, but you have to realize that public education includes health, housing, transportation, right?

It's just that you got to put all of those together, and we'll solve that.

I do not believe and I'm angry when the notion is put forward that these poor people, well, they're poor because it's their fault.

They're lazy, you know, if we help them they'll just stay on the dole forever.

That is an infuriating notion.

Everybody wants a job.

Everybody wants to work.

Everybody, you know, that we don't.

And for some reason our system is not working so that they have the opportunity to do that.

Now what you'll hear is, no, everybody has the same opportunity.

Some people take advantage of it and others don't.

No way.

No way, now I didn't say that I don't believe in hard work, and you got to go through it and all that sort of business.

And no way do I excuse the fact that we have 25% poverty, and we have a bunch of lazy people.

That's big, it's okay to say that now you know?

As a politician you can say that.

I don't believe in the welfare state.

These people need to go to work.

Nope.

- How do you define the business case for the importance of education, especially public education?

- Right, I have a couple of things to say about that.

One, and I say this nicely, I'm tired of the business case.

Do we really need a business case to decide we're going to teach kids to read?

So we've gotten ourselves in this position that we'll say, and it's true, you know, if we did a better job teaching people to read we wouldn't have as many people in prison.

It would save us money.

The business case is we wouldn't have to pay $20,000 a year for this prisoner, if we just teach them to read in the third and fourth grade.

Now I bought into that for awhile, but I woke up one day and said, oh, wait a minute.

It doesn't have anything to do with prison.

It has to do with our responsibility to provide an education to folks 'cause they're folks, right?

See what I mean?

You shouldn't ask me that question because I'm into this notion that we don't need a business reason to do the right thing.

I'm not mad at you.

Right, I think we have lost our way when we say there's a good business case for helping poor people, right?

You see what I mean?

That's what I'm trying to do and say, no, okay, well, great, but how about there's a good case for doing the right thing?

See what I mean?

We've gotten away with the point if there's not a good money reason for doing this, then we're not going to do it.

That's really dangerous.

- Your wife, Barbara Goodmon said in an interview that, quote, happiness is helping other people, end quote.

Do you believe that as well?

- Oh, I think that is there a better feeling than maybe doing something that's successful and helping an organization, or other people, or something, getting it done?

I mean, is there?

I don't know what that is.

Yes, I agree with that.

- You and Mrs. Goodmon are getting ready to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary.

What are the keys to a successful marriage?

- You're not gonna be surprised when I say simplicity, keeping the main thing the main thing, and sort of rolling with the notion that it's not gonna all be good.

And we're going to have lots of problems in the family and in the business and everywhere else.

We're gonna get through that.

None of that, whatever it is, we're gonna get over it and keep rolling.

- You and Mrs. Goodmon have 10 grandchildren.

- 10, that's right, count them one to 10.

And they're wonderful.

Let's see, Elizabeth has two, they live in Greenville.

Jimmie has four in Raleigh live next door to us, and Michael has four and lives in Durham.

- Do you think any of them will want to follow into the family business?

- I am sure that I know I think about it.

I know Jimmy thinks about it.

I know Michael thinks about it.

We don't talk about it.

I think we decided how about we let them grow up a little bit before we start talking about that.

I hope so.

- Let's go back in time a bit and talk about a nickname that you had during junior high school.

- Our house was next to my grandfather's house, and I was going to Daniels Junior High School.

It was great, new, went first year that Daniels opened.

I'd get a ride out my mom would take me, and my grandma would drive me to school.

My grandmother fell and broke her hip.

So my grandfather hired a driver for my grandmother.

His name was Oscar Williams.

She had a black Fleetwood Cadillac, it was horrible.

And so, believe it or not, and I was furious about this, but believe it or not, Oscar would drive me to Daniels Junior High School in the morning in this big black Cadillac.

I thought it was abusive.

And that, of course, didn't work, but Oscar and I together figured out we'd see people as we were driving by we just started stopping and picking up everybody.

And so basically we became the school bus for our side our end of Glenwood Avenue.

And Oscar would even come to the school assemblies for our class, but so out of that I got the nickname Diamond Jim Goodmon.

He comes rolling in in his chauffeured Cadillac.

I take some pride that I survived all that, that I got through all that it wasn't terrible.

- Even in those early years, and then later on you seem to be a very creative problem-solver.

How do you approach challenges and issues?

- Creative problem, I think that the key to that always is to back up.

Okay, I know that we're upset, I know it's emotional.

I know it's a problem, it's not working, oh no, oh no.

Okay, well, how about stop, let's back up and start at the very beginning again.

What are we trying to do?

Why are we trying to do that?

And then how are we gonna do that?

And just go through it again.

Really simplify it to me.

Just kind of sit back.

Right.

If you ask me to describe myself, I would say, if things are falling apart, and things are not going well, call me, I'm your guy.

Now, if things are rolling, and it's good and everything's fine, don't call me.

I won't be much help.

I enjoy problem-solving.

- We often ask our guests to imagine their own epitaph.

And you said in an interview in 2014 with "Business North Carolina" you volunteered that one such epitaph for you may be, quote, here lies Jim Goodmon.

He really went after it, end quote.

- That's it.

He went after it.

Yes, I like that, yeah.

You know, he swung the bat.

He would swing at the pitch when it came.

I mean, he would go and get it.

Right, I've worked hard.

That doesn't mean everything was good, and I accomplished wonderful stuff, but I worked, I did it, I went 100%.

Gosh, I read all these things.

David Brooks is now making all these speeches about it's not what you did.

It's all your relationships and all your kind of stuff, all that kind of stuff, but I worked hard at relationships.

I mean, I just didn't ever, I hope that I gave it.

I gave everything a lot is what I'm saying.

Jim Goodmon, he's a player.

I might like that better, he's a player.

So, Shannon, we've talked about a lot of things.

Broadcasting, the foundation, the community, I loved it.

Been involved in a whole lot of things.

And the only way we could get all that done is the people that I worked with, and that we all worked together to do that.

I can't, there's no way that I can mention all those people.

I have worried that while we were doing this I didn't give enough credit to other people, but I got that.

I mean, I know that certain things would not have happened, and that a whole lot of the success of the company, of the foundation, of what I've been able to accomplish has to do with a whole lot of help from a whole lot of great people.

- [Shannon] Sounds like a lot of collaboration and partnership.

- Yes, right.

- You once told an interviewer that you are, quote, still amazed that we can send pictures through the air, end quote.

Do you still have that amazement?

- Well, yeah, it's really a child youthful sort of.

I'm still the same way I've always been about, wow, look at this, look at what we can do.

We can send pictures through the air, and think of it now we're using satellites, and the internet, and all that kind of stuff.

I'm very still excited about what we can do.

And I think that's a big part of success is to really like what you do, have some interest in it.

- Mr. Goodmon, we'll leave it there.

Thank you so much for sharing all your time with us.

- Shannon, thank you, I've enjoyed this.

It's been a great experience.

- And that concludes our "Biographical Conversations" series with Jim Goodmon.

For more information on this series and the "Biographical Conversations" project you can go to our website.

Thanks for joining us.

[soft music] ♪ - [Narrator] Funding for this series of "Biographical Conversations" was made possible by support provided by Frank Daniels, Jr. And by contributions from UNC-TV viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.