How this small-town NEPA boy met Big Bird: Bill Kelly at TEDxWilliamsport

Nice to be here in Williamsport. I feel like I know all of you, although I may not know you by name or face. WVIA has been so committed to Williamsport for so long, and I'm going to prove that to you in this talk here. By the way, TEDx — I've been watching TEDx for a long time on my iPad, so it's wonderful that Williamsport is conducting a TEDx event. I'm here to tell you a story. My talk is going to be more personal than I initially intended it to be. When Jerry asked me to make a presentation, it was going to be more generic, more vague, I suppose. But then something happened a few weeks ago that involved a Sesame Street character, and it provided me a perfect opportunity, I think, to talk to you about what a PBS station is. But before I get there, I want to kind of set it up by telling you a little bit of my life story. Try not to be too bored. There's a connection between how this little boy — yes, I was once one — fell in love with radio, got committed to public service, and found my way into public broadcast. First thing I'd like to show you and make a point: I'm about to retire, by the way. I started in radio at age 14. I got my first paycheck at age 14. I hung around that radio station in Towanda, Pennsylvania for a couple of years. I actually discovered radio at age 12. And this is a microphone. Matter of fact, this is a piece of history. This is the RCA 77 DX. It is really, really history. And you needed some way about two pounds. You needed something this big to communicate on the radio. When I was that 12, 13 year old boy, this microphone right here — you can't even see it — it's about the size of spitballs my friends and I used to throw in seventh grade. And that's where it all started for me in Towanda Junior High School. One of my teachers in Towanda Junior High School was a part-time DJ at the local radio station WTTC. He would invite kids he really liked, and I guess I was one, to come down and visit him at the radio studio. So I went down there one weekend. He only worked weekends; he was a jazz DJ. I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that from the moment I saw those needles bouncing around, and the microphone with a red light that told you when it was on, and the transmitter buttons on it, I was mesmerized. I think in retrospect I knew then what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I pretty much have done that. I was one of the really young, lucky young people — and there are some here in the audience — who discover your purpose in life at a very young age. So I visited that little radio station and had a wonderful time. When I was 14, I was hired. Before you knew it, I had worked at eight commercial radio stations, including a super popular one in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. After I graduated from college with a teaching degree in English — which I never intended to use; it was a secondary occupation — I volunteered at that last commercial radio station. There's a PBS station, Channel 44, and I started to volunteer for it. That's when it clicked for me. I had reached a point in my commercial radio career where I think I was up against a wall; I just stopped growing. It wasn't any longer intellectually satisfying to me or any of that. I needed something else. Along comes public television. I get hired as a public relations director. I discovered that I can raise money. Nobody could have ever told me I could raise money, but I just happened to have the instinct. That's what I've done for now 39 years, currently president and CEO. So that's just all in the way of background — the old microphone, the new microphone. But I'd like to introduce — you've already seen the head sticking out here, probably no big surprise to you — this guy's been in the news lately, right? Big Bird. I don't know whether Big Bird is a he or a she; we'll just make him gender neutral. But I want to make a point to you today that public television is so much more than this adorable yellow puppet. When I first started at WVIA in 1974, that business was pretty much Big Bird. That's what you relied on. That's major case. That's why people called and pledged and became a member. However, that was a good start. In retrospect, as I look back on my almost — don't fall over — as I look back on my almost four decades in public television, that was a start. What did you do after you had the start? I'm going to show you what this public television station did. We're particularly proud of it. This is a presentation that we made to our congressman Tom Marino from this area, Lou Barletta, just a few weeks ago to make the point that a PBS station is a citizen. This is WVIA's coverage area, by the way. That little Towanda radio station was up there in Bradford County; it served about an area maybe 20 square miles. WVIA serves 20 counties. Take a look at this. I'm going to show you what WVIA does. These are our educational partners. These are the school districts that WVIA has a formal partnership with. We work with the teachers and the students in these school districts. By the way, America now is the 14th rated country in reading and 25th in math. So the point is this: indeed, is this the time to dismantle educational television in America, which is the only publicly owned, not-for-profit, public service broadcaster in our country? So these are all school districts WVIA serves and works with. We work with communities and do projects called "Our Town." These are programs all done by the people who live in those communities. They're made by them; documentaries done like, for instance, in Milton, Muncy, and so on. We've done all of these in just the last year or so. Here are WVIA member events: when you're a member of WVIA, we give you tickets free and free adventures — Knoebels Grove, that you can see them for yourself. But WVIA is very active. We'd like to consider ourselves citizens. We're not broadcasters as much as we are citizens. And these — not these pages that I'm showing you — prove that. These photographs are of WVIA's board of directors. Should see some from Williamsport in the area. In fact, we try very hard to make sure that our whole coverage area has a representative, called geopolitics or whatever you want. But we want our board members to be representative of the community that we serve. Here, WVIA productions: we're not just broadcasting this adorable yellow puppet here. We're telling the story of the people and the issues, problems, and the opportunities of the entire area that we serve. Those are documentaries. They take on average three to six months each to make, somewhere between 70 and 100,000 dollars to make. We have to raise that money to do it, but we do it with ambition and real ambition. Here are some — these are radio productions: we have a public radio station. These are all broadcasts, mostly concerts and special events in our coverage area. And again, you know what that coverage area is. Over here in Williamsport, lots of very special activities done here. We believe that public radio's purpose is to raise the profile of what all of you do. We cover these events. Again, it's not just Big Bird. Here's something we're particularly proud of: we do these programs called Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal. Several people from this area have been on those interviews. They tell the stories of entrepreneurship, of risk and sacrifice and struggle, many failures on the way, but it's great television about business. Again, not just Big Bird. WVIA memberships here: you see every little dot, and there's a lot of dots there. They represent a member total — roughly 20,000 of you are members of WVIA. 20,000 people give an average of 116 dollars each for something you get for free. That's a powerful statement right there. These people — you don't have to do that; you do it because you want to. We believe that's kind of a statement of worth and value, and we intend to keep it going. So there you get a sense of it. All of these dots — visual special effects — represent WVIA actually touching you and others in that coverage area. Nielsen ratings, on the other hand, measure how many times you turn on your set and turn it off, how long it's been on, and so on. These are our Nielsen ratings. These tell us that we're doing much more than Big Bird. We love Big Bird — you heard that on television a few weeks ago — we love Big Bird. But the fact is, WVIA is an active, involved citizen in these communities. And these dots represent that. So as I look back on a 40-year television and radio career, I have enormous satisfaction. I knew as a young man — young boy, in fact — that my niche in broadcasting was going to be public service and education, and it's turned out that way. It wasn't an easy struggle to get there; there were many pathways along the way. But I'm very happy to have young people with us in the TEDx audience. Because my life, my choice of career — as so many of those Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal interviewees — was a struggle; there were a lot of diversions. But you get there; keep your eye on the ball. Thank you all very much.