[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1201-E1202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     RECOGNIZING SERVICE BY WCTE-TV

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                            HON. BART GORDON

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 7, 1995
  Mr. GORDON. Mr. Speaker, WCTE-TV in Cookeville, TN, provides a great 
service to the television viewers of Putnam County and the Upper 
Cumberland region of Tennessee. The enclosed article from the New York 
Times shows how the small, but capable staff juggle many 
responsibilities and produce quality local programming.
                [From the New York Times, Apr. 17, 1995]

           Where Public TV Is More Than a Political Football

                          (By Laurie Mifflin)

       Cookeville, TN.--When people argue about public television 
     in Washington, Boston, New York or Los Angeles, they talk 
     about ``Sesame Street,'' ``Nova'' and ``Frontline''; about 
     whether the political programming is too partisan, about 
     whether opera and ballet are too elitist, and about slashing 
     station budgets of $100 million a year or more.
       Here, too, in Cookeville, in the Upper Cumberland region of 
     Tennessee, public television means ``Sesame Street,'' 
     ``Nova'' and ``Frontline.'' But political programming means 
     covering monthly meetings of the Putnam County Commission. 
     Cultural programming means the Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree 
     and the Tennessee Tech Faculty Brass Quintet. The budget runs 
     a little over $1 million. And the station consists of three 
     rooms and a truck.
       The boxy WCTE-TV truck is parked beneath the iron girders 
     and concrete risers of the Tennessee Tech football stadium, 
     the station's home. It is a ``remote truck,'' divided inside 
     into three cramped carrels lined with audio and video editing 
     equipment, the kind of truck television crews use when they 
     cover events away from the studio.
       This remote truck does venture out--to cover Tech football 
     or basketball road games--but as soon as it is parked under 
     the stadium, thick hanks of blue cable are pulled out and 
     connected to other cables leading to the station's control 
     room, because the truck doubles as the station's main editing 
     facility.
       So when Donna Castle and Rick Wells return from videotaping 
     teenagers in Cane Creek Park who are testing leaf and water 
     samples in a regional ``Envirothon'' contest, for example, 
     Mrs. Castle climbs into the truck and sits down to edit a Hot 
     Puddin' Cake recipe for that week's ``Cumberland Cooking With 
     Cathy'' show.
       Mr. Wells heads to the ``studio'' on the other side of the 
     parking-bay wall--a windowless 20-by-30-foot room with 
     cinder-block walls and klieg lights sprouting from the 
     ceiling--to operate a camera focused on teams of jittery high 
     school students competing in the Upper Cumberland Academic 
     Bowl. And when that taping starts, Mrs. Castle will have to 
     stop editing because David Dow will need the truck's control 
     panel to direct the three-camera Academic Bowl production.
       WNET in New York and WGBH in Boston may be the signature 
     stations of the Public Broadcasting Service because they 
     produce many of its best programs, but the mom-and-pop 
     stations of small-town America have deep roots in the public 
     television heritage, too.
       The two dozen or so smallest PBS stations in the country 
     receive 30 to 40 percent of their budgets from the 
     Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so eliminating Federal 
     financing could force them to close up shop. But ``zeroing 
     out'' now appears unlikely; when Congress returns from Easter 
     recess, the House and Senate will have to reconcile their 
     versions of bills to cut back financing, with the compromise 
     likely to be in the 10-to-15-percent range.
       But for Donna and Richard Castle, the operators of WCTE, 
     Channel 22, in Cookeville, even a 10 percent cut will hurt 
     their bare-bones budget of $1.16 million (which includes 18 
     salaries). And because it would be cheaper simply to pick up 
     PBS's national programming, Channel 22 would probably cut 
     back the thing that makes it distinctive: its local 
     programming.
       WCTE was founded in 1978 as part of the state Department of 
     Education, and Mr. Castle, 58, the general manager, still 
     calls it ``educational TV'' as often as he calls it ``public 
     TV.'' The station offers instructional programs used by local 
     schools and by parents who teach their children at home, as 
     well as programs informing the community about local 
     government, local schools, local cultural affairs and local 
     businesses.
       ``We're here for the public, and I try to remember it all 
     the time,'' Mrs. Castle said. ``If people around here want to 
     see the Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree instead of something 
     from the Theater of the Rhinoceros in San Francisco, that's 
     O.K.''
       Mr. Castle pronounces himself ``stumped'' by the Washington 
     politicians who seem so down on public television. ``We've 
     never been partisan or played politics in any way,'' he said 
     of WCTE. ``And when they talk about public TV being for the 
     wealthy and the elite, well, that's sure not true here.''
       Cookeville lies midway between Nashville and Knoxville, far 
     enough from each for the area to qualify for Federal money to 
     build an 840-foot television and radio transmission tower. To 
     the east, the countryside's rolling ridges become small 
     mountains; there, television reception requires either a 
     satellite dish or a huge antenna. Many people cannot afford 
     either.
       ``In our viewing area, 60 percent of the people don't have 
     cable,'' Mr. Castle said. ``In the mountainous parts, if you 
     don't have a dish, you can't even get ABC, CBS or NBC. In 
     some of the historically poor areas around here, the only 
     station people get is Channel 22.''
       Channel 22, one of the smallest PBS stations in the country 
     in terms of both budget and viewership, is so small that it 
     falls ``below measurable standards'' for rating by the A.C. 
     Nielsen Media Research Company. Nielsen estimates WCTE's 
     cumulative weekly audience (house-holds
      that tune in for at least 15 minutes a week) at 17,000 to 
     18,000.
       The station gets its modest home rent-free from Tennessee 
     Tech, whose green campus graced by red-brick Georgian 
     buildings is the town's centerpiece. Of the station's $1.6 
     million budget for 1994-95, $393,254 comes from the 
     Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $498,315 from the 
     state.
       Finding that level of financial support around Cookeville 
     would be unlikely. Membership in Channel 22, which costs $25 
     a year, accounted for $50,000 last year. An annual eight-
     night auction at the town's Drama Center, run by 200 
     volunteers, added $72,000. There are no large corporations 
     here, and persuading local businesses to underwrite programs 
     instead of buying advertising on local commercial stations is 
     difficult.
       ``We charge $50 a program a week,'' said Tina Majors, 
     WCTE's director of development, ``whether it's for a local 
     program or one from PBS, but that's for a 13-week commitment. 
     Some businesses won't commit to that, but they'll spend $100 
     for two spots in a big local event like Horse Show Night at 
     the county fair.''
       Ms. Majors is WCTE's newest employee, hired about 18 months 
     ago because of fears about losing financing. She is just 
     about the only one who doesn't work on programs. ``There's 
     nobody here who can't run a camera,'' Mr. Castle likes to 
     say.
       Sue Gibbons, the traffic manager, said, ``Richard and 
     Donna's three boys grew up in the station, pulling cable and 
     helping out.'' Russ Castle, 23, now works for a local radio 
     station but still ``runs a camera,'' unpaid, on all Tennessee 
     Tech football games for WCTE. His 20-year-old twin brothers, 
     Art and Roger, attend the University of Tennessee at Martin 
     and run cameras (also without being paid) when they are home.
       Steve Boots, the station's young assistant manager, 
     describes his job as ``anything from grabbing a broom to 
     hosting a show.'' He was the host for the Uppper Cumberland 
     Academic Bowl in early April.
       Channel 22's director of educational programming, Becky 
     Magura, started out as a college intern in 1980 and has run 
     the camera on hundreds of football and basketball games by 
     now. She also produces the Academic Bowl shows and many 
     segments for ``Upper Cumberland Camera,'' a magazine-format 
     show that appears every Thursday night.
       That program--``52 new shows a year; we don't repeat,'' 
     Mrs. Castle says with pride--has done segments on the effort 
     to restore defunct movie theaters, on a conference offering 
     advice to women in business, and on a Tennessee Tech 
     professor using computer simulation in chemistry experiments.
       The station also produces the ``Upper Cumberland Business 
     Profile,'' an interview program; ``Education in the Upper 
     Cumberland,'' and ``Cumberland Cooking With Cathy.'' ``When 
     she did her Christmas show, we stupidly said, `Send us an 
     envelope if you want recipes,''' Mrs. Castle said. ``We got 
     over 600 requests. Joyce Hunter and I sat there and stuffed 
     all those envelopes.''
       WCTE's productions look and sound as professional on the 
     screen as most shows aired [[Page E1202]] on Channel 13 in 
     New York. Indeed, its one-hour special on the Smithville 
     Fiddlers Jamboree was offered nationally by PBS, and more 
     than 100 stations picked it up.
       Teachers, parents and elderly residents watch the 
     instructional programming offered every weekday between 9:30 
     A.M. and 2:30 P.M., including some courses for college 
     credit. Mrs. Magura, the mother of a 4-year old, coordinates 
     the schedule with PBS and makes sure teachers get the guides 
     that go with it.
       ``A lot of our rural schools don't have VCR's,'' she said, 
     ``so teachers watch our program guide very closely. If 
     something they want is on at 10:30 A.M., they put on the TV 
     in their classroom at 10:30 A.M.''
       Mrs. Castle bristles at two frequent criticisms of public 
     television: that it serves only an elite and offers too much 
     provocative programming.
       ``People come up to me and say they watched `Upper 
     Cumberland Camera,''' she said, ``and some of them go on and 
     say, `Boy I sure enjoyed that mystery program you had on.' So 
     they watch us, and then maybe it leads them to watch 
     `Mystery' or `Nova' or Charles Dickens, too.''
       As for programming, she points out that middle Tennessee 
     has a cultural heritage of its own. ``Our local programming 
     gives people around here a positive image of themselves, 
     too,'' she said. ``It gives people things to feel proud of.''
     

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