- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

50 years ago this month, the nation's first African American owned and operated television station began broadcasting right here in the city of Detroit.

WGPR TV62 debuted in 1975 and remained on air until it was sold in 1995.

The WGPR Historical Society has preserved the station's legacy by transforming that original TV studio into the William V. Banks Broadcast Museum and Media Center, named after WGPR's founder.

Here to talk more about this milestone anniversary and the planned celebration are Joe Spencer, who is president of the WGPR Historical Society, and Vice President and Treasurer, Doug Morison.

Both were part of the original staff at WGPR.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, Steven.

- So anytime I talk about WGPR, I have to talk about where I was in 1975, I was four years old.

But I lived not too far from that station.

And so I always felt like that was the station I kind of identified most with, not just because I listened to it, but because I would go by it all the time.

And then in high school, friends dared me to go on "The Scene."

And I did it, which is really a feat because anyone who knows me knows I don't dance well.

But I did it and there's a video tape somewhere of that.

But I've always felt a real closeness to GPR, and the idea that it's 50 years old.

- It's unbelievable.

- It's incredible, yeah.

First African American owned and operated in the country.

- Very exciting time for me and for all those people who were part of it.

That's why we're celebrating it, you know, because it is real history.

I mean, true American history, true business history.

I mean, can you imagine back in 1975 or early 1970s, the founder, William Banks, owned real estate property downtown, and he used some of that to fund the television station, which cost something like $2 million, which was a huge amount of money back then, just real.

- 10 or 12 million.

- Yeah, exactly, if not more, yeah.

And he took the leap and he launched that.

And that's why we're here today to celebrate that, to make sure that America does not forget America's first African American owned and operated television station.

- The two of you were there in the beginning.

- Yes, I was part of the anchor team that did the evening newscast, the very first evening newscast at 7:00 PM on channel 62.

We had two newscasts that day.

We had a Noon newscast, which Amyre Makupson was Amyre Porter at the time, and Pal DeQue, who was the co-anchor with Amyre.

And that's what kicked off our experience at Channel 62.

- How skeptical were people when this happened?

Like, you know, this is the first time that you've got this Black owned and operated TV, you have African Americans up on air.

- I think there were a lot of people that had slight skepticism, but there were a lot of people who were cheering us on.

That really wanted us to go on the air and be a success.

And that was something that we were striving to do.

- Yeah, I actually was not there the very first day.

I was working for Channel 4 at that time.

And I was invited to join the staff by Jerry Blocker, who was the original news director and the anchor that anchored with Doug on that very first show.

And Jerry was the one who brought me over to be part of the production team.

- He couldn't wait to get there.

He watched us on TV, he watched our debut on TV, couldn't wait to get over there.

- Yeah, I mean hey, me and all the folks at Channel 4 who, Jerry had come from Channel 4, sit there and watch the very first newscast.

And it wasn't longer, it was like 30 days later I was working at the station.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about the museum.

I can't remember how old the museum is now, but it's been there a while.

- 2017 is when we launched it, yes.

- And talk about what it is you're preserving there, the idea of this legacy.

- Well, we're trying to cover not only the founder, but some of the important legacies of the station.

You know, for example, so many people who have been successful in broadcasting got their start at Channel 62.

Because back then in those days, there wasn't a lot of African Americans on television.

And when so many of the then aspiring writers, producers, talent wanted to go on the air, they go to the other stations, they tell them, "Come back when you got some experience."

So many of those people came to us first and got a year, get that year, that two years, and so forth.

And, you know, they went on to have great careers, and some of the people have had tremendous careers, you know.

If I can just jump ahead a little bit, one of the people that we're gonna be giving an award at the ceremony we are having is a fellow by the name of David Roberts, who came in as a rookie right out of Wayne State University.

Now he's the Executive Vice President of ESPN.

You know what mean?

That's pretty doggone high.

- That's a pretty good path.

- That's pretty good path, you know?

Yeah.

So he's in fact bringing in Isaiah Thomas and Cam Newton and Kendrick Perkins to help us celebrate.

That's the power that he has.

- That's amazing.

- Yeah, it is.

- Another side story about the whole experience thing.

My photographer at the time, the late Herman McAlpin, he started out with our new equipment, which was the video tape cameras.

We did not use film.

All the other stations were using- - [Stephen] Were still using film, right.

- Well, when he moved over to one of the other stations in the city, he moved up a hundred places in the seniority line because he knew how to use that videotape versus the film.

- Yeah.

That's amazing.

- Yeah.

- Although I feel like we might have to pause and explain to half the audience what videotape is.

(group laughs) If you said that to my children, I think they would look at you like, I don't know what you're talking about.

But once upon a time, that was the cutting edge.

- That's right.

Yes, yes.

- One of the exhibits we have in the museum is the chronology of video imaging.

You know, we go with the two inch tapes right on through the one inch to half inch and on down.

And so, like you say, now it's the telephone.

- Right, everything is on the telephone.

- Another legacy that the station has is that, you know, we were the first station to broadcast 24 hours, you know, back then, yeah.

Back then, in the late '70s, everybody, 12, 12:30, 1:00, you got snow, got the National Anthem and snow.

But we were the first that started, we started with the movies all night, and we showed movies all night to start that trend and other stations followed after we did.

So we were the first to use videotape, first to broadcast 24 hours.

And you know, that's a significant history there.

- Yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about the celebration, the 50 year celebration, you talked about David Roberts.

What else is on tap for that?

- Well, our goal there again is to just celebrate the 50 years, to honor some of the people who have been a part of this legacy, you know, and to honor the man probably more responsible than anybody, James Dogan, who was the president of WGPR and the International Masons who owned the station, who actually funded the building of the museum to honor David Roberts.

We're gonna honor him, and then we're gonna honor 10 other members of the staff that worked in the past years, we're gonna do that, and we're gonna just have a really nice dinner and have some music and just really celebrate 50 years.

And it's a fundraiser, so, you know, we're gonna be trying to raise some funds while we are there, you know, for people attending.

So we're gonna invite people to come, you know, they can find out about tickets going to our website, wgprtv62museum.

- And we'll put that info on our website as well.

- One of the other things we want to do as a result of our fundraising activities is to develop our media center where we can bring young people in and teach them storytelling from soup to nuts, where they can be a director, they can be a video person, they can be talent, whatever.

But we wanna set up a facility so we can do that on an ongoing basis.

- I can't stress how important that is right now.

If you talk to young people who are interested in broadcast or in journalism or any of those things, the opportunities to learn to do it are just going away.

And more and more of them every day are disappearing.

And of course that affects young people in our community more than other communities.

And there isn't a WGPR right now to give them that shot.

So the idea of trying to create something, that would make a huge, huge difference.

- Well, we're looking at it, you know, young people now are so involved with TikTok, everything's a 30 second story and so forth.

And we'd like to open their heads for a way to do things, to really tell some storytelling, really look at their communities in real ways and look at what's happening in their lives in real ways, and be able to talk about it, you know, and share it as opposed to, hey, you know, I can look at the dance stuff, I can fix my hair.

- Well that was important too.

Again, I was on the scene.

That was such a critical part of WGPR, I run into people all the time.

White, Black, lived in the city, lived in the suburbs, who every weekday at 6:00 turned on WGPR to watch that show.

- You know, Stephen, two weeks, three weeks ago, we had a senior 50th reunion.

- Oh, you did?

- We had it with 300 people.

- Probably a good thing.

- No, listen, we had 300 people in our age group dancing around.

(group laughs) You can go on our website.

You'll some of the video, you know, yeah, yeah.

- It's such a cultural guidepost I think in this community, that show, and the whole idea of that show, right?

That celebration of Detroit and Black culture.

- Well, that's what we're doing with the 50th anniversary as well, so yeah.

- All right.

Well congratulations, guys, on 50 years.

- Thank you.

- And on the celebration and the work at the museum, which is a real special place.

- Thank you for having us.

- Appreciate it.

- I hope you can make it too.

Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna try.

- [Joe] You're invited.

- I'm invited to this one, right?

I'm invited to this one, not the scene one, yeah.

It's election season, so we may be doing other stuff, but I'm gonna try and make it.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.