(upbeat music) - In Pennsylvania, there was always a desire for public broadcasting and Northeastern Pennsylvania wanted to be part of that.

And they decided that 1965 they wanted to put on a television station.

Maybe they didn't quite know what they were getting 'cause we did something different.

What we really wanted to do was get programming out of there, distribution.

The studio could come later.

WVIA on September 26, 1966, went on the air without a studio.

We broadcast from the tower up on Penobscot Knob.

Everything was going up to the tower, you had to take the tapes up every day and you had to bring the tapes down every day.

And they came to us by Railway Express, in those days, interconnects and internets and all the rest, they didn't exist.

There was a push to make educational broadcasting something other than a cottage industry.

That's all it was.

Oddly enough, on the very day we went on the air, they received a letter from E.B.

White, "Non-commercial TV should address itself to the ideal of excellence, not the ideal of acceptability.

Take us on journeys, enable us to participate in events, present great drama and music.

It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle."

Once in a while it does and you get a quick glimpse of the potential.

V-I-A, as in, by way of, via.

And then we put a W in front it and so it became the World VIA Television.

That was the dream that we had in those pioneering days.

Initially started with no studio and then used the studio at Marywood College and then bought a number of acres where the station is now.

As we went into the radio, we started out with sort of a canned program that we quickly went to people that came onboard specifically to be on radio.

We laid out the studio where it was a big circle and you could take tours through and look into where all the things were happening.

We did some really wonderful things.

Started with the auction.

And one of our board members, Phillip L. Jack Lance came and he gave us tie and we auctioned off that.

Yes, he was a member of the WVIA board.

I'm a programmer.

I've done everything in this business, I don't climb towers, but I've done everything in the business but probably if there's something I do, it's programming.

Although we march to a higher calling perhaps, it's still show business, no show, no business.

You need to really get the audience involved.

We bought a lot of film.

Anybody who goes back remembers we are running movies without commercial interruption.

We were about the 35th station in the country to go on.

14 of us pulled our money together and we bought the rights to "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and brought it to the country.

We were able to get "Star Trek."

And we brought in "Dr.

Who."

So, we were able to get lots and lots of things.

They said, "Well what's it gotta do with public broadcasting?"

Well, wait a second.

Along with that came the audience to watch these other programs that we're also doing.

So if we did the Scranton Symphony, which we certainly did, that was surrounded by other things that would drive audience.

Eventually, we were in Nielsen and we became the number one public station in the whole country.

Nobody ever had higher ratings than we did.

If you're just putting it on because, you know, like, castor oil, because you're supposed to watch it because it's good for you, well, that's crummy television, I'll tell you that.

We've had a lot of creative people gathered in, people who wanted to create.

We were creating programming and we funded it, we made it happen.

There was an opportunity more than a challenge.

I mean, this was an a wonderful thing and we knew what we wanted, we knew what public broadcast should be.

It became public broadcasting, that became the term of art.

Some people still think of it as educational and I hope it is educational.

There is a mission here but it's also a means of entertainment.

Local means of communications.

That was the most important thing of all.

(calm music)