(upbeat music) - Welcome to "At Issue."

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And we are celebrating, and I say we, WTVP, celebrating 50 years of service to Central Illinois.

50 years and I am pleased to have the first two CEOs of WTVP on the program.

First, let me introduce you to Elwin Basquin.

Elwin was the CEO for the first 25 years.

Elwin, thank you for being with us.

And Chet Tomczyk is here.

And Chet was the second CEO.

You started in 1996.

- Six.

- [Wayne] And served for how many years?

- 18 years as CEO and two years as Development Manager before that.

- Thank you so much for being with us.

- [Chet] Thanks for asking.

- And for those of you watching, I'm going to yield my hosting capabilities and allow these two gentlemen just to have a conversation.

And I think Chet might carry the ball for us.

- [Elwin] I don't know but you were here that long.

- I was here before you were, I think.

- [Wayne] I can see I've lost control already, but let me start with one question though.

You, Elwin, you took a leap of faith so to speak.

You were on an airplane, and you met for the first time an individual called Dr Phil Weinberg and, lo and behold, you had a job, what were you thinking?

You were in Iowa.

- Yeah, yeah, we'd been at a fundraising conference up in Boyne Highlands, Michigan, and we rode back next to each other on the plane.

And after he began telling me all that was going on in Peoria, or planning to be going on.

I began to wonder what he was smoking in that pipe he had in his mouth.

But come to find out it was all true.

And I was amazed at some of the plans that he had for building and growing a PBS station in Peoria, Illinois.

After years of planning and researching the ability to have one, and in fact, the matter of fact, the license was given to Channel 47 as a commercial license rather than a not for, what am I saying?

- [Chet] Not for profit.

- Yeah.

- Or non-commercial.

- Because the FCC got tired of having us appeal the motion that they grant that wish that we use Channel 47 until that particular license was freed.

And so they were finally gave in and allowed us to do that.

- Chet, this is a rather unique station when you look at the entirety of the nation.

It's a little bit different than most PBS affiliates.

- Well, especially in terms of the size of the market.

When Phil and Elwin got this thing going, the signal reached maybe from Bradley's Campus to the river, if not for much further beyond, maybe Topeka and back, without too much exaggeration.

But the thing that made it different than other stations of this size and markets of this size, is those markets had stations that were governed by universities or colleges or a state entity like Iowa.

- Right.

- And this was a commercial, or sorry, a community licensee, where the community was in charge and they started with zero budget every start of every fiscal year and had to raise their money.

And this is the guy that did it.

- [Wayne] So Elwin, is it true that in the early days you went door to door to let people know that there was a public television station?

- Oh yes, and until we moved off the campus with a tower and a full power transmitter, we were not well-known outside the Tri-County area.

- Chet, if I might just a little bit of background, you really have been in big markets.

- [Chet] Yeah.

I've been in markets in New York.

I've been in Washington, DC and with PBS.

And then here in Peoria and it has been terrific.

This is where it happens, right here.

- So what makes WTVP, I don't wanna use the word unique, but special having seen, you worked for PBS in DC.

- Yeah.

- What makes this station so special in your mind?

- The staff and the volunteers.

I mean, if you look back at when Elwin got started with the initial auction, for example, and with the fundraising, many of those volunteers that were there with him are still working today as volunteers for the station.

50 years of volunteering.

- [Elwin] Yes, it's amazing.

- The peak of friends, yeah.

That's the uniqueness, it's the community that comes together to support the station to make the station happen.

Not just a couple people up in a tower somewhere, you know?

- [Wayne] So it's not just the, go ahead, Elwin.

- [Elwin] The hope and the promise, I think in the beginning was that if we could make a PBS station work well in a market this size, under the conditions that we were growing, why stations around the country, over a hundred markets, did not have a PBS station at all, would be able to get the courage up to file a license with the FCC and get a station of their own going.

And that did happen.

- And it was unique in other ways.

When you came first to interview, Chet, you saw a studio on the second floor of an engineering building at Bradley University.

- [Chet] Yeah, yeah, it was kind of hidden away.

But- - We loved the grand piano.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I don't know how they got it in there, or how they got it out.

But it was kind of interesting is when Elwin invited me down for an interview, he picked me up at the airport and we went to a volunteer's home where there was an auction wrap-up meeting.

And I wasn't supposed to tell anybody why I was here 'cause I had worked in auctions in other stations before.

And so I was kind of the consulting person on auctions with Elwin.

And I just fell in love with the people, fell in love with the place.

And, fortunately for me, he, you know he says, "You interested in coming to Peoria?"

- [Wayne] You know, I wanna continue the conversation with regard to the volunteers because there's a small staff here.

- [Chet] Yeah.

- And you mentioned the volunteers and you, in fact, after you retired, you still volunteer.

You're an MC on the auction.

So what in talking to other volunteers, what is it that brings so many of them here?

- I think they find public television, and specifically WTVP, unique.

There are other commercial stations in town.

They do a wonderful job with what they do.

They do local news, but this is the station, I think, that does programming that reflects back on their community.

It's programming that can be used in their home programming, that can be used in their schools for general education, for specific education, for just a general area edition, if you will.

And I think that's important.

A lot of those people are retired teachers, they're active teachers at the time, now they're retired.

They still see the value of the station and what it provides to the community, a unique contribution to the community.

- [Wayne] I wanna step aside for just a moment and I'll let Chet take the lead on this.

But if you, I'd like to hear some thoughts from both of you and maybe you can reflect back on the history before you came to WTVP.

But if the two of you could share some thoughts on the growth of this station.

- Well, Elwin, when you came here you were literally starting from from the ground up.

- Yeah.

- You had to get a transmitter.

- They had fewer lights than you got in this studio.

That's all we had in the studio.

- And you kind of begged, borrowed, and stole equipment, whatever else.

- [Elwin] Yeah, we'd go on treasure hunts on the weekends, find auction sales of television equipment.

We'd buy up whatever we could afford and haul it home.

- I remember when I first got here, there were big scoop lights painted green that said WTVP on it.

And I said, that's great.

You bought those from some station in Decatur or someplace.

- That's right, yep.

- That was amazing.

- We didn't even have to repaint them.

- (laughing) And they were still there.

But, and then you had your office at Jobst Hall, and the studio was there.

There's no handicapped accessibility.

How did you deal with all that?

- Well, it was a constant request at the University for more space.

And we worked hard to get that additional space even though it was hard to come by at Bradley.

And eventually we eked out a proposal by the amazing Mr Phil Weinberg.

- [Chet] Yeah.

- To build an addition onto Jobst Hall and which would allocate space in there for, wouldn't you know it, some TV people.

And that's how we managed to spread our wings a little bit.

- [Chet] I always kind of got the idea, when I got here, that Bradley didn't quite know all the things that you were doing.

All the things that Phil had done- - Yeah.

- To get the station going.

- Yeah, well Phil didn't have time to tell everybody everything he was doing.

(Chet laughing) And probably that was a good thing.

And he built many features of the campus at Bradley that he built up on his own with his raising the money for it, getting the things together to make it work.

Different buildings added on, additions, rebuilding, new targets.

He did it all.

And he did it all without the encouragement necessarily from the University.

- [Chet] Yeah.

- He did it on his own.

- [Chet] Well, the license originally, they thought, was going to be part of the University.

- Yeah.

- Because WCBU radio is licensed to Bradley.

- Right.

- But how did it come about that the license for WTVP is a community licensee?

- [Elwin] Well, he wanted to keep that very separate and make sure that the University didn't grab onto the license itself and use it as a promotional tool for the University.

That was one reason.

But he wanted it to be unique and different.

And have that feature where it could stand alone on its own.

- Right.

- And by gosh, it has stood on its own all these years.

- [Chet] And then to get the community involved and to get people on the board, you had to work with many different organizations to get them as partners, like the library and the- - Yes, we had 40 some agencies throughout the Tri-County area that were affiliated with WTVP.

And we met every month and planned programming, and researched opportunities for production.

And had the aspirations of these organizations to move ahead and produce programs and of which they helped feature people and resources to make it happen.

- [Chet] Well, one of those programs, I think it's kind of unique and an interesting story is Sesame Street.

- [Elwin] Yeah.

- Phil Weinberg saw Sesame Street and wanted to get it here in Peoria.

- Oh yes.

- [Chet] Can you talk about that?

- Yes.

Long before they ever put a signal on the air here for Channel 47, Phil went to WMBD Television and asked if they would be willing and interested in carrying an hour of Sesame street each morning to alert the population of a forthcoming tool to teach children from the Sesame Street program.

And of which they, amazingly enough, agreed to do that for an entire year.

It was an amazing game that he played and won.

And the people at WMBD loved the show.

They'd all gather around the TV every morning to watch their own station play Sesame Street.

- And it was commercial free.

- Yes.

- On a commercial station.

- Right.

- [Chet] That's amazing to me.

- [Elwin] Yeah, it was.

- [Chet] They gave up all that revenue- - Yeah.

- [Chet] And did that as a public service.

- Yeah, it was.

Yeah, so that was kind of a unique arrangement.

He also got the cover, or the back then they were publishing the phone book every year, it was a nice thick volume.

- You might wanna explain what a phone book is.

- Yeah, a phone book is one where it carries all, everybody's phone number in it.

- All alphabetically.

- On the cover of that- Was a picture of our tower on it.

And it wasn't even completed at the time that they took the picture, but it looked great.

- [Wayne] Well, actually there were two towers, right?

The one on Cole Hollow Road- - [Elwin] Yeah.

- came later- - [Elwin] Yes, back in '83 or '84.

- [Chet] Well, there's an interesting story, speaking of towers, that I had heard that Phil and you, I guess, picked up a bargain basement transmitter somewhere.

It was being used somewhere in Germany or whatever else.

- It was from Germany.

One of only two that were made, prototypes.

And they shipped it to Peoria, Illinois.

And it took two freightliners to unload it into the space that was allocated for it.

And the amazing thing was that the engineers at Bradley and the Engineering Department helped install it.

And, of course, they had a great deal of difficulty because of the language.

And all of the schematics were in German.

And so this was a real challenge for these, even these well-to-do and well-schooled language men of the department to learn how to use a little bit of German to figure out the schematics.

- [Chet] Yeah, the story, I was talking to some of the engineers there and they said when they first turned it on there was a short or something in there.

- Oh.

- And it made the tower glow.

It got so hot, it started glowing, or at least the antenna.

- Well, that may have been true, that may have been a nice story.

- [Chet] I guess an apocryphal story, but it was a good story.

- We had an old Ampex antenna that was faulty.

And we sent it back to the manufacturer three times and finally gave up on it.

And we made them replace it with a GE unit that was more reliable.

That really stuck in their craw, they have to buy somebody else's antenna- - Oh wow.

- And mount it for us.

But they did it.

- Yeah, and at that time there was a tower company here in Peoria that built the tower.

- Yeah.

- It was a Rohn Tower Company.

- Yes.

- I don't know if they're still around, but yeah.

But now, so that tower was only up so high and that means the antenna was only up so high- About 280 feet.

- [Chet] And so that didn't give you the coverage area that you wanted, so- - [Elwin] That's correct.

- You went looking for a higher spot, didn't you?

- Right, we researched the Tri-County area but we wanted to be where the other stations were fairly closely linked together.

That's why we chose the location that we did, which was just off 474 over in East Peoria.

And it turned out to be a great spot for us.

And we bought seven and a half acres of corn.

And raised a crop every year, which we raised and banked about a little less than $200- - Yep.

- Off it.

But I'll tell you, the land was very important to us.

- [Chet] Oh yes, it was the gentleman farmer- - And we didn't have to pay any taxes on it.

- The gentleman farmer, as I recall.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

So that actually increased the potential viewership for the station.

- Oh yes, made all the difference in the world.

- [Chet] Yeah, just from a technical standpoint you could either increase the power to the transmitter to get the signal out further or raise the antenna up higher.

And that would give you that same broad reach with less power, as I recall the engineers.

- Yeah, so their logarithms show you how that's done.

- [Chet] Yep.

- And our coverage area turned out to be even more than we projected.

So we were very proud of that movement.

And the federal government helped us with building that tower because we could carry the weather station on that tower for the government.

And ensure them that that would be a safe place for them to have it.

- Now towers, antennas, and all that is kind of interesting.

But public television, WTVP is about programming.

And you started a number of local programs, some of them, I wish they, which continued 'til today.

- Two things stuck in my craw when I first came here, was that I wanted the station to have a mobile unit.

Where we could get out of that second floor studio and do programs throughout the community.

I managed to talk to the man with a cigar down on Farmington Road and got a mobile unit.

A carcass given to us to build it up the way we wanted it.

And that the second thing was to have our auctions off the campus.

And a place where it would be worthy of the volunteers that we would have helping us with it.

That's why we settled on doing it at Exposition Gardens in the opera house there.

As unworthy as the building was, it served our needs at the time to have that facility to do our auction there.

- Yeah, and that was before the Civic Center was built.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- [Wayne] Let me add one other issue, that floor was slanted.

- [Chet] That's what I was gonna say.

I hear people talking about the floor being slanted, it was a theater style.

- Yeah.

- And these guys having to push these heavy cameras, which the cameras nowadays are so small and portable.

And those were like boat anchors and just trying to push those up the hill and keep them there.

- [Elwin] Yeah, yep.

- That's when TV was real men, boy.

- Yeah, yeah, it took physical physical work to carry off that auction.

One year we went for seven nights on the auction.

And it was an amazing attempt at us to do a live auction seven straight days in a row.

And it was a challenge on our staff and our volunteers to be able to pull that off.

But I tell you, we made more money that year than we ever made in any other year.

- As an auctioneer, I remember those days because it was chalk on a green board.

And you go back to Duckies, I think was the place we were getting tuxedos.

And they'd say, "What's all this yellow on your jacket?"

Could I ask the two of you to talk about programming first?

And you, because you mentioned that Elwin, if the two of you could follow up on, you know, sporting events- - Talk about that mobile unit.

- [Wayne] Go ahead.

- That allowed us to come out, we went to Pekin and did the Pekin Marigold Festival more than one year, I believe.

We were out at Expo Gardens during the fair, during the heart of Illinois Fair.

And covered all kinds of events out there.

We just wore ourselves thin doing it.

But I'll tell you, it was the shows that were never done before and have never been done since we quit doing them.

- [Wayne] And sporting events, for instance.

- Bradley basketball, men's basketball was on WTVP until it became commercially viable, until the Bradley teams got really good.

And then it was made available to the commercial stations here because they could return dollars back to Bradley.

And so other programs went on.

When I started here, one of the first things that I did was Program Director at the time, Melinda Miller, and I met with Ken Kavanagh who was the Athletic Director at Bradley.

And we decided we're gonna try doing with Title IX, we'll do some Bradley women's games.

And so then we ran those for several years.

And then toward the end when things got tough for the commercial stations, we started broadcasting some men's basketball programs too in the newer unit from the one that was done back there.

Back when television, when Elwin was the manager, television pictures were like this.

And when I came in with digital, television pictures were like this, if that makes any sense, look at your TV now.

So that's the difference between this and this, right?

- Yeah right, that's the difference.

- It took me a year to figure out how to do that.

- We did several events from the field house.

- Yep.

- Which was just across the road on Elmwood there.

And we did several visiting guests and sports figures, and highlighted the different subjects of sport, including tennis and others.

We had a tennis tournament that we featured national events.

And I think, I can't remember all the names of the people that were in that tournament, but it was a great event.

And people began to recognize the station for more than just a studio talking face kind of program.

And so we won some national awards with some of those programs because we were able to get out of the studio with a mobile unit and produce programs.

- [Wayne] And other sporting events included Illinois State Football, and hockey, and Peoria Chiefs.

- [Chet] Baseball, yep.

- [Wayne] And I believe WTVP was the first to broadcast in all of those sports.

- And Bradley soccer.

- [Wayne] And Bradley soccer.

- Yep.

- Yeah, it was nice to lead the way with some of the programming and introduce it to other stations who then followed suit and decided that that was something they could do too.

- [Chet] Yeah, and there were two programs that continued for a long time that started under Elwin's regime.

One is your program, "At Issue."

- [Wayne] 1988.

- And here we are, 1988.

Well, gee, what's that, how many years is that?

- [Wayne] 33, starting 34 in July.

- [Chet] With the same host, that's amazing.

And "Illinois Adventure" started that same year.

- [Chet] "Illinois Adventure" is the second one, yeah.

- [Elwin] Our first weekly show that we put on, called "Monday Night", which was hosted by Celeste Kelly.

And she would have special guests, people foot she would bring in from outside of Peoria to interview, and to perform, and to be recognized, and so forth.

And that ran for several years while she was with us.

So that was followed by H's program.

And they all seemed to find their market.

- Yeah.

- And that's good.

- Yeah.

- [Chet] I think, for me, some of the program production that we did here, that kind of stuck was a lot of the town hall meetings.

There were specific problems going on in the community that needed to be more than five, six minutes on a local newscast.

Really needed some in-depth discussion, sharing of viewpoints, and all that.

And whether it was race relations, or economics, or business, or healthcare, or whatever, and those were some of the topics for town hall meetings here.

And where people are allowed to call in and ask questions and get their questions answered.

So I was pretty proud of that, of the way the station did those.

- [Wayne] One other thing I wanna bring up, Chet, and that is when the tornado hit Washington in 2013, November 17th.

It was on a Sunday morning.

Wednesday night, all the TV stations gathered here in this studio.

- [Chet] Right.

- Tell me a little bit about how you pulled that together.

- I was at home watching, the weather was coming in.

I had turned on Channel 25, watching Chuck Collins.

And I think it, all of a sudden, Chuck says, "We're leaving right now."

And he disappears and you get back a few minutes.

Well, our transmitter was just down the road.

And so I got in my car, my wife said, "Where are you going?"

I said, "I'm going to the transmitter."

Like I could do something, you know?

But I wanted to make sure it was still there.

And so fortunately it still was.

And the folks at Channel 25 were okay.

But Washington was not, Washington was decimated.

And for all of the times that, we WTVP, have asked our community to help us to become members, to support us with auctions, whatever else, it was time for us to do something specific to give back.

Well, one of the problems or good points, I guess, with public broadcasting is that we cannot use our facilities to raise money for any other cause.

- [Elwin] Yes.

- We can raise for ourselves, but not for anybody else.

- Right.

- So I thought, well, we need to do something to get the word out and try and raise something, some dollars for Washington to help them out.

So I went to the Red Cross and talked to Anne Fox and said, "Would you be interested in doing something like this, and co-sponsoring?"

And she says, "Yeah."

I said, "All right, let me get in touch with the FCC and see what I can do."

So I called our Washington attorneys, got in touch with the FCC and said, "Can we do this one time?"

Absolutely.

And I called over to, again, Mark DeSanders at Channel 25 and said, "Would you guys be interested?"

And he said, "Yeah."

And he made the calls to the other stations, commercial stations.

And we got their news people here.

Their on-air people, our on-air people, people from the area, the Governor was here.

The Lieutenant Governor came in with her string band and played music.

(Elwin laughing) And we raised a significant amount of money that went to the Red Cross to support relief efforts in Washington.

I think we were all very proud of, the entire staff, was very proud of their efforts in that area.

And I was very proud of the staff for all the work they put into it.

So that was pretty neat.

- And that's not just a solo event.

The station has stepped forward when, not necessarily to raise funds, but to bring attention to issues.

- And raise awareness.

- [Wayne] And raise awareness.

And for 50 years, this television station has been doing that.

So it's kinda sets WTVP aside from a lot of other organizations in that we have the ability, we have the capability to reach out to all of Central Illinois- - [Chet] And the will.

- [Wayne] And the will, yes.

- And one of those wills is William Baker, our Executive Producer here.

And we have got some great storytellers on the staff.

We've had some great storytellers over the last 50 years here at WTVP.

And I think that's part of the success of the station, is the staff, the producer's ability to tell stories about organizations, about events, about occurrences in the community.

I don't think there's an organization in the Tri-County area that we haven't partnered with on something or another.

- [Wayne] Yeah, and that brings up another area of programming, Elwin.

And that is the documentaries.

This station has done more than a hundred documentaries since I arrived on the scene in 1988.

And you said in 1989, you said to me, "Why don't you put together a documentary?"

I'd never done a documentary before, but you had faith in the ability of Bill Baker and me to put something together.

- The last few years that I was there officially, I stepped out and helped develop and organize the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council, which brought together all the radio and television stations in the public broadcasting sector together on common ground to work together on programming, and on fundraising and on finding the resources to live up to our calling as a public broadcasting system.

And I was very proud of the action that we took and the progress that we made over those years.

And the funding, the resources that we acquired from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Because we were rather instrumental in starting a statewide public broadcasting council.

- And correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't Illinois lawmakers programming come out of that.

- Yep.

One of the offshoots of this was getting money from the state for a satellite unit.

So that the staff from WTVP would take the mobile unit that Elwin had started.

And then we got another, and we upgraded to that.

To go Springfield and to do a series of programs about what was happening in the state legislature.

This is one of the things that I think people don't know enough about, and there's not enough outlets for that kind of information here to know what our state lawmakers are doing.

And that has more direct effect in our pocket books, on our daily activities, whatever else.

So the public broadcasters came together and produced a regular series every year about state government and what was going on there.

And used that satellite truck to beam the program live from Springfield up to satellite, off to all the stations across Illinois, Chicago to Carbondale and beyond.

To say, "Hey, this is what your state government's doing."

With the Governor, the Speaker of the House, you know, the Senate, the whole shooting match.

And I think we've gotten a lot recognition for that.

- [Elwin] Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Chet, because that was an important sequel to our all of our fundraising plans over the years with the state government.

And we were the only unit of our type that was successful in doing that.

- So I think that satellite unit became also a way to support some of the other stations where we could rent out the use of that unit.

And then we kept some of that fee, if you will, here at WTVP.

And the other portion of it was shared with other stations.

And so we all got some benefit of it out of that unit in addition to programming, which was obviously its main purpose.

- Elwin, I wanna turn to the public again and the role of the public.

Because you you've talked about the auction.

You've talked about pledging and reaching out to the community, but this station wouldn't exist without the viewers contributing back to the station.

- About viewers?

- [Wayne] The viewers make this station happen, financially speaking.

- Yeah, we talk about volunteers.

That's true.

But our viewing level continues to increase each year.

I'm amazed at how well this station does amongst all the options out there on cable and on the Internet and so forth for them to watch different kinds of programs that we acquire a high number of members each year.

From people who we go to and ask for their support.

- [Wayne] And we now have five stations.

- [Chet] Yeah, and that's something that the conversion to digital broadcasting from analog allowed us to do.

To get multiple program streams within the same amount of bandwidth at each station was allocated.

So originally with that same bandwidth in analog, we could do one broadcast service and now we're doing five.

And we're serving the schools directly with an instructional channel.

And then with other, the band channel, and create, and children's channel and you know, something for everyone.

We're fulfilling our mission.

And I have to really give credit to, again, to the staff and the leadership now that has found a way to deal effectively with all five of those program streams, to keep people interested.

We talk about this being a family station.

And that doesn't mean that every program that's on is appropriate for every member of the family.

But over the course of the service, over the course of the broadcast, there's something for everybody in the schedule.

So whether if it's Frontline, for example, you may not want younger children watching Frontline depending on what the concept is.

Not too many adults, me not included, but necessarily wanna watch Sesame Street, you know?

But there's something for everybody on the station and there are now program streams for everybody.

You like cooking, got that covered.

You know, you like public affairs, got it covered.

You like children's, got it covered.

And you know, it's that service to the community that no one else is able to do.

- [Elwin] Wide variety.

- Yeah.

- [Wayne] And you mentioned the instructional that's 47.5.

- [Chet] Yeah.

- I wanna talk about coming back full circle because Dr Weinberg's original intent was educational, in the 1960s, it was to create an educational component so that they could communicate with other universities and it was educational in need.

And here we are educating again.

Of course- - [Chet] I wanna back up just a little bit.

There's a difference between educational and instructional.

Educational is broader.

Instructional was very specific for teachers.

If you're gonna teach English or math, or this or that, whatever else.

And there's programs directly helping teachers as resources for those particular areas as opposed to broad general education for an audience.

- It may all have a variety of interests and educational value, but there is a difference between those two.

I grew up in instructional television where we were putting out third grade science and fifth grade geography to the schools in the Des Moines market.

And we were actually teaching youngsters every day in those topics, many more.

And we were doing that with two VTRs, as you know.

- [Chet] Yeah.

- Two video tape recorders, but we were able to fast forward them and get them back on the air in time.

But it was very different.

And we were turned the station around at night, so we could still broadcast our evening programs for the masses, for all the public.

That was very different from the instructional.

- [Wayne] I have two topics I wanna make sure we talk about in the remaining minutes.

First, the move, Chet.

While you were CEO, we moved from that second floor studio down to the largest studio in all of Illinois, outside of Chicago in downstate Illinois.

I mean, that was needed.

I mean, we were in cramped quarters.

What led up to that?

How did you- - Well, it was worse than cramped quarters.

It was cramped for doing analog broadcasting 'cause we were side by side with another station that was serving Springfield in the Bradley Jobst Hall.

The FCC, in about 2008, started putting out little bits of information saying they were going to require, I'm sorry, 1988, 1998.

I got it, 1998, saying they're gonna start making a transition to digital broadcasting so that in the long run they could have more bandwidth to serve public service needs, fire, police.

And now, you know, satellite television, garage door openers, all that takes bandwidth.

So they need extra bandwidth, nobody's creating more bandwidth.

So they want the stations to start converting to digital.

And originally the goal was to convert by 2003.

So we took them seriously.

And we started a fundraising campaign, Glenn and Polly Barton chaired, co-chaired that campaign.

They got a number of people from the area here to help raise money for that.

And we were gonna have to run two stations side-by-side, which we did until 2008, until the FCC said, okay, you can stop doing that now, just do digital.

So people would have a time to get rid of their old TVs, get new TVs and all that.

Well there was no room at the end, at Bradley, to expand to do analog plus all the things we had to do with digital and the new receivers, et cetera, et cetera.

So we looked around and were there places on the Bradley Campus, and well, there was nothing.

So we started a survey here in the Peoria area and wound up at the State Street location here, 101 State Street.

Which, at the time, was the O'Neill Brothers truck terminal.

And we were able to cut a deal with the O'Neill family and acquire that building and build a studio here in a broadcast and production facility to allow us to run those stations side-by-side.

And to do more production and to have some recognition and some access.

This studio, for example, now is handicapped accessible.

We can drive vehicles in here.

Tough to do on the second floor at Bradley 'cause you couldn't get on the elevator.

And there were steps into the studio, so the studio was not handicapped accessible.

And the power wasn't there and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

- Right.

- And so the reason for the building was to accommodate the conversion to digital and to give us more opportunities to create more programming, which is what we're about.

- And Elwin, you came here and there was really nothing, there wasn't even a budget when you came here.

And yet you took on the challenge and then another challenge occurred that you had not anticipated.

I got a phone call, I believe it was a Saturday morning.

And the voice on the other end said, "Can you come down and help clean up the studio?"

And I thought maybe tape storage, which was in the studio, it was cramped quarters.

The tape storage was on all four walls.

I thought one of the racks fell down and we gotta pick up all the tapes.

No, there had been a fire.

And you recovered from that fire.

You had some contacts down at the School of Med?

- That was a tragic fire that took us off the air and wiped out at least one video tape recorder, one of our newer machines.

And it brought in the fire department, who basically sprayed most of the equipment to keep the fire from spreading and to keep it confined because of the the University's engineering building at Jobst Hall.

And they were successful in snuffing out the fire.

But in the process, the equipment that they sprayed with was foreign to the electronics that we had.

And pretty well ruined most of the broadcast equipment we had in the studio and the control room because of the nature of the substance.

And fortunately we were able to settle with the insurance company and replaced all of that equipment with brand new stuff which was kind of the icing on the cake.

- And because of your contacts at the School of Med we were able to get a couple of tape recorders sitting in the studio because control room was wiped out.

And we were broadcasting from the studio on two machines.

- [Elwin] Yeah.

- So, I wanna thank both of you for the trip down memory lane, but more importantly, your discussion of what the importance of WTVP is to all of Central Illinois.

So let me say thank you to Elwin Basquin, the first CEO of WTVP and to Chet Tomczyk, the second CEO of WTVP.

Thank you to both of you for your leadership in television and in the community.

- Thank you.

- And we do have a future to look to.

And we'll be back in just a moment to talk about that.

And we're joined now by the current President and CEO of WTVP Leslie Matuszak.

Leslie, thank you for joining us on "At Issue."

- Thanks H, for having me.

I'm glad to be here.

- Two years into your leadership here, and the station has always been listener and viewer oriented.

I go back to my old radio days there, but viewer oriented more so today than ever?

- More so today, and we will be even more so in the future as we move forward.

You know, we've always been fortunate at WTVP to have an amazing group of volunteers, board leadership, particularly our executive committee.

So what we did that might be just a little fresher or newer, is we took a look at the talent that we have in the community, not only our volunteers, but our board and our executive committee.

And we put those talents into play at full force.

So we're able to spend more time out in the community, finding out in our 22 county coverage area what people wanna see more of.

What people need to see more of.

And then we've provided that with new shows, more in-depth and more research.

We've listened to data.

We've looked at data.

So we are even more, we were always great at listening to viewers.

But even more so now to our membership, as you know, we're a membership driven station.

- So let me ask you, and we're about to provide some more British programming.

- Oh yes.

- Is that part of the listening to the viewers?

- That's part of listening to the viewers.

That's part of listening to the membership in the community.

You know, it's a hot, hot topic right now and we happen to be really good at providing that with the content that's available from PBS to us.

So yes, we've purchased more shows and we're going to be able to purchase even more shows.

We found out from folks, because we do listen and we get out and we interact with our people in 22 counties.

That's what they want, that's what they're gonna get.

- What about the expansion of local programming?

- Oh, that's been fun.

So as you know, and I've said it to you before, you are so relevant, there's just not enough of you to go around.

So we expanded and we took a look, and we added "Business Forward" with Matt George.

And that's another deep dive into local, in our coverage area, business messages.

And we focus on the positive.

So people know what's going on in their communities.

We look at the data, what's happening.

You know, we don't chase ambulances.

So we're not out there, you know, running around all day long, getting this quick story.

But what we do is pay attention to what's happening in the community, come back with the deep dive and give folks the information so they can make their own decisions.

- And documentaries have always been important here at WTVP.

- Yes, we have an amazing team, as you know, that's under the leadership of our Executive Producer, Bill Baker.

And of course, Todd Pilon is very engaged.

We've got those folks so busy.

We could take five more people.

The relevance of what we do to provide documentaries in this community of our coverage area, it's incredible.

And again, there's so many deep topics to talk about and to dive into, people have told us they tune into WTVP for information, relevance, and entertainment.

So we could keep those folks 24/7 busy because that's what our membership and our viewers have told us they wanna see in here.

- Let me take a look further into the future.

What do you foresee for WTVP in terms of its relationship with the Central Illinois community, not just Peoria?

- Right.

When I say us, I mean, 22 counties in our coverage area.

So people have told us they want information.

They want in-depth information, but they also wanna be entertained.

So we see more fun things coming on.

We're giving more interstitials, more little local.

And again, that talks 22 county areas.

More localized programs, sessions of information, more people that you know and see out and about in your own, you know, where you live, where you work, where you play.

So with the WTVP people, for example, and the underwriters, it's an expansion of what's going on in the communities.

- [Wayne] You've been in the community for quite some time, but only engaged in WTVP specifically for two years.

Can you relate to us the difference between having been a viewer, if I may say that, and a member of WTVP versus being involved on a daily basis?

- So I'm a newshound and I've known you for years.

I happen to like the in-depth information and you get down to the nitty gritty.

And I like being able to formulate my own opinions.

You give me the information.

I don't need somebody to tell me what to think, to feel, to say, I love being able to provide that for our coverage areas.

And I think that you'll see more of that here.

As you know, like I said, I'd have you on many, many more times if we could.

And people are telling us that's what they want.

So that's what we're gonna give them.

- [Wayne] In terms of expanding, what about an agricultural show?

- Well, we listened to our folks.

We are in an AG region.

We are so blessed with the soils and the community and the agricultural related businesses around here.

So we're starting new with our 50th anniversary celebration, "A Shotta Egg" with Rob Sharkey.

So that's a half hour show, once a week about topics of agricultural and related it to that industry.

- I wanna talk a little bit about the relationship between community and WTVP.

And I don't mean support, financial support.

I'm talking about providing solutions with other organizations.

- Hence "Business Forward", hence "At Issue" with deep dives, "Consider This" with Christine Zack.

We're able to go out, listen to people.

We're able to take that deep dive.

We're able to explore those topics and provide that to our viewers.

- So providing solutions?

- [Leslie] Solutions, yes, because we are part of this community.

We are relevant.

We are out there.

We all live in different parts of the coverage area.

And as people with a sense of broadcast abilities and newshounds, if you will, and people that explore the arts, we are there.

And we like to be kind of first on the scene to be able to take that deep dive.

- I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the importance of the viewers.

The viewers are what makes "At Issue", "Illinois Adventure", "Business Forward" possible.

- Yes, yes.

The viewers, the underwriters, the volunteers, the folks that produce.

We are membership driven, but every single person that puts eyeballs on our five television stations is relevant to us.

We wanna hear from people.

We wanna know what people like.

We look at the data, we look at the trends.

We look at who's buying, what's going on in the community.

What's happening in real estate.

What's happening in government.

What's happening in public affairs.

What's happening in retail.

We don't just limit to what we think, we're out into the communities.

- Let me talk to you just briefly about the importance of volunteers.

I know you've mentioned it at the start, but volunteers, it's not just Bill Baker, Todd Pilon and Tracy Simmons, et cetera.

- Right.

So volunteers do a lot for us with the 47 Auction.

Volunteers also serve as a source of information, you know, because we see a lot of our volunteers.

And we hear from them, and they put on fundraisers, and different communities for us.

They are a wealth of information.

And we listen to those in positions of relevance within the community.

For example, the remote channel.

When we split one of our channels, world and create into two separate channels and added the remote channel, we were one of the first in the public broadcasting system to really take that seriously and do that.

In fact, our founder, as you know, Phil Weinberg, he thought ahead, back in '75 before anybody else did about using television as a medium to provide sources of information and learning opportunities.

And that was critical.

So what we saw before pandemic, because remember remote came along, perfect timing, but right before a pandemic.

We were able to help schools, to help parents, at-home learners, those that go to private school, public school, we were able to provide content and information that's relevant to what's going on within the curriculums that have been provided by the professional educators and those.

- For those people who may not understand remote 'cause we talk about it all the time.

- [Leslie] Sure.

- So we just say, well, remote.

We actually have five stations here.

- Yes we do.

- We come from one station in 1971 to five stations.

Thumbnail sketch- - Yes.

- The five stations.

- So our main channel, which you get everything from Nova to Masterpiece, et cetera, in-depth news reporting.

The kid's channel, and this is all in the program guide.

You can go online, you can find what that is depending on who provides television into your home, is 24/7.

It's fun.

It's educational, it's cartoons with a message and relevant.

And it allows you as the parent to choose for your kid.

Then three, the next channel is world, which is world and news affairs.

Then we go into create, which is hobbies, "This Old House",` in-depth explorations of what you wanna do in your home.

And then remote, which means you just turn that channel on and you have access to topics of interest.

And that's primarily put together for those within the rural community.

- [Wayne] Leslie Matuszak, President and CEO of WTVP.

Congratulations on 50 years of service, not you but the station.

- Thank you, H. - And thank you for joining us on "At Issue", as we celebrate 50 years of serving you with quality programming.

Thanks for being with us on "At Issue".

(upbeat music)