00:00 - This is the oral history of James J.

00:02 - Duratz.

00:04 - For 30 years, the general manager of the

00:07 - Meadville Master Antenna System in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

00:11 - Jim is also a cable television pioneer, both with the capital P

00:16 - and with the small P as and is a founder.

00:20 - It was just an honorary title held by by Jim

00:24 - in the Pennsylvania Cable and Telecommunications Association.

00:29 - Jim is in his tenure.

00:31 - Tenure at Meadville.

00:34 - At Meadville Master was the early developer

00:38 - of many things, including an extensive

00:41 - local programing operation from a local cable standpoint.

00:45 - The date is August 3rd, 2001.

00:50 - The place is Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the annual

00:52 - meeting of the Pennsylvania Cable and Telecommunications

00:56 - Association's Heritage Society meeting.

01:00 - Welcome, Jim.

01:01 - Jim, to start off with, tell us a little bit

01:03 - about your background prior to getting into cable television.

01:08 - Right from the beginning,

01:08 - right from the beginning, no.

01:12 - Of what you got once you got out of service.

01:15 - When I get out of the service,

01:17 - four years in the service

01:20 - and an infantryman. Yes.

01:22 - In the infantry

01:24 - served the South Pacific in Germany.

01:26 - But after I got out of the service,

01:28 - it's something I had wanted to do all my life.

01:30 - And that was to be a Pennsylvania State policeman.

01:33 - And I did that.

01:35 - But and it was a very

01:38 - I was very proud to have been one.

01:40 - But after I was there for a while, I decided

01:42 - I didn't want to make that my career.

01:44 - It was it was I went through the academy

01:47 - and I, I guess that satisfied me more than anything.

01:49 - But it was I was a.

01:52 - But I can say that

01:53 - that probably was the

01:56 - what eventually got me into

01:58 - cable television tower and hard to imagine that being true

02:02 - because I was stationed in Greensburg, Pennsylvania,

02:06 - which was a squadron, one headquarters.

02:09 - And from Greensburg I was transferred to Erie

02:12 - and that was to be the Pennsylvania State Police.

02:15 - And Meadville was a substation

02:18 - of Trubee.

02:20 - They had five substations and Erie was the headquarters

02:24 - and there were nine of us.

02:25 - And alphabetically I was first

02:28 - and they needed somebody to go to Meadville

02:31 - to replace the guy who was going on vacation.

02:33 - So that was me.

02:36 - And when I went there,

02:39 - everybody said, You better hope you don't go to meet

02:41 - this really tough place.

02:43 - And it turned out that I liked it.

02:45 - It was a lot of work, like a really good stuff,

02:48 - and I enjoyed it. But

02:51 - at the end of the 30 days, I went back to Erie

02:53 - and the first Sarge said to me, Well, dress how you like me.

02:55 - I said, I'd go back any time, George.

02:57 - He said, Well, don't unpack.

02:59 - In fact,

02:59 - came right back to me and never went to another substation.

03:03 - I stayed there for how long?

03:08 - I was there for two years

03:11 - and there was a little college in Meadville

03:13 - called Allegheny College.

03:15 - And every time I drove by that and I thought,

03:17 - that's where I should be.

03:19 - So I resigned that Meadville and went to college.

03:22 - But in the meantime, I had met Helene.

03:24 - You met her while you were still a state trooper.

03:27 - And Helene being Helene Markov?

03:31 - That's right.

03:32 - She was George Barker's daughter and, you know, and

03:35 - his sister. And

03:37 - these they were the house was next door to the barracks.

03:40 - For the record, these are names that are

03:43 - legendary in cable television in the state of Pennsylvania.

03:47 - And as a matter of fact, nationally,

03:48 - because both of them were very much involved

03:50 - in the National Cable Television Association also.

03:53 - So I just wanted to bring that in as a reference.

03:56 - This is back and this is 1950, I guess this

03:59 - is before cable, before they even had the cable in media.

04:03 - So I decided I was going to resign

04:06 - and go to college and and I did

04:11 - a very lot of things

04:13 - happening during the college time but

04:17 - didn't get in trouble, did you?

04:18 - Pardon me?

04:19 - You didn't get in trouble, did you?

04:20 - Yeah, a couple of times. Okay.

04:22 - But I won't go into it.

04:23 - But I just.

04:23 - I guess knowing you, I imagine you did.

04:26 - Yeah, I kept myself busy, but anyway,

04:29 - uh, in the meantime,

04:33 - I was starting dating Colleen, and we got pretty serious, and,

04:37 - uh, I think George liked the idea of.

04:41 - Of my not

04:42 - having a college education,

04:46 - so I sort of vowed to myself

04:48 - that I wouldn't get married until I finished college.

04:52 - So I did.

04:52 - I did it in two and a half years

04:55 - and we finished

04:58 - because they never stopped going straight through it

05:00 - finished about the eighth or 9th of July.

05:02 - And we got married on the 28th.

05:03 - Oh, and then

05:07 - actually I went to work for Westinghouse

05:09 - in Pittsburgh after I got out of college.

05:13 - Still living in Meadville over there?

05:14 - No, we moved we moved to Pittsburgh.

05:17 - And of course, every weekend it was a trip back to Meadville.

05:21 - And but

05:24 - then they started this cable television business.

05:27 - And, uh,

05:30 - were you involved in it from.

05:31 - From the beginning?

05:32 - No, no, no, I.

05:35 - We are in a no, I wasn't in the concept stage though.

05:40 - I mean family discussions and things like that type of thing.

05:43 - But I still was.

05:44 - I was working with Westinghouse and it got to a point where

05:48 - what was the what was Bakos thinking about

05:51 - the development of cable in Meadville?

05:54 - Oh, that's an interesting story.

05:56 - Please talk.

05:59 - George and Yolanda would go to New York City every summer

06:03 - for educational continuing education

06:07 - classes for the legal profession.

06:10 - And one year they went to New York.

06:12 - And when they checked into the hotel,

06:15 - they told said the George was

06:16 - they were both attorneys that they were both attorneys.

06:19 - In fact,

06:20 - I mean, would go with them occasionally but

06:23 - she was with them on this trip.

06:25 - She was a paralegal in their office.

06:26 - Was that correct?

06:29 - She was.

06:31 - George was when he was checking in,

06:34 - they asked him if he would like to

06:35 - have a television in his room

06:36 - because it was $2 extra

06:38 - for the television and he had never seen television before.

06:41 - So he said, Yeah, it's nice to see it.

06:43 - What year was this?

06:44 - Oh, I must have been, I would guess, like

06:50 - 1952, some of the early 51 or two,

06:55 - because it started developing shortly after

06:58 - when I tell you the story.

07:00 - So when he got home from the class,

07:02 - got to the hotel from the class that first day, he couldn't

07:06 - wait to turn the television on and we turn it on.

07:08 - Didn't work.

07:10 - I couldn't get it at the hotel in New York.

07:13 - Hotel didn't work.

07:14 - He was paying two bucks

07:16 - to get television and he he wanted to see it.

07:19 - So he goes just calls the desk and

07:22 - and the next thing you know, that they had people in the room

07:25 - trying to find out what the trouble was.

07:26 - And to make a long story short, the next day

07:30 - it was an RCA system.

07:32 - He had the president of the RCA

07:36 - installed it in his room

07:38 - trying to explain to him what wasn't working.

07:42 - And then he finally got it to work and he saw television.

07:45 - So during that discussion he asked this

07:49 - fellow was in the room with him

07:51 - if this could work in a hotel, why can't it work in the town?

07:55 - And was Meadville getting any signal at all at that time?

07:58 - Nothing. There was no television at all? No.

08:00 - Well, up on the hills you could get

08:03 - there was one station at Erie.

08:04 - And it's a matter of fact, Pittsburgh only had one.

08:06 - It was a Dumont Channel three in Pittsburgh.

08:09 - Katie x.

08:10 - Katie X. Katie X I don't know.

08:13 - I don't remember that, but it's now Channel two.

08:17 - Katie K

08:18 - But that was the only station in Pittsburgh

08:20 - and Erie only had one.

08:22 - It was an NBC that Erie had

08:24 - and Cleveland I think had two at the time.

08:27 - They could get a signal

08:29 - on the hilltops, but you could get nothing downtown and

08:35 - so the guy told us

08:37 - it was a matter of fact, there's a full in Pennsylvania

08:40 - starting to do this kind of thing for communities

08:43 - and it was built in Shep and it's Joe electronics.

08:47 - The next week we get back he was in Philadelphia a meeting

08:50 - with Gerald with the mil chat and that's how it developed.

08:55 - And by 1953, well I guess yeah, by 1952 is when they started

09:01 - and uh that everything with Gerald at the time.

09:06 - There's a question

09:06 - on my mind about that, and I think it's of interest.

09:10 - Gerald was developing cable television

09:14 - in Pennsylvania and elsewhere that they would provide

09:17 - financing manufacturers, financing

09:20 - for the development of systems, but they would always take

09:23 - a percentage interest in those systems.

09:25 - Did that happen in Georgia to do that?

09:27 - I wondering why he didn't do that.

09:29 - That's the question.

09:29 - Oh, he he saw right away

09:31 - that that's when the best way to go,

09:33 - because a lot of people felt that way after a while.

09:35 - Interesting, too, because

09:37 - one of his clients was a doctor.

09:40 - Doctor Winslow and

09:44 - the Knowing George could talk somebody into anything.

09:47 - He talked Doctor Winslow to go with him as a

09:50 - as part of the corporation, as an equity,

09:53 - because he was also a president of the bank.

09:56 - I think, and he also was president,

09:59 - the telephone company.

10:01 - So, you know, he had the touch attached to the poles

10:04 - and you had to get the money.

10:05 - So he had this guy who could provide that.

10:08 - And so if you had local

10:10 - financing, the local bank financed the system.

10:14 - And how much of his own money did he put into it?

10:16 - I can't I don't remember what that was.

10:20 - But anyway, the doctor, after they start building

10:23 - the system, started to cost more than they thought.

10:26 - And the doctor said to George was,

10:28 - I better get out, it's good. It's too much money.

10:30 - And so George had to

10:32 - take care of him.

10:34 - And that's that's how George became sole owner.

10:37 - And so he bought the doctor out or didn't buy the bank at that.

10:41 - Well, he just he just took over

10:42 - the responsibilities of the bank alone.

10:46 - And, and then and, you know, he was already involved

10:50 - in it, too, but

10:52 - it was then now there's the two of them.

10:54 - In fact, Yolanda was the first general manager

10:58 - and I and that's where I started coming into the picture.

11:02 - I had a nice job with Westinghouse.

11:04 - I really didn't want to leave Westinghouse, but

11:08 - get to a point where I saw that

11:11 - I wanted to be back in Meadville.

11:12 - And what were you doing for Westinghouse?

11:14 - I was I was a kind of a troubleshooter

11:19 - when there was a problem,

11:21 - for example, there was a

11:22 - problem with the washer, Westinghouse washer.

11:28 - I had to go investigate and could bring the problem back.

11:31 - And problem with that,

11:34 - the handle on the arm, that was a problem.

11:36 - Find this lady and find out

11:38 - what the problem was and if the party line

11:41 - was bothering her fingers.

11:42 - And so the around the retail level right but but I worked at

11:47 - East Pittsburgh where all this was manufactured

11:50 - and I just go

11:51 - find out what the problem was and come back in

11:54 - and get together

11:55 - with the engineers and try to correct the problem

11:59 - that I enjoyed it.

11:59 - I covered all the Westinghouse plants,

12:03 - I guess, east of the Mississippi.

12:05 - So George talked to you in the then and George and Eileen to

12:11 - we came along one weekend and

12:13 - and we were talking about it as a family

12:17 - and I thought about it and I thought, let's give it a shot.

12:21 - I can't.

12:22 - But by that,

12:24 - you weren't really confident, though,

12:25 - that this idea was going to work.

12:26 - That was it was like digging an oil well.

12:29 - You know, it's just that

12:30 - or a gold mine even as in what year was this just?

12:34 - I think the that was in 1958, 59.

12:40 - And I think they had

12:43 - I think it was around 9000 subscribers at the time.

12:46 - They already had 9000.

12:47 - It was this interesting

12:50 - and I tell people this story.

12:52 - We started with three channels.

12:54 - And when we started when they started

12:55 - the three channels,

12:57 - it was more excitement

12:58 - than anything that ever happened to me, though.

13:00 - We went to 20 channels, nobody got too excited about it.

13:03 - But those three channels tell me about the excitement

13:06 - because they had nothing.

13:08 - And how did the excitement manifest itself?

13:11 - Well, they had a

13:12 - they they leased an auditorium from the Catholic school,

13:19 - and they had the dealers bring their

13:21 - television sets in and they had them on display.

13:25 - In fact, the dealers had promotions going

13:29 - that it was $125

13:31 - get connected and 350 a month for three channels.

13:33 - And by this time, though, the dealers weren't

13:35 - able to sell any televisions in Meadville.

13:38 - As a matter of fact, some of them had to call

13:40 - place other places to get television sets.

13:42 - They didn't have any because they couldn't sell them.

13:45 - So they were a few, but not not they were big backers.

13:48 - And they, they started promoting and said,

13:52 - well, we'll pay, we'll pay for $125.

13:55 - If you buy television set, we'll be we'll pay your

13:59 - pay so many months that

14:01 - they did a promotion

14:02 - together with the cable company and in their store.

14:07 - Well, crazy.

14:10 - They had lines of people just signing up.

14:14 - You weren't involved at this time?

14:16 - Well, by then I was helping them.

14:18 - Okay.

14:18 - That's that's why I said I wasn't

14:20 - really officially working then, but I was helping them and,

14:24 - uh, another is I see now I see advertised

14:29 - where the cable companies are buying back dishes.

14:34 - We were buying back end antennas.

14:36 - Right. Tons of them.

14:38 - We had we kept the scrap yards,

14:41 - kept their bins full with antennas and pipes

14:44 - that were holding the antenna.

14:45 - But we did that way back then.

14:48 - But anyway, uh, uh,

14:52 - it, it

14:54 - would you trade the whole hundred and $25 for a,

14:57 - an antenna or only a portion of it.

14:59 - Oh, we put to the whole thing and we would take them down.

15:03 - Fact taking them done

15:05 - got to be more expensive than anything

15:07 - because some of them were pretty high.

15:08 - And but we had, we had bucket trucks and ladder trucks and,

15:12 - and it was, we got them down that it worked.

15:17 - It really and all of a sudden you see the, the

15:22 - tree too.

15:22 - I mean the house stuff looking better.

15:25 - The whole town saw it looking better.

15:27 - And we we promoted that appearance thing to it.

15:31 - So how many homes did they pass when they had 9000 subscribers?

15:35 - And what was your penetration rate?

15:37 - You know, Jim, I don't we didn't think about that.

15:40 - I can't I couldn't tell you.

15:43 - Nobody thought about God counting the houses,

15:46 - because, in fact,

15:49 - we would build down the street

15:52 - and sell that street, collect the money,

15:54 - and we get the money to build the next week.

15:57 - That's how once it got started and then when I came

16:02 - to the company, we really started

16:04 - promoting that.

16:05 - And I would go out and I'd go down the street

16:07 - and knock on the doors and tell them, we're coming

16:09 - down, pass through, pamphlets out.

16:14 - And that worked.

16:15 - You probably got eight out of ten

16:17 - and you went down the street. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:19 - It was especially in the old part of town.

16:23 - It was

16:26 - Jim. I had people offering me

16:28 - money under the table to get ahead in the line,

16:32 - and I wouldn't do that, of course, at all.

16:34 - I would do that unless they were your friend.

16:37 - Yeah,

16:39 - well, a lot of them are your friends,

16:41 - and you, you got to do something.

16:44 - But it was so much excitement about those three channels,

16:47 - and that always interested me.

16:49 - And they were the three networks.

16:51 - Yes, we were one out of every one of the

16:55 - Pittsburgh, one out of Cleveland, the three networks.

16:58 - And that was it.

17:00 - And in fact, if you remember that

17:02 - you had to go to four and six,

17:03 - you couldn't put

17:05 - adjacent channels in because they interfere with each other.

17:07 - And where you weren't using broadband amplifiers.

17:10 - And in the early drip strip, one one amplifier for each channel

17:14 - strip for each channel as you went in each amplifier location.

17:17 - And they had no

17:20 - no filters on so you couldn't put them together.

17:23 - The broadband, the first broadband amplifier

17:25 - was five channels.

17:26 - Yeah, that was that was it.

17:30 - And so you were using the Jerrold strips

17:32 - in each amplifier location.

17:33 - Needle was always Jerrold.

17:36 - Until then we had some later on

17:39 - when um

17:44 - to Bruce Miro's company amico amico

17:47 - we use some of his there on in some scientific Atlanta

17:52 - once we started expanding

17:53 - where you see though another Pennsylvania company.

17:55 - Yes well as a matter of fact, the just before

17:59 - we sold, I was designing

18:03 - the rebuild of the whole system, and that would have been.

18:05 - Ziegler Were you doing the engineering

18:07 - also for the system? Pretty much so.

18:09 - But we had we had another fellow who was really the designer

18:13 - and we worked together on it and uh, that was, was Keeble.

18:18 - Then we would get him one of these days to

18:22 - do one of these. Great.

18:24 - When did you go from three channels to

18:26 - what was your next step?

18:30 - Five.

18:31 - The next step was five and we went to a broadband network.

18:34 - Let's see, we started in 53. It's

18:39 - about 1955.

18:41 - It was a couple of years of three channels

18:44 - and but that didn't stay very long because

18:48 - as I said, that was the broadband amplifier then.

18:53 - But by then things had geared up in the manufacturing.

18:57 - That was another thing about George Parker was in fact,

19:01 - every time Millichap would see me

19:02 - keep George away from me because all he wants is more channels

19:06 - every that every time we see them happen is people

19:09 - didn't believe that the broadband amplifiers

19:11 - would work in the early days. And they're right. No, no.

19:14 - As a matter of fact, isn't that true?

19:16 - Well, that was interesting that most of the development

19:21 - that Jerrold created

19:24 - was field tested by us

19:26 - when we'd get something

19:29 - you never knew it was going to work.

19:30 - Just you have to put it out in the field

19:33 - and try it and see and make adjustments and

19:37 - we went we went from

19:39 - 12 channels to, you know, from three or 3 to 5

19:44 - and then 5 to 12, you had the two amplifiers.

19:48 - So at that point I ran a little man amplifier, right?

19:51 - And also

19:55 - they put in galvanized boxes.

19:57 - They weren't in the housing themselves.

19:59 - They put the amplifier in a galvanized box.

20:02 - And that was

20:06 - a pretty difficult installation on a pole

20:09 - and took a lot of space on the pole to put the box on.

20:12 - But anyway, uh,

20:16 - I think it was when we went through the 12

20:18 - channels, the 12 channel tube was NEC,

20:24 - then it was 12 channels transistors.

20:26 - And when that 12 channel transistor came about,

20:31 - I think by the time we started putting them up,

20:34 - but they weren't working well,

20:38 - they finally Jerrold finally sent a young fella

20:40 - from Philadelphia to Meadville.

20:42 - He was there for six months making the modifications.

20:45 - If something like 30 modifications

20:47 - on the amplifier

20:48 - wasn't the original transistor, didn't have transistors

20:50 - only on the input and tubes on the output that somebody

20:54 - when it first started. Right,

20:56 - Jerrold had that type of amplifier also.

20:59 - But that's how that's I guess

21:01 - that's why they call us pioneers because

21:05 - we really were it were question actually

21:09 - and nobody we didn't complain about having to modify

21:13 - we knew what we were doing was going in the right direction

21:17 - and uh, sometimes it became a challenge

21:20 - to, to make something work very well and

21:25 - even even

21:27 - back then.

21:27 - Jim, you know, we had to design our own antennas.

21:30 - And I remember Jack Beaver from Joe, who is an antenna man.

21:36 - He'd send you the drawings, just which would to stack them

21:40 - and make sure you got them in the District

21:42 - four stack or each stack.

21:44 - It doesn't,

21:45 - you know, it's just,

21:46 - uh, the reason I like to go into this in detail

21:49 - is that some years,

21:50 - 50 years down the pike or wherever it's going to be,

21:52 - somebody is going to be looking at this interview.

21:55 - Never heard of cable television except what they see

21:57 - on their television set.

21:58 - Had no idea of how this began.

22:01 - And you guys that were in well, you know

22:04 - what you're saying now.

22:05 - It reminds me of a story that

22:08 - later in in in our years

22:11 - a young fellow

22:13 - that we a social that was complaining about

22:16 - how bad television was and this didn't work. No.

22:20 - I said, you know, the trouble with you,

22:21 - you you forget about what it was like when you had an antenna.

22:24 - And he said, Jim, I never had an antenna.

22:26 - Yeah, that's right.

22:28 - So that that maybe you wake up and say

22:30 - this, you were into a generation that that really never saw

22:33 - television with an indiscriminate antenna.

22:35 - That's right.

22:35 - And so and now that's we're in dishes now that's

22:39 - but the fact that we're having

22:42 - these interviews in the archive is going to be for future

22:45 - use by people doing books and scholars and things like that.

22:48 - So there's

22:49 - a lot of pictures around that we've got to start taking,

22:52 - putting these pictures into some kind of a form to show

22:57 - that we are

22:58 - we put pictures of the antennas when we built them, and

23:03 - our channel to

23:04 - meet them were to channel to wavelengths,

23:09 - to big screens, about ten apiece.

23:13 - They had to hang on the pole and

23:17 - that was a big project.

23:18 - And now we have a nice picture.

23:19 - That effect affected says, Well, I hope these pictures

23:21 - will someday find their way into the archives of at the center.

23:25 - I think is

23:26 - I think that's got to something has to be done

23:29 - so people can see what we had to do.

23:31 - Jim, I don't want to go into

23:32 - great technical detail, but I do I have a big question.

23:36 - George Barkow was always

23:38 - a firm advocate of the cable system

23:42 - and only has a master antenna system to receive signals.

23:45 - And I have, for whatever reason, and I had

23:47 - thought it was for copyright purposes and others,

23:50 - but yet you were the first ones to develop really,

23:52 - or one of the very first ones to develop an extensive

23:56 - programing on on the local level.

23:58 - Is this a dichotomy or is it

24:00 - what what happened that made this work?

24:02 - Well,

24:03 - because he was always opposed to any kind of first me first.

24:06 - I think the reason he was opposed to it was

24:12 - he had a terrific legal mind.

24:15 - He had no technical mind at all about how things work.

24:20 - But legally, he was very good at it.

24:22 - And I think he worried about copyright

24:25 - rights in the beginning. I think he did, too.

24:27 - And he was very felt very strongly about that.

24:29 - And later on, he he was part of that copyright settlement,

24:34 - and it was a thing that bothered him.

24:37 - Uh, but the reason

24:39 - we initially got involved with

24:42 - the cable casting, we called it

24:45 - then is it

24:48 - he wanted it for education.

24:51 - He felt very strongly in what way.

24:53 - The local schools order to bring other programing in.

24:56 - For what.

24:56 - Well to be able to I guess

25:01 - the legal education stuff that he was doing,

25:05 - he thought that there was an opportunity

25:08 - they had to go to New York City.

25:09 - He said, why can't we get a tape?

25:11 - And sure, in Meadville.

25:14 - And but it never developed

25:18 - even even even the schools.

25:21 - He said, well, let's try it with the schools.

25:23 - He's he's we tried everything to get the get the

25:27 - education into the cable.

25:29 - In the meantime

25:29 - you would make made quite an expenditure

25:31 - in buying all of this equipment for the studios and whatever.

25:34 - $50,000 or more.

25:36 - Oh yeah, maybe a hundred.

25:38 - In fact,

25:41 - uh, we even it one of the reason we built the building,

25:46 - we built the building just for the cable company,

25:49 - for the offices and, and for the service department.

25:53 - But on the second floor, we built a studio, television

25:56 - studio that was really at that time

26:00 - better than any studio that the television stations

26:03 - had in our area.

26:05 - In fact, one of the guy,

26:06 - one of the engineers from one of the years,

26:08 - when you say your area, what what do you mean you're in Erie?

26:11 - Erie here in this area.

26:13 - One of the fellows

26:15 - from one of the stations in Erie, the UHF station,

26:19 - was a good friend of mine and he helped a lot, helped us.

26:22 - In fact, we bought a lot of the used black and white equipment

26:27 - because we started with black and white, no color

26:31 - and big

26:33 - huge cameras and the right film chains.

26:36 - A big film change tape machines are one inch or two

26:39 - inch machines and heavy could move them around too well.

26:44 - But it was

26:45 - it was quite in in fact, Jim Strickler is still around.

26:49 - He's the he was the first

26:51 - manager of the cable, of the television, of the programing.

26:55 - And we're going to do a little session with him, too.

26:59 - And because he started it

27:04 - now, had had you viewed local programing

27:07 - in any other system at the time you got into it?

27:09 - No, no.

27:11 - There were very few I know going on, if any at all.

27:14 - We we had

27:16 - we had heard about it,

27:18 - but we just knew we could do it.

27:20 - Uh, I had a

27:22 - pretty good relationship with the couple of the Erie

27:26 - stations, and

27:29 - we talked about it a lot.

27:30 - And at first

27:34 - even they thought it wouldn't be a bad idea

27:36 - to get some coverage of some kind in your own little town.

27:40 - It was never the town itself couldn't support a television

27:44 - station, so

27:48 - and and I guess George, it was not

27:53 - it was not a moneymaker.

27:55 - It in fact, we lost money for a long time with it.

27:58 - And, uh, but that wasn't his concern.

28:02 - When did you start selling spots or start selling programing

28:04 - you never did, never did, never did.

28:06 - You had to lose then?

28:08 - Yeah, never did it.

28:09 - They're not today.

28:11 - They're not selling ads.

28:13 - Yeah, they are now. Okay.

28:14 - In a lot of the automatic stuff now uh,

28:17 - we didn't have that.

28:21 - You remember the, remember the weather station

28:23 - that had the camera that went like this?

28:26 - Yeah, that

28:27 - pretty much gave us the idea that

28:30 - if you stood in front of that camera, people could see you.

28:33 - You said, Well, why don't we?

28:35 - In fact, that just reminded me,

28:38 - Jim Stricker and I, he he worked for the radio station.

28:41 - He was a schoolteacher,

28:42 - and they can manage the radio station.

28:44 - And then he worked for

28:46 - the power company, and that's how I got to know him.

28:49 - And I talked to him one day about it.

28:53 - So Moab, Utah, you know.

28:58 - Yeah.

28:58 - And I flew out to Moab, Utah, because

29:01 - we heard about this guy who's the guy that name

29:04 - of the guy that designed it.

29:05 - I know. I'd, uh.

29:07 - Oh, I know. He's no good. His name.

29:08 - I just can't think of it right now, but, uh,

29:12 - he has since passed away. But

29:15 - he was.

29:16 - He had a man doing

29:18 - automations, automation.

29:20 - And the interesting, the end panel, you take

29:25 - the and I put his face in there and that's the

29:28 - newscaster that's was and they sold it.

29:33 - They just put ads on a two car and they sold it.

29:36 - And it was kind of interesting set up.

29:40 - So we get back from there.

29:41 - And the first the first program

29:44 - we did was the same way and we did inspection returns

29:47 - with your with your did you do the.

29:50 - No, Jim Stricker did.

29:51 - I was on the phone getting the numbers from there.

29:55 - And he was just looking through this panel, giving them

30:00 - and that was looking at the numbers.

30:02 - And he announced what the vote was.

30:05 - And I was getting it from a newspaper.

30:07 - In fact, I, I went to

30:09 - sit in the number one time

30:11 - and knocked of one of the metal garbage cans over.

30:14 - And we worked it in,

30:17 - I think we were all in

30:17 - across the big noise

30:20 - of that.

30:21 - That's and then we thought

30:25 - people liked it.

30:27 - It was everybody knew his face.

30:29 - And so that's when we our first studio

30:34 - was in the second floor of the YMCA.

30:37 - In fact, every time somebody used a diving board, you'd hear

30:40 - the answer.

30:42 - And then that's when we decided

30:45 - it was going pretty well as far as programing and we had.

30:50 - What other types of programing did you have

30:53 - that girl do a little children's show?

30:57 - Uh, and then we had no clowns or no clowns.

31:03 - Yeah, it's a bozo type show.

31:05 - Yeah.

31:06 - And the religious group of ministers

31:10 - come in and, uh,

31:14 - interviews for the people in town.

31:17 - Oh, George.

31:18 - And you were always very involved in the infrastructure

31:22 - of Meadville and various organizations

31:25 - and so on, and you develop that greatly over your tenure there.

31:29 - I did this and I and it's it's shown its effect.

31:35 - It's a nice community.

31:36 - And George felt very strongly about Meadville.

31:40 - He was

31:41 - lived there and practiced there.

31:43 - So did you? Yes,

31:46 - I being that was my home.

31:51 - I wasn't originally from Meadville.

31:53 - So what other two program types did you do in the early days?

31:58 - And then as you developed the whole concept,

32:02 - oh gosh, we did

32:07 - the there was a lot of material

32:11 - available on tape and we did a lot of that.

32:14 - We even we even did a series of movies,

32:17 - old movies, and

32:21 - our logo was CTB

32:23 - 13, which is a unlucky number.

32:27 - And so we had a cat,

32:30 - black cat, and they, they did a series of

32:35 - ghost type movies and that really was pretty popular.

32:39 - And here again, we still didn't sell it.

32:41 - We could have, but we could have.

32:43 - We had the opportunity. So could have. But

32:47 - George was a funny duck.

32:48 - As far as as far as money.

32:51 - He had it budget time.

32:52 - It always complained we're not making enough money.

32:54 - But he wouldn't let us raise the rate.

32:57 - He just wanted to keep the rate low

32:59 - and his idea was

33:02 - it's the

33:06 - he said,

33:06 - you can only spend so much, you only need so much money.

33:09 - Why take more?

33:10 - And that

33:11 - was kind of a strange attitude to have in business as it is.

33:14 - And but but you were you had an economics degree didn't you?

33:19 - Pardon me?

33:19 - You had a degree in economics. Yes.

33:21 - And I kept telling, isn't it, George,

33:25 - we're putting new equipment in, you're extending money and we'd

33:30 - we were 350 for a long time, even after 12 channels.

33:34 - Then we changed it.

33:36 - Uh, I think it was

33:40 - like 24, 95, four, 95 a month.

33:43 - But then by that time we're up to 20 channels.

33:45 - Tell me when when HBO came on, when did you put it in?

33:48 - And did you have a little problem

33:50 - philosophically with putting HBO on the system?

33:52 - Well, we didn't put HBO and Showtime on first

33:56 - because

33:59 - quote unquote, they were a little cleaner.

34:02 - They didn't on the smart stuff like that.

34:04 - Okay.

34:05 - And that that was one of the George's problems, too.

34:09 - And I guess all of the nation's blame, George, for that, too.

34:12 - Uh, we were all pretty conservative people,

34:14 - and we thought

34:15 - we'd get some trouble from the church to go to church.

34:18 - Community media.

34:21 - And then we later on put HBO on.

34:24 - And when you put Showtime on,

34:28 - it was it was

34:29 - sort of a test to put Showtime on

34:32 - and we didn't have much trouble.

34:33 - But now this

34:34 - this totally little blue, his concept

34:36 - of being only a master antenna system.

34:38 - I Oh, yes, that's right.

34:40 - And was

34:41 - was there a philosophical discussion

34:42 - of what should we put it on or should we not? Yes, yes.

34:45 - But there was enough requests for that.

34:49 - In fact, we just did a lot.

34:51 - And I especially

34:55 - sort of talked him into it to let's just try it.

34:59 - And the

35:01 - he decided, okay, go ahead.

35:03 - It was interesting.

35:05 - You you felt

35:06 - very strongly about something, but it didn't take much to

35:09 - change his mind.

35:10 - If you could show him some good argument and

35:14 - I sort of keep a record of the requests

35:17 - that we got for it, and I

35:20 - we had a

35:21 - after church on Sunday morning.

35:23 - We had a family meeting every Sunday

35:25 - that we were in town.

35:26 - And that was pretty much the

35:29 - the meeting was talking about what happened the past week.

35:33 - And and they always wanted to hear it.

35:36 - They both always wanted to hear anything that was unusual

35:39 - that happened in my office.

35:40 - And we talked about that a lot.

35:43 - And any decision that was made was made

35:46 - at one of those meetings as a group.

35:49 - And, uh,

35:50 - and that would be the four of you, George,

35:53 - Yolanda, Leon and yourself. Right, right.

35:55 - And in fact, even even George, my mother.

35:59 - Mother had I'd get involved once in a while.

36:01 - She had a woman friends with

36:05 - six years.

36:05 - Yes. Yes, I had some people ask me about

36:08 - why can't we have

36:09 - never had

36:10 - never had the women guarding society on the programing.

36:13 - Oh yeah. Yeah.

36:15 - Ladies to society as well.

36:16 - I guess we eventually interviewed every

36:20 - special person in town, some for some reason

36:24 - that was a lot of the program and just interviewed a George.

36:28 - And you I think also were responsible

36:30 - for the building of the Pennsylvania

36:33 - that the Penn Network to me about that

36:38 - that that started out this panorama

36:41 - this was George and Joe Ganz

36:45 - senior

36:47 - Joe Ganz was doing something here again.

36:51 - Joe was doing something with a college

36:53 - in eastern part of the state.

36:56 - And they were

36:57 - they had a microwave system didn't they, going Joe.

36:59 - But Joe had

37:00 - his own little system going, he had some microwave going in

37:04 - and he was telling George about it, George Berkeley about it.

37:07 - And so George said, Why don't we get a group

37:10 - is such a wonderful idea.

37:11 - Why don't we get a group of people together and finance

37:15 - a network

37:17 - and cover the whole state?

37:20 - And it was 11 companies.

37:22 - Initially the George got money from 11 different companies

37:27 - to remember who they were.

37:29 - I can't name them all now, but I have that list.

37:32 - I can.

37:32 - I think that would that would be interesting.

37:34 - Interesting.

37:34 - The Denver I, I have the list in my office,

37:37 - but I, I can remember

37:41 - there was TCI,

37:43 - Armstrong

37:46 - Rinehart's group,

37:48 - that Blue Ridge, Bob Sterling,

37:51 - Joe Gans and Meadville.

37:54 - What year was this?

37:58 - So I know you're going to ask me

37:59 - all those dates and I can't remember.

38:01 - It's, you know, generally speaking,

38:03 - uh, late sixties, certainly seventies.

38:06 - It would be about 25 years ago,

38:09 - mid seventies.

38:10 - We had a 20th anniversary

38:13 - just four or five years ago.

38:14 - We ATC was involved in Pennsylvania at that time.

38:17 - Were they part of that group also?

38:18 - You know, TCI was the you.

38:20 - I was in

38:24 - that's pretty much

38:25 - covered most of them and I

38:27 - there's a couple

38:27 - I can't think of right now but but

38:29 - I have that list in my office.

38:31 - But so how did it develop?

38:34 - They built

38:36 - that's when they started building the microwave system.

38:38 - And Joe's Skinner's idea was to use this

38:43 - hit ends of cable companies.

38:45 - If there's enough cable companies

38:46 - spread around the state that we can use their head ins

38:51 - and their towers or

38:53 - and put the dishes on their on own.

38:56 - But it didn't work that way.

38:57 - Once you start laying it out,

39:00 - it up.

39:01 - We had a we had a

39:02 - we called it a figure eight

39:04 - and Penn State was the center of that figure eight.

39:06 - We made a big noise about developing

39:09 - this whole network, but it never work. Is that right?

39:12 - Yeah, it worked.

39:13 - It worked. Eventually we built the network.

39:15 - We built the microwave network.

39:17 - And what did it do?

39:19 - Pardon me? What it do?

39:21 - Well, what kind of programing did it handle?

39:23 - The trade we had.

39:25 - We had Penn program.

39:27 - It was Penn Ram from Penn State.

39:30 - And it was all education

39:32 - and continuing education.

39:34 - Or would

39:36 - you could take a course for credit

39:38 - if that was the general

39:41 - consensus that we would make it available

39:44 - for people who can't afford to go to college.

39:46 - They could do it at home,

39:48 - but That didn't work.

39:52 - Surprisingly enough, that did not work.

39:55 - But then we, uh,

40:01 - Brian Lockman came with us

40:04 - and just sort of changed our

40:07 - philosophy about programing

40:10 - and that started working.

40:13 - Then what kind of programing did you go to? Uh,

40:21 - we call it

40:25 - what types of the,

40:25 - sort of the public service type programing.

40:30 - The now we're in that pretty strong.

40:33 - And here again, still not selling anything.

40:38 - And it goes into all of the systems in the state

40:41 - or those who want to participate.

40:42 - Yeah, people

40:43 - who wanted to receive the signal would pay per subscriber

40:48 - like in other networks

40:50 - and that worked pretty well.

40:52 - And now we had a lot of problems with the microwave system

40:57 - that we had the

40:58 - the maintenance on it was pretty strong and keeping it going.

41:02 - And it was initially designed to go in two directions.

41:05 - That's why with the figure eight,

41:08 - but then

41:11 - changes in technology came about with compression digital

41:16 - and and we finally we were able to put it on the satellite

41:19 - or you are on the satellite.

41:21 - That was going to be my next question.

41:22 - Because of the

41:24 - because of the compression, we had to buy less bandwidth

41:26 - and it became feasible to put it on the satellite.

41:30 - And that's working very nicely now.

41:32 - And it's I think I think we can consider it successful now.

41:36 - Great.

41:38 - You're

41:38 - still on the board then, aren't you, that

41:41 - what other boards are you currently involved in of.

41:46 - Just other than cable. Yes.

41:48 - Oh it's quite a few, but

41:51 - some of them are almost all Meadville,

41:52 - except for some of the statewide associations.

41:55 - Yeah, well, I do a lot with the University

41:59 - of Pittsburgh in the athletic department.

42:01 - Uh, I've known the board

42:04 - trustee at the university again and university out of Erie.

42:07 - And congratulations, Doctor.

42:08 - I heard you get the honorary law degree.

42:13 - In fact, I said to them, I think I'm a lawyer.

42:16 - I better tell them I'm not. I'm not.

42:19 - You're a doctor, but is interesting and

42:23 - I do a lot of I still do a lot of local stuff

42:26 - in Meadville itself.

42:28 - I went to the Chamber of Commerce

42:30 - and Redevelopment Authority and that type of thing.

42:33 - And I still stay very active.

42:36 - I still have an office, although everybody's gone now

42:39 - except me.

42:40 - And I still maintain that.

42:43 - And I want to

42:45 - keep the

42:45 - name as long as we can to.

42:49 - And that's my goal.

42:49 - Or do they still call it the Meadville

42:53 - master Antenna System, or they have the change of Dr.

42:56 - Armstrong changed the name.

42:58 - It's part of Armstrong group of companies now

43:01 - and that but most people still call it

43:04 - master antenna in May and that's still a new

43:09 - and they still think I'm involved in and tell you

43:11 - if you if you get the calls and everything like that

43:14 - you left there wasn't 89 when it was after 89.

43:19 - You've been gone 12, 12 years. Yes.

43:22 - And you still.

43:23 - Well, I, I left there, but I was involved with the the network.

43:28 - I, I volunteered for that job and I never lost it.

43:33 - I know how those things work.

43:35 - Yeah.

43:36 - The fellow who was doing the work

43:38 - that I started doing

43:41 - died and they needed somebody to fill in for him.

43:44 - And I told you that I would

43:46 - until they found somebody, I would do it

43:49 - as a favor.

43:51 - Well, they never did find anybody.

43:52 - And so I stayed with it and I enjoyed it.

43:55 - I enjoyed working with the network.

43:57 - And you're president of the Barkow Direct Foundation.

44:00 - Now to tell me about that.

44:02 - And what does it do?

44:04 - Well, it was there again.

44:09 - Uh, George. George Barkow.

44:12 - And you're on to, to, uh, I guess all of us felt that

44:17 - you were successful in the community and you should

44:20 - make some arrangements to return something to the community.

44:24 - And I really don't think there's anybody

44:27 - that's done any more for me during George than his family

44:32 - and just Meadville.

44:34 - But then we we still felt strongly about education

44:37 - and scholarships to help.

44:41 - It's kind of a

44:44 - and I don't say this to make one group look different

44:47 - and not as good as another group,

44:48 - but our philosophy was that the

44:53 - the kids

44:54 - whose father was successful

44:57 - and had money, too, could afford to go to college.

45:01 - He didn't need any help.

45:03 - And the guy way down on the bottom could get help

45:05 - through the government in most cases.

45:08 - The guy we were looking to help was the guy in the middle,

45:11 - the family, hardworking families,

45:14 - but just didn't have enough

45:16 - to get that son or daughter to college.

45:19 - But yet they were good students

45:22 - and we felt very strongly about grades.

45:24 - We didn't want to we wouldn't help somebody

45:27 - that didn't have it just to get them through college.

45:30 - They had to have good grades that any time

45:33 - somebody would come in and send an application and

45:38 - the first

45:39 - thing you'd look at was their grades.

45:42 - And so we have quite a few youngsters

45:45 - go to call it that way.

45:46 - And, you know, we're still doing it still doing that.

45:47 - That's that's the primary function of the foundation. And

45:51 - and there are certain certain guidelines

45:54 - that they have to go through and that

45:58 - and you administer this.

46:00 - I'm the president.

46:01 - But we now since I'm alone,

46:05 - I've turned it over to the bank

46:08 - and I have

46:10 - four trustees.

46:12 - But I'm they call me the master trustee.

46:14 - A master trustee.

46:15 - And so

46:16 - now you're not only a doctor, but you're a master trustee.

46:19 - And everything else is just this guy I thought I knew.

46:22 - Everything that they decide has to vacate by me

46:26 - when I have the four good guys. And,

46:31 - uh, I.

46:33 - We haven't been too wrong yet.

46:35 - You take their money on the golf course

46:38 - that lives that I'm paying, but I'm not good enough to take.

46:41 - But once in a while, I get

46:45 - of the 30,

46:47 - give or take a few years that you were

46:50 - manager of the system, what were you most proud of?

46:55 - Oh, I think the made decision we made, I think the decision

47:00 - of putting changing every two aluminum cable was

47:04 - was the

47:06 - biggest thing I've ever done in the

47:09 - and that was Jim.

47:11 - That was really a almost a mistake

47:15 - the way it happened.

47:18 - I don't know whether you remember that

47:19 - the University of Wisconsin had a very much so.

47:21 - That's where we first met right, in 1960 or 61.

47:26 - Yeah.

47:26 - And it was we went there for a week or ten days

47:30 - and in the last day we were there, I was.

47:33 - And that's where I met Bud Fish.

47:35 - Bud Shepard is from Canada, Camp Vancouver

47:40 - and I liked him

47:43 - and I think we got along very nice, a great loss, fine guy.

47:47 - And on our way to the airport,

47:50 - I was telling I had already ordered the cable

47:53 - from times

47:55 - flat flat braided flatbread

48:00 - and on the way to the airport he was telling me about this

48:03 - aluminum cable

48:04 - only thing we had in that it states at the time

48:06 - was probably made a half inch piece of the cable.

48:10 - That was it.

48:11 - And he was telling me about this three quarters

48:15 - truck line cable, three quarter inch.

48:17 - That's like a pipe, but

48:20 - it was being made in Canada.

48:23 - So I said and then I said, Well, how do you put a tap in?

48:26 - Just a pressure tap, if I could do it now in the for one, two

48:31 - for the

48:32 - feeder line, I said, I want you to send me a sample

48:36 - so it right away I got the sample

48:38 - I want to put putting a little bit in perspective.

48:40 - Bud Shepard was the president

48:43 - I guess Sid Welch was the president

48:45 - but was Vice President, General Manager of the Vancouver,

48:48 - Canada cable television system, which expanded into become What

48:51 - Empire was.

48:52 - That's the name of the couple of

48:54 - big operators in Big in Canada.

48:56 - Big in Canada.

48:57 - And Vancouver is a big city and they were great, great guys.

49:00 - But he was really I liked him very much

49:03 - and I think he liked me too.

49:04 - But we we sort of had our philosophy.

49:07 - We were about the same,

49:08 - but he sent me a

49:09 - piece of three quarter inch cable and,

49:11 - and a piece of feed it for one to feed on with a tap in it.

49:15 - And so

49:16 - I got together with our engineer, it was cable.

49:19 - And the next thing you know, we're up in Canada

49:22 - talking to the Canadian wire people.

49:24 - And if you call came back

49:27 - and called, Larry said, Larry, cancel your order.

49:31 - You were still prototyping a dollar.

49:33 - Yeah. Yeah.

49:34 - When did you go do inline taps, pre tapping?

49:38 - We never did know.

49:39 - I remember the great controversy and we never did

49:42 - mid-Sixties Sixties.

49:43 - But now they have.

49:44 - Yeah, it was after we sold the system.

49:46 - We were still pressure tap when I was still there

49:49 - and they would have a lot of controversy.

49:52 - That was yeah split

49:53 - why spend all that money to put those pre tap

49:57 - but when you're only going to use 50%

49:58 - or whatever

49:59 - is great in your case so you had every

50:01 - every home in town so it didn't make much difference.

50:03 - You still prototyped right to the end. Yeah.

50:05 - Well then when they

50:06 - when Armstrong bought it, they say

50:09 - it's about time for a rebuild.

50:10 - As I say, we were already designing.

50:12 - In fact, the system was on paper when we sold and

50:17 - it was going to be secure and we had had the layout all done.

50:22 - But, uh, but

50:23 - I think that was the, uh, by going to that aluminum cable

50:29 - that sort of set the trim for the whole thing.

50:33 - And now, as you know, everybody's using

50:36 - you never used any your jacketed aluminum cable, though

50:39 - not Meadville it was, yeah, we did some places and we did

50:42 - where we varied it to. Oh, okay.

50:43 - When you buried it and had the ceilings

50:45 - stuff, the goo in it and that we use quite a bit.

50:50 - And then I, I built the system

50:53 - in California, Pennsylvania, uh,

50:58 - because of the, there was a chemical plant

51:02 - in the area, all the cable near

51:04 - there was covered because of the,

51:07 - you look at the screen doors and you could tell you

51:09 - better do something like Altoona.

51:11 - I remember that for

51:12 - you just came right out of the air, right?

51:14 - Yeah. So that the

51:18 - well and you you remember all the trouble we had with the

51:21 - plastic cable, with the moisture coming in and the water and.

51:25 - Oh, that was the other thing that when we were

51:28 - rebuilding the plant for me though,

51:33 - with aluminum, there was a section four

51:36 - or five miles that we had just put in braided cable.

51:41 - In fact, it was when we were when we were going to

51:48 - the low band, high band,

51:49 - we were putting it was supposed to be a broadband system.

51:54 - And we put the amplifiers in right where they were

51:58 - and all of a sudden we couldn't get anything else.

52:00 - It didn't re space and and you're saying, oh,

52:02 - we just put it where we should have reached.

52:05 - But the high band wasn't going through at all.

52:08 - And it turned out that the cable

52:10 - with full of water cut the span out in the middle and

52:15 - it on like a pipe would have spit it out.

52:17 - It didn't so that that we took that down and put it in.

52:23 - Looking back in your career,

52:25 - what was the biggest mistake you made?

52:27 - None great had your first

52:29 - I have not never made a mistake.

52:32 - No, I

52:35 - seriously, Jim, I don't.

52:38 - We pretty much start everything out as far as,

52:41 - uh, I'm not so sure the program.

52:45 - It wasn't a mistake, but this was something

52:47 - that George wanted to do. So you can't consider.

52:49 - Didn't turn out to be a mistake that no one tried.

52:52 - But initially, for many years, it was not making any money.

52:56 - It was losing. What were you opposed to it, though, when?

52:59 - Well, not entirely.

53:01 - If it would have worked for the education.

53:05 - And there's no reason why it shouldn't have,

53:07 - except that the schoolteachers were afraid of it.

53:10 - And that's a this is blunt, as you put it.

53:13 - They were thought they were going to lose their job,

53:16 - which was not any truth to that at all.

53:19 - It's it's just too bad

53:21 - they couldn't see that as a tool.

53:23 - And nobody said anything when they brought movies in.

53:27 - Why they were afraid of television.

53:29 - But I think that the interaction

53:32 - scared them back and forth and they knew that was coming.

53:36 - I think they sensed that was coming anyway,

53:39 - and that's probably what scared them more than anything.

53:41 - And I can see maybe that would have

53:45 - and you only had one major rebuild

53:47 - in the time that you were there,

53:48 - and that was when you went to get three.

53:52 - I was involved, the three rebuilt

53:54 - and you said you had another

53:56 - rebuild on the drawing board when you sold in the fourth.

53:59 - What would that have been?

53:59 - Five 5550 megahertz for 5550

54:04 - and that's a long

54:06 - way from the three channels and individual strap amplifiers.

54:09 - It started with

54:12 - in retrospect, when you look back

54:14 - and think of the things that happened

54:18 - and how the development in 50 years, what happened

54:21 - in the communication field is just tremendous, I think.

54:25 - And look where we are today.

54:28 - And the other thing too is that

54:30 - we're past the development stages anymore.

54:33 - We get a piece of equipment.

54:34 - Now, you I'm sure it's going to work.

54:36 - We're supposed to work.

54:38 - And I don't that's not the I'm not

54:42 - saying anything bad about those guys.

54:44 - In the beginning, they were doing

54:47 - what they thought was right and that's what brought it

54:50 - where it is today.

54:50 - I Armstrong being a utility company,

54:53 - are they planning on instituting telepathy in the metro system?

54:57 - Do you know?

54:58 - I don't I don't know.

54:59 - But they're putting fiber in now.

55:00 - And I was just there.

55:02 - And that's what they they are in the telephone.

55:04 - I know they're a telephone company or a utility company.

55:07 - They're small companies, but I can't help

55:10 - think they're already in the Internet business.

55:12 - So they don't they don't serve the city

55:15 - of Meadville from telephone to the

55:19 - Internet commercial for use only.

55:21 - But when they get all the fiber in, they're going

55:26 - to go to Internet for everybody.

55:29 - And I that's I'm pretty sure of that.

55:32 - But they haven't said anything to me about the telephone.

55:34 - But I got to believe they're going to go that way.

55:36 - You'll be there, they'll run and it's their business. And

55:41 - I, I think that's going to be a very

55:44 - you know, it's interesting to

55:48 - you can't help to think that one of these days

55:50 - it is going to be one. It has to.

55:52 - I think there's no question.

55:53 - And that's going to be the big move.

55:55 - And because it's awfully close to that now, we one cable

55:59 - coming into the home is going to carry everything.

56:01 - And it's kind of interesting that

56:03 - that physical dropped cable, how important that becomes now.

56:06 - True I often often remember the when we were we were going to

56:10 - allow the telephone company and all that kind of stuff

56:12 - never went

56:13 - or the telephone company wanted all that

56:15 - entrance into the home, which had always said no

56:17 - vast piece of cable and the converter

56:20 - that it was the other thing we had.

56:22 - So it's a it's it's been a fascinating

56:25 - experience is this way I can talk about it.

56:28 - I, I enjoyed every minute of it. I

56:32 - can't quit now.

56:34 - Everybody said, well,

56:35 - I thought you were going to

56:35 - retire by now, so what would I do if I retired?

56:39 - You can only play so much golf

56:41 - and that I'm afraid I'm going to miss something.

56:46 - I just. I still get the trade magazines.

56:48 - I still try to read the trade magazines, not all of them,

56:51 - but I still get three or four of them.

56:53 - And I reading about some old friends who are still around.

56:58 - And but I got to tell you, though, I went to Chicago

57:02 - last year, I didn't make and

57:07 - I know you're not going to believe it, but I.

57:08 - I spent 3 hours on the floor that much time.

57:12 - I left because I was trying to find somebody I knew.

57:15 - I'm the same way. I did not find one person.

57:18 - And all that time, both vendors and

57:22 - people who makes you cry does that after all?

57:24 - Oh, I went back to my room.

57:25 - I thought, Boy, that's pretty sad.

57:28 - And where are they now?

57:30 - I went to the Pioneer getting old and there were

57:32 - they were all there who were there

57:34 - but couldn't find anybody.

57:36 - And I guess that they were a little disappointed about the

57:39 - activity on the floor this year.

57:42 - But and if you remember, Jim,

57:45 - there was a lot of business taking care of.

57:46 - Oh, yeah,

57:48 - I can remember almost like being at an auction

57:51 - to buy equipment and get bargains and

57:55 - I remember the time that Gerald showed the hit in the pan

58:00 - was rather than going to back, there was nothing there.

58:03 - But we were buying it.

58:04 - Yeah, everybody's.

58:05 - Well, it was the only thing that there was a

58:10 - its who were some other than George who were some of the most

58:14 - memorable characters that you met in your experience?

58:17 - Oh, number one comes to my head is Bill Daniels.

58:22 - I, I thoroughly enjoyed Bill Daniels.

58:24 - I just, I thought his whole background was very fascinating.

58:27 - And, uh, it was just interesting

58:32 - to discuss things with him and, and I liked him very much.

58:35 - And I think he liked our family too.

58:38 - And, and Don and I had a lot of good times with him.

58:43 - Joe Ganz, the

58:47 - Fred Rinehart.

58:49 - Oh, gosh.

58:51 - I went down to Tyler, Texas, to

58:55 - Flynn.

58:56 - Yeah, there was a problem we had.

58:58 - I can't remember what the problem was,

58:59 - but I flew down there and he spent some time

59:01 - with Toby and Tyler.

59:02 - Or was he in Arkansas?

59:04 - No. Your entire time. Okay.

59:07 - That's that's an interesting point to that.

59:10 - I think missing

59:12 - because the companies are getting so big now.

59:14 - But if you remember, we could call the owner of that anybody.

59:18 - You always get a return call or you're always

59:21 - it always take the phone call because we were changing,

59:24 - exchanging problems back and forth.

59:26 - I spent a lot of time on the phone with John Regas

59:29 - when we started about the same time.

59:32 - And and I think that's gone now.

59:36 - There's nobody you could you don't even know who to call.

59:39 - Well, I think that's right. I think that's right.

59:40 - But it was

59:42 - I think I talked to him almost oh, gosh, I write it down.

59:46 - And and

59:50 - the two brothers out and

59:52 - oh, gosh,

59:54 - I think of their names now. But

59:58 - any time you had a problem, you would find

59:59 - 164 somebody else had the same problem.

01:00 - 04.300 Where he brothers you talking about in Kansas where you know

01:00 - 07.971 Snyder or Gene and Snyder.

01:00 - 10.006 They were very nice.

01:00 - 11.975 And Gene and Richard. Right.

01:00 - 14.010 And nobody ever

01:00 - 16.913 not helped you.

01:00 - 18.448 They wanted to talk to you

01:00 - 20.283 till we got in the franchising battle.

01:00 - 22.251 Yeah.

01:00 - 24.420 Did you ever go through any of those?

01:00 - 27.190 I know you did in Meadville, but no.

01:00 - 29.826 In fact, it's an interesting thing.

01:00 - 32.061 Meadville still doesn't pay a franchise fee.

01:00 - 36.065 And I had the California system, and when I had it,

01:00 - 37.433 we didn't pay

01:00 - 39.869 California, Pennsylvania

01:00 - 42.171 and Titusville had that system.

01:00 - 44.707 We didn't pay.

01:00 - 46.275 Did you how did you get the franchise?

01:00 - 46.743 Just go.

01:00 - 47.810 And that's why

01:00 - 51.014 we'd like to bring television, sort of I guess we

01:00 - 54.517 here again, George,

01:00 - 58.588 he was very strong about franchising and

01:01 - 03.426 I said, you have a franchise in Meadville.

01:01 - 04.894 Oh, yes. Okay. Yes.

01:01 - 06.562 But some of those early systems didn't have.

01:01 - 07.897 Oh, no, we didn't start

01:01 - 08.498 we didn't

01:01 - 10.767 start with the franchise that didn't come along for

01:01 - 12.235 almost 20 years.

01:01 - 14.737 Well, I know why I came along because you had to have the

01:01 - 17.073 intangible assets you had to appreciate.

01:01 - 18.641 We had a

01:01 - 22.045 I guess you could call it almost like sort of a certificate

01:01 - 25.081 that we could put our cable in the rights of ways.

01:01 - 27.550 That's about all we had.

01:01 - 30.253 Jim When we when they first started,

01:01 - 32.422 me and everybody laughed that you're not to be here

01:01 - 34.123 for a couple of couple of years.

01:01 - 35.324 The telephone company.

01:01 - 36.693 Oh yeah I know.

01:01 - 39.095 Yeah go ahead. Do it or we have to.

01:01 - 41.264 But you're not going to be around very long,

01:01 - 43.132 and that's the way it was.

01:01 - 48.404 And, uh, it was, it was,

01:01 - 50.840 I guess, a different attitude then.

01:01 - 54.243 And, uh, we never, it wasn't

01:01 - 55.812 that we had difficulty

01:01 - 58.114 with either company or the telephone company.

01:01 - 59.248 They were all good friends.

01:01 - 01.317 We, I knew them personally and,

01:02 - 05.354 uh, they had worked, we worked together very good.

01:02 - 08.524 It was never but when I, when I went down

01:02 - 11.661 to California, to Pennsylvania and had to deal with Bill

01:02 - 14.230 to meet with our

01:02 - 16.599 company, we just a local was a Meadville telephone.

01:02 - 17.600 Is it still.

01:02 - 20.703 No it's all tell now but it was just a local one

01:02 - 22.371 and you could

01:02 - 25.041 you right from the president who was the doctor Winslow.

01:02 - 27.844 You could write in his office talk to him.

01:02 - 28.377 Right.

01:02 - 30.413 You can't do that now.

01:02 - 32.415 And when we went down to California

01:02 - 34.784 and we had to deal with Bill and I had to go to Pittsburgh,

01:02 - 38.588 but once I met them and once they saw the work we were doing,

01:02 - 40.823 at first they were tough.

01:02 - 42.892 Well, they were really tough.

01:02 - 45.528 But it got to a point after they saw that we had to do it

01:02 - 48.464 the right way and we did it the right way.

01:02 - 50.266 They sort of backed off

01:02 - 52.769 and then I'd call and say, We're going to go down

01:02 - 53.603 a certain area.

01:02 - 55.238 And the guy would give,

01:02 - 57.640 given the full list of poles, he'd go out by himself.

01:02 - 59.375 I wouldn't have to go with him.

01:02 - 59.976 Tell me about

01:02 - 04.147 some of your bizarre complaints that you'd get from people.

01:03 - 07.350 Oh, oh,

01:03 - 09.786 well,

01:03 - 12.922 I'll tell you a good one.

01:03 - 16.058 You know, during the so that's another thing that the equipment

01:03 - 18.628 everything is more reliable now and you have battery backup.

01:03 - 21.230 You don't have you don't have these kind of outages. But

01:03 - 23.733 in the big storm come through,

01:03 - 26.469 you lost a hit and that was everything.

01:03 - 29.472 And my job was always answering that phone

01:03 - 32.842 and directing the trucks.

01:03 - 35.878 And one Saturday morning, the whole system went off.

01:03 - 39.415 And boy, you just had two phones.

01:03 - 41.984 I kept them going and finally some growing.

01:03 - 44.086 And I answered the phone with some girl

01:03 - 45.621 and she was screaming

01:03 - 48.157 and she said, What am I going to do with these kids?

01:03 - 52.195 I said, Why don't you just take them out and drown them?

01:03 - 54.130 All of a sudden it was quiet on the other end

01:03 - 57.867 and she started laughing.

01:03 - 59.569 I said, Read a book

01:04 - 01.838 because we're having trouble.

01:04 - 03.039 It was a big storm.

01:04 - 04.907 I said, You know, we had a storm.

01:04 - 07.643 And then she she threw apologizing.

01:04 - 10.246 But later on, she came into the office

01:04 - 11.948 to tell me

01:04 - 14.016 how shocked she was when I said, once you take them out,

01:04 - 17.053 you got her attention.

01:04 - 17.186 Know.

01:04 - 19.555 Yeah, but we were friends

01:04 - 23.359 it wasn't but there.

01:04 - 25.895 Oh we had, the wires were shot with

01:04 - 29.332 a lot of hunting in our area and you always had

01:04 - 31.133 shooting happen.

01:04 - 34.337 Storms were terrible and we had a lot of trees

01:04 - 37.573 in Meadville and any time a wind blew a little bit,

01:04 - 40.743 you were out there in the cold.

01:04 - 45.615 That was another thing we were we

01:04 - 49.318 we extended our lines to another town

01:04 - 51.654 from Meadville

01:04 - 56.726 and got a bad back chick cable.

01:04 - 58.594 There were a lot of those.

01:04 - 00.229 And what year was this

01:05 - 02.932 roughly?

01:05 - 05.001 Again, I don't remember, but I have a record.

01:05 - 08.437 It was it was

01:05 - 10.907 probably in in the early seventies

01:05 - 13.709 and cable was torn apart.

01:05 - 17.280 Just the connectors.

01:05 - 18.381 Connectors, yeah.

01:05 - 22.118 In the pool and right out of the connectors.

01:05 - 24.921 And then it was too short.

01:05 - 27.123 You had to add a piece, but

01:05 - 33.329 when it was Christmas Day

01:05 - 36.532 and there were two crews out working

01:05 - 39.568 and I said, I got to get these guys

01:05 - 41.637 coffee, something, try to find a cup of coffee.

01:05 - 44.140 And if they had, Meadville was impossible

01:05 - 47.176 and I couldn't understand and nobody was open.

01:05 - 49.545 So I,

01:05 - 53.582 I used to make a little wine

01:05 - 55.918 and it looked like black coffee.

01:05 - 59.288 So that old dago red

01:05 - 01.524 and I can remember him coming up

01:06 - 08.431 to one of the guys and he was shaking me.

01:06 - 10.666 That was the coffee for that day.

01:06 - 12.735 But it was it warmed everybody up,

01:06 - 16.372 didn't drink out of it, but it was

01:06 - 20.743 they had to make fun out of it or you'd go crazy.

01:06 - 21.344 But we didn't.

01:06 - 24.747 We really our service crew were always pretty nice kids.

01:06 - 26.816 At your peak company employees, did you have

01:06 - 30.086 accounting the studio, too?

01:06 - 33.923 Yes, probably 30, 35.

01:06 - 37.426 It was how many were in the studio?

01:06 - 39.528 It was up to about a dozen with that many

01:06 - 43.666 technicians and, you know,

01:06 - 46.369 running the equipment, everything we had, we had

01:06 - 49.305 two guys who did nothing but maintenance on the equipment.

01:06 - 52.708 And the equipment was what had a lot of trouble with equipment.

01:06 - 57.246 Constantly repairing the stuff would wear out

01:06 - 01.050 cleaning, cleaning the heads on the on the machines,

01:07 - 02.585 that type of thing.

01:07 - 05.721 So we kept guys pretty busy and because it

01:07 - 11.327 is interesting how the programing developed

01:07 - 17.633 and it's just like we're doing with PCM now.

01:07 - 20.703 It's it's kind of gratifying now when you say,

01:07 - 23.339 Well, I'm connected with PCM and they know who you are,

01:07 - 26.142 and that for a long time didn't happen.

01:07 - 28.644 Well, the same thing in the country,

01:07 - 30.112 when you said you were in cable television,

01:07 - 32.415 radio and community antenna television,

01:07 - 33.749 they had no idea what it was.

01:07 - 34.984 Nobody had any idea.

01:07 - 35.751 And that's,

01:07 - 39.321 I think, is a tribute to the people who are in it now.

01:07 - 42.324 And I think it must make them all feel it makes me feel good.

01:07 - 44.260 I know I feel the same way

01:07 - 47.263 and nice to because it's nice to be part of it

01:07 - 50.733 recognizes is a kind of a leader in an industry

01:07 - 54.570 because you are in and I I'm very proud of that

01:07 - 58.641 I you became a pioneer and a national pioneer in 82,

01:07 - 59.075 didn't you.

01:08 - 01.310 But it's back when it was.

01:08 - 01.710 Yeah.

01:08 - 06.982 And then I got to state to I know you were say founder.

01:08 - 09.151 We're starting to wind down now.

01:08 - 10.186 Jim, can you think of anything

01:08 - 12.922 you'd like to add before we wrap this thing up?

01:08 - 14.990 Oh, there's probably a million things,

01:08 - 18.094 Jim, but I

01:08 - 20.096 you go too long.

01:08 - 23.165 That one thing, it gets boring, I guess.

01:08 - 25.234 No, it's not a member of people that are

01:08 - 26.502 that'll be looking at this.

01:08 - 28.204 We're putting together a lot of other things.

01:08 - 29.805 They'll be writing a book about you someday.

01:08 - 31.440 And so we want to go on to know about you.

01:08 - 33.843 That's what personality comes across.

01:08 - 37.613 I just I think the most important thing is that

01:08 - 41.750 I'm very proud to be part of the whole industry.

01:08 - 47.022 And I think it was a fine it's a fine industry developed.

01:08 - 50.292 So it's you know, we're only talking maybe 50 years.

01:08 - 53.762 And what has happened in that 50 year period

01:08 - 57.366 is really phenomenal.

01:08 - 01.103 I think I just think I often sit down

01:09 - 05.541 and think that I, I, you know, one of the big excitements to me

01:09 - 09.278 was when we when the first time I saw a signal of a satellite

01:09 - 12.882 and I was on the telephone talking to a guy in New Jersey.

01:09 - 15.885 And you don't think about it until you actually see it.

01:09 - 17.386 Saw that delay.

01:09 - 20.789 He says the signal was on its way and it was a delay.

01:09 - 26.162 And that's what 22,000 miles twice.

01:09 - 28.664 And I'm seeing it right here.

01:09 - 31.967 That was a Jim, the first the first satellite

01:09 - 34.904 received dish we put in with $60,000,

01:09 - 36.972 I remember was 100,001st when we put it out,

01:09 - 38.841 Jackson, Mississippi, to put a bass in,

01:09 - 43.312 it was four feet deep and 12 feet square, reinforced

01:09 - 48.017 with three bars and heard copper wire all a meter, 30 feet.

01:09 - 49.785 Oh, jeez.

01:09 - 52.555 Today you just put a stick in the ground and

01:09 - 56.859 would you have envisioned this when you first started?

01:09 - 01.497 No, no, no, I don't I don't imagine anyone did

01:10 - 06.802 I you know, I did.

01:10 - 09.038 I did envision,

01:10 - 12.408 uh, VHF and UHF

01:10 - 14.944 being one someday.

01:10 - 18.013 I just thought there's enough bandwidth there that.

01:10 - 21.050 But I never dreamt of 100 channels.

01:10 - 24.220 I never had I never thought of that kind of a bandwidth.

01:10 - 29.225 Just never entered my mind that that would be in or or or

01:10 - 33.562 computer stuff that never, ever, ever in my mind.

01:10 - 34.763 Two days later.

01:10 - 36.532 But 250 was mind boggling to me.

01:10 - 38.167 Yes, right.

01:10 - 40.436 And you'd say, why?

01:10 - 42.137 What do you want it for?

01:10 - 43.639 You certainly don't want it for television.

01:10 - 45.641 It's just too much.

01:10 - 47.843 But then this other stuff comes along and.

01:10 - 49.878 Well, the first thing was radio is that FM radio.

01:10 - 52.848 And we had I remember that 14 channel FM

01:10 - 56.018 in the in the between the two

01:10 - 59.455 so it was that was I thought with fascinating

01:11 - 01.724 because

01:11 - 04.727 and we had a nice demand for that

01:11 - 08.964 it's surprising with the FM that was a pretty popular

01:11 - 10.132 well again

01:11 - 12.801 because you couldn't get any FM down in the valley at all.

01:11 - 15.070 Jim, we're going to wrap this thing up now.

01:11 - 17.239 We've been going for for quite some time.

01:11 - 20.309 This has been the oral history of James J.

01:11 - 24.113 Duratz former general manager and all around

01:11 - 29.151 entrepreneur and good guy and a man of an old friend,

01:11 - 31.687 a man who has devoted much of his life

01:11 - 34.757 to community service, both in the city of Meadville

01:11 - 37.960 and the state of Pennsylvania, and in nationally.

01:11 - 38.861 Also,

01:11 - 41.730 this oral history is part of the

01:11 - 46.402 oral history program of the National Cable Television

01:11 - 50.472 Center and Museum and financed by a grant from

01:11 - 52.241 the Cost of Housing Foundation.

01:11 - 54.743 Jim, thanks very much. It's been a great delight, as always.

01:11 - 56.679 Thank you, Jim. Thank you. It's a very pleasure.