WGTV

On May 23, 1960, the University of Georgia WGTV signed on the airwaves as Georgia's first public television station. Jere Huggins and I were there. 

Jere and I were the first two employees, except for the two founding executives, Dave Fisher (executive producer) and Pope Hill (artistic director). It is unclear to me why Jere and I  were hired - maybe we were the only two applicants - but we had to learn virtually everything about the job while working at the job. Sort of OJT, or apprentice, or something. We were both math majors entering the sophomore year at UGA in September 1959 when we got these jobs. The hours were 2:00pm - 10:00pm, which allowed us to be full time students while holding down full time work. A remarkable stroke of luck. 

We learned studio lighting, Lekos and Fresnels, backlighting, side lighting, spots and floods, fill and contrast. We climbed ladders and adjusted the hardware, and saw the results through camera lenses. 

We learned the cameras. Huge monstrosities that weighed several hundred pounds mounted on pedestals that rolled, panned, and elevated smoothly. I recall we had three cameras, but normally used only two, operated by Jere and me. While Dave jabbered instructions to us via headsets and Pope threw up his hands at the lack of artistic expression while we filmed a farm show on the pros and cons of pole beans. It was exhilarating, video taping to the incredibly complex recorders. These used tape about 3 inches wide and recorded in cross-sectional strips via a spinning head. We recorded 30 minute shows in one take  - editing those complex tapes was almost impossible.

Pope and Dave were very interesting men. Both with a kind of "about to make the big time" attitude, in many ways like the characters in the TV show "WKRP in  Cincinnati". In Fall '59 Pope was ending a production of "Waiting for Godot" (way over my head) and Dave was tinkering with the protocols of technical direction, instructing the cameras, running the cuts and fades, checking the lighting, managing the talent. Both were eccentric and emotional, which added to the fun and enabled us to learn to get along with great varieties of people. 

I believe the first broadcast (May 23, 1960) was a tape of the farm show, with Jere and me working cameras. In Fall 1960, our junior year at UGA, transitions began. We had our first actual live broadcast (another farm show I think). A live 30-minute show is a pressure cooker. When taping, you could always start over to correct gross mistakes. With a live broadcast, all mistakes and accidents go out over the air. There's a scene in "Tootsie" about this.

Math was getting ever more interesting and time-consuming for me, and Jere was starting to think of media production as a career. I stuck with the skills I knew at the studio, but Jere became an apprentice technical director sitting in the control booth running the faders. 

Jere ended up switching out of math and into sound production. He moved to New York, worked on the sound track for the Woodstock film, got in the union, moved to Hollywood, and worked in the film industry. He was on a first name basis with Quentin Tarantino after being the lead film editor for Pulp Fiction.

While Jere was developing production skills, I took a couple of flings in the "talent" direction. There was a Christmas live show in December 1960 in which I had a role as an elf, dressed in green tights. Even more humiliating, a couple of months later, I was assigned to interview (live) Sarah Lacher. I do not remember why or what the topic was. But I do recall that I paused on live camera just at the point of speaking her name (trying to remember the next part of the script) which gave the impression that I had forgotten the name of my own mother. 

I stuck with math.

WGTV was the first, and has remained the flagship, station in what is now called Georgia Public Television (GPTV). They still occupy space in the Georgia Center (for Continuing Education).