00:00 - Let's get started with this, Joe.

00:02 - You brought this letter today and it's from a board meeting

00:06 - for Pennsylvania Education Communications Systems

00:09 - from 1980 can explain what was going on there.

00:13 - Well, prior to

00:17 - prior to Pex, PEX,

00:21 - there was an organization and a group of people got together

00:25 - one evening, I think it was after the PTA board meeting,

00:29 - and it was what I would describe as the dark years of cable,

00:33 - because we were under heavy regulations by the Federal Communications Commission.

00:38 - We were only allowed

00:40 - three distant, the local channel, three

00:43 - distant in one independent station, and the technol.

00:47 - It was very robust for its time in its infancy.

00:50 - We had more channels than we had programing.

00:53 - So we had all this dark space and dark space is never good, so

00:59 - everybody's trying to figure out what to do.

01:00 - We had seen this games where you take a 16 millimeter film, put a television camera

01:06 - in front of it, and you pay somebody to keep changing the reels

01:10 - they had.

01:11 - They then began using three quarter inch videotapes,

01:14 - and we're looking for resources of programing.

01:17 - And there were none or very few, if any.

01:21 - And there was a meeting held in State College

01:25 - by the Pennsylvania

01:28 - PTA, Pennsylvania Cable Television Association,

01:32 - which my dad, Jim, Yolanda, we were all there,

01:35 - and a guy named Marlo Farrokh introduced himself

01:38 - and took my dad, the X, and he showed them all of these videotapes.

01:43 - He had thousands of them without hours and hours and hours.

01:47 - Oprah. So one thing led

01:48 - to another many discussions over a period of a year, I believe.

01:52 - And there was an arrangement made between Penn State University

01:57 - and Northeast Cable Television to start airing some of these tapes.

02:02 - So a blank channel.

02:03 - And we started that in 1975, Northeast Cable.

02:08 - And then it

02:09 - grew from there to with this letter describes

02:12 - as a formal agreement between Pennsylvania state universities.

02:17 - They call it University Park and what was then the newly formed

02:21 - company of PECS Peaks, Pennsylvania Educational Communication System.

02:27 - And this is a letter from the

02:29 - from the secretary to Jim Tedesco at the time from Vertov

02:32 - advising us that we'll be getting the information

02:35 - for the big up in front coming meeting which started all of this

02:40 - wasn't that Joe where they decided that they could

02:44 - the person could take courses at home for truth.

02:48 - That's correct.

02:49 - That's correct.

02:50 - It was not no longer a a fill a blank space.

02:54 - It was it had a mission. It had a purpose in it.

02:56 - And we had quite a few taking courses at home

03:01 - and getting credit for it from Penn State.

03:03 - And you already had something up and going in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

03:07 - What was that?

03:08 - Northeast started this started off as a,

03:12 - uh, educational network. Okay.

03:15 - But it was only local, was only on the Northeast system.

03:18 - Was that your family systems that were were there more systems, right?

03:21 - No, that was our system.

03:23 - We we also shared the signal with Verdell, with Scranton.

03:28 - Scranton. Okay.

03:30 - We we had we were opposing different different communities.

03:33 - But we served that community.

03:36 - Jim Peters, who was the engineer,

03:39 - we ran a cable underneath the interstate over to our system,

03:43 - tied it in in back that our cable networks from Scranton, Worthington campus.

03:48 - So Scranton was part of vertical in northeast.

03:50 - We shared those signals and he had a they had a small room smaller than this

03:54 - and a a guy and a gal ran the ran the recorders.

03:57 - They get the tapes from State College and they'd play them back on the system.

04:00 - And that's where it started.

04:02 - And this is a letter this is the preemptive strike

04:04 - as I call it, that started, which is now PC.

04:08 - This is what

04:09 - this is the two called ARM to make it happen.

04:13 - Jim, how did you get involved?

04:14 - Well, no, it was just

04:17 - it was something in the

04:19 - when we started Meadville,

04:22 - one of the main things George Burke was mine was education

04:27 - people, you know, because they were going to law school

04:29 - every summer for a new new things happening.

04:34 - You've got to keep up to date that type of thing.

04:36 - And that's when I think it started

04:39 - with George, talk to your dad.

04:43 - And he said, Well,

04:46 - if you could do that out here, why can't we do it the same old thing?

04:50 - And then, then I guess he explained, explain that.

04:54 - That's what we're working on it.

04:57 - Yeah. Cable will forget.

04:59 - Cable was always

05:01 - there were never

05:04 - not like cable today.

05:05 - Cable today is a, you know, a very well-run business

05:09 - cable in its early years, as Jim describes remedial

05:13 - mastery of ten or cable TV company or service electric or Armstrong

05:17 - Cable was a bunch of ideas put out on the table.

05:21 - Let's see which one works.

05:23 - And that's how cable started.

05:25 - Well, that's it.

05:27 - This microwave with the figure eight

05:30 - with the signal going both directions, that type of thing.

05:33 - And remember, we made a proposal to the state systems to interconnect

05:38 - all 14 plus then state

05:41 - that they could do the same thing on the whole system.

05:45 - They turned it down.

05:46 - It was too hard to do it too far ahead where it starts.

05:50 - I guess that's the thing because it's all sort of

05:52 - you take it for granted now that they're.

05:53 - Yeah, yeah, well, now they know you can do it.

05:56 - But we didn't really know until you put it up and see if it worked.

06:00 - So what kind of the agreement was.

06:01 - They were going to provide the programing and the cable operators

06:05 - were going to provide the distribution service.

06:07 - Yeah, that was the partnership where the money come from

06:11 - the, from the cable operators of cable networks.

06:14 - A subscriber charge, is it ten or 11?

06:16 - Everybody, all the cable operators would pay so much per

06:19 - month based on the subscriber count of the system

06:22 - and that help underwrite the the program initially was started

06:27 - we all contributed.

06:30 - I can't do much but

06:32 - it was ten or 11 companies

06:35 - put money in to make it start.

06:37 - I think we all put in $20,000.

06:40 - I think that I think is what it was.

06:41 - Yeah, it was 20.

06:43 - That's after, that's what became more formal.

06:46 - Uh, prior to that it was negotiating and talking.

06:50 - Okay, well, we have this and you have that and how do we get together?

06:54 - How will we make this work in this?

06:56 - It started off it started off forming the company.

07:00 - And I remember it was in September, so that was in September.

07:05 - And we flew up to me,

07:07 - you know, we had the meeting in Georgia in round his office

07:09 - and that's that's when we said, okay, this is what we're going to go forward.

07:13 - And we did it.

07:15 - The seed money was put in to start this and then trying to finance

07:20 - and get banks, everybody to agree that this is a viable organization.

07:25 - And I think that was, in a sense, a subscriber in the beginning.

07:28 - Yes, something like that. Yeah.

07:31 - Well, moral fruit became very strong in a

07:34 - and because he was providing the programs.

07:37 - Who was he?

07:38 - He was from Penn State.

07:39 - Marlo Farouk from Penn State. And

07:44 - he could he could be part of this,

07:46 - I think the, in the organization,

07:50 - uh, simply become something in,

07:53 - in Pennsylvania cable.

07:56 - You never work for cable, but Marlo for Marlo Farouq

07:59 - was director of communications for these.

08:03 - They had two televisions that they had.

08:05 - Right.

08:05 - They had Penn State.

08:07 - Yeah, he was he was he was the head of of direct.

08:10 - He was director of communications.

08:12 - And Dave Phillips was his

08:16 - next the board.

08:16 - He was subordinate to Marlo more.

08:18 - Dave Phillips was in charge of WPX, which is a PBS station,

08:23 - and Marlo had the vision

08:26 - with my father and George to get these tapes and air them

08:30 - so people could share that in the educational part was was Georges.

08:37 - Georges Power.

08:38 - Yeah, he we need to do this.

08:40 - We need to give our our our people the state of Pennsylvania,

08:44 - a a way to educate themselves.

08:47 - You know, we use television.

08:48 - We do.

08:49 - He he was the first chief for the middle school district at the time.

08:54 - So he oh, things were happening in education.

08:59 - That's what he was organizing.

09:01 - He knew we could do it.

09:03 - Well, how big was the cable industry in Pennsylvania at the time?

09:05 - I mean, how many what what percentage of the

09:07 - all the cable companies were on board with this thing when you got started?

09:10 - I would say

09:13 - I would say 51, maybe 60, 70% of the cable system,

09:17 - the the the major cable players in the state

09:21 - were on board with Texas.

09:23 - All right.

09:26 - There were very few areas that would not were not thought of when we

09:30 - when we did the design and we started implementing microwave and technologies to

09:34 - to distribute the signals,

09:37 - they all were

09:38 - supportive of it, although some of them we couldn't reach.

09:41 - It was just, you know, it was just cost prohibitive to get that there.

09:45 - But that was later.

09:46 - And you've got to remember what I said, the dark days of cable.

09:49 - We had the technology, we had the infrastructure,

09:53 - but we had no programing.

09:55 - And it started it started becoming a robust industry.

10:00 - Ted Turner with WGN out of Chicago.

10:03 - Ted Turner came up with the idea to satellite deliver technology

10:07 - to get signals out.

10:08 - HBO was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,

10:11 - by a microwave network from time of

10:14 - Times Square.

10:15 - Yeah, Madison Square Garden.

10:18 - But that was microwave only. Could go there.

10:20 - Couldn't go anywhere else.

10:21 - So cable really became, uh,

10:24 - in, they say, inventive in a sense that they started developing technique

10:29 - to deliver signals and then it became the Weather Channel.

10:33 - MTV All this started to happen, but we still had techs in techs

10:38 - with a educational base that was that was special was special

10:42 - is educationally based for Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania citizens.

10:47 - It just and it still is.

10:49 - I mean, this is this is the best this is the crown jewel

10:53 - with telecommunications developed in Pennsylvania.

10:56 - Can you explain microwave that to people who don't understand it?

10:59 - How you got the signal from one place to another.

11:01 - But in fact, that that was a microwave, that thing was a big thing.

11:05 - When we were doing it,

11:06 - people started knowing about it, they heard about it, so they explained

11:12 - the technique to transport

11:15 - analog.

11:16 - Well, maybe getting to technical microwave is a methodology for

11:21 - transporting a signal off television signals

11:25 - at its time was the best that there were

11:29 - uses a higher frequency.

11:30 - See it does some magic with analog signals,

11:34 - upgrades it and sends it out so that it can go from point to point.

11:39 - It could only go so far in distance and you need to receive it

11:42 - and re amplify it and transmit it again from point to point.

11:46 - Microwave is a technique where

11:49 - they were able to transport video signals across the country

11:52 - and there's different there's amplitude, there's all kinds of technical reasons

11:56 - how it works and so on.

11:57 - But it was what we had available to get signals from point A to point B

12:02 - or to point C and distribute things so that people could watch them.

12:06 - Okay.

12:07 - Television systems, television stations have contours

12:11 - where they put a tower up on a mountain and it can transmit so far

12:15 - and then signal becomes degradable in Pennsylvania.

12:19 - Anything that was in its way would the signals would pass.

12:22 - It was on top of a mountain and you were in a valley.

12:25 - You wouldn't see those signals.

12:26 - That's why cable companies put risk points on top to the mountains, right.

12:30 - Analog signals down on coaxial cable.

12:33 - These distributed to their clients or customers,

12:39 - microwave was a

12:40 - way to transport more signals in for farther distances.

12:44 - So this is where the best of the technology at its time.

12:47 - That's what we had.

12:48 - So when the decision was made to do this, you had to build a lot of time.

12:53 - So it was a big logistic situation to go in there

12:57 - because every tower we'd have a dish that would receive it

12:59 - and then another transmitter to push it on to the next.

13:02 - Say this. Here's what we had to build.

13:05 - These are all the towers.

13:08 - Oh, great.

13:08 - We'll have to get pictures of those.

13:09 - Yeah, yeah, that's where we tower.

13:12 - So how did you figure out where to put the towers?

13:15 - Oh, that was.

13:17 - Well, the cable companies, by nature, would be on the top of a mountain

13:21 - or a good place to receive it from because they were receiving signal from.

13:25 - So, you know, that was always good to them.

13:28 - It was just negotiating and or pleading

13:31 - to get the space on their tower.

13:34 - But then sometimes if there was too much of a distance

13:37 - between cable companies, we'd have to negotiate or somehow build

13:40 - our own towers in between the cable companies, most of the towers

13:45 - on, say, property,

13:47 - the top of the mountain game, Pennsylvania Game Commission.

13:51 - A lot of game land.

13:52 - Yeah, we had to go through the game commission to get permission.

13:55 - There were two approaches.

13:56 - One, we started off with an aeronautical chart state of Pennsylvania.

14:01 - The first thing we did is we had went at one of our Pennsylvania

14:06 - communications to

14:09 - a Pennsylvania cable association meeting.

14:12 - We got the locations of everybody's antenna site and latitude and longitude,

14:15 - and we started putting fish to put pins in this map.

14:18 - So we knew where we all the antenna sites were.

14:21 - Then we got all of the fire tower locations,

14:24 - the Department of Forest and Waters.

14:27 - We put different color pins in.

14:29 - So now we have an idea where everything is.

14:31 - And then we started figuring out, well, if we transmit from from various head near

14:36 - mine or city to Berwick, Pennsylvania, then Berwick went to Williamsport.

14:40 - Williamsport went to Lock Haven.

14:42 - Lock Haven went to State College and we started routing.

14:45 - Oh, yeah, well, we can make this thing work, so they schemed up an idea.

14:49 - Well, how are we going to do this?

14:51 - And we actually went to the Department of Education.

14:54 - Remember the state of Pennsylvania, and he said, Well, we can interconnect this.

14:58 - This is how it will work.

14:59 - And they did a feasibility study here where they said

15:03 - it's going to take 11 years and $35 million to build this thing.

15:07 - And we said, no, just

15:11 - and that's when we built it

15:15 - for 2.1 million years and 2.12.5

15:21 - somewhere in there for 2.0 instead of 11 years.

15:24 - We did it in 60 days.

15:27 - How do you do that now?

15:28 - Well, that's where all these books are involved.

15:31 - It's called Rainbow the Chain.

15:33 - So it's

15:36 - there's a lot of truth in that.

15:37 - One of that way, we could have cut

15:40 - trees down the place to put the tower.

15:43 - When you've got an acre, everybody acre, you know,

15:46 - just wanted to make a triangle like this, you know, we put a tower up.

15:51 - Tower has usually has three guy wires.

15:53 - Well, we just cut the triangle, he said.

15:55 - Now we got to clear it off.

15:57 - So we had a little discussion about that and a helicopter one day.

16:01 - Well, the important thing there is if the cable companies didn't

16:04 - want to participate or if they didn't know, it wouldn't happen.

16:08 - I mean, that was very important that the cable companies wanted to give back.

16:12 - And in a lot of their tower cables

16:15 - or their tower, the Eastern Loop, I have the

16:19 - we started off in the east with with the educational system.

16:24 - I have some pictures.

16:25 - I have some stuff I have to give you here.

16:27 - The eastern route

16:29 - commissioned by Microwave Associates.

16:32 - Okay. That's the original.

16:34 - That was the original start.

16:36 - And we started off

16:40 - oh, you got to remember, we, we,

16:43 - we started off with videotapes out of this Grant Worthington campus

16:47 - and we used an amplitude modulated link to transmit

16:51 - some of the signals to other cable operators.

16:53 - And we upgraded into this network, which was a frequency modulated

16:58 - microwave Associates radio gear, which started the Wagner

17:02 - building, went to center of video, which was Jim Palmer C Core Electronics.

17:08 - And then we went to various systems, Williamsport was and Joe Lacey,

17:14 - Williamsport Cable, our companies in

17:17 - any borough with vertical Scranton Mount effort, which was one of ours,

17:21 - went to Blue Ridge, Little Gap went down to Imus, which was

17:28 - Chuck Dolan system.

17:31 - No. Yeah.

17:33 - Oh, remember his name. Yeah.

17:34 - Oh, it's going to be almost north.

17:39 - He's an attorney,

17:41 - you know.

17:41 - I mean, every time we name

17:47 - I think Lockhart.

17:49 - Lockhart was Lockhart was down here in Harris.

17:52 - I think Lockhart was.

17:54 - He worked for boy.

17:57 - I can't remember that name either now, but he was in Harrisburg.

18:00 - Sammons. Sammons, that's right.

18:02 - Yeah, that's correct. Sammons Communication.

18:05 - Yeah, that was before the

18:07 - the loop was Lester this was the big didn't get to Harrisburg.

18:12 - Yeah. In Harrisburg.

18:13 - Then back to you came back. Okay.

18:16 - So how expensive was it to put one of these in?

18:19 - I mean, you had to

18:21 - you had to go through the building a tower and going through the expense

18:25 - of putting a microwave in to hit a cable system,

18:27 - you had to make sure it had enough described.

18:29 - We tried not to have to build towers.

18:31 - That was tough.

18:32 - If you had to acquire land or permission or buy or lease land

18:36 - and then actually build the tower, it was much better if we could

18:41 - get tower space on an existing cable.

18:43 - This network was all on existing cable systems.

18:47 - Okay, the eastern route was all existing cable systems.

18:51 - The only thing we needed to supply were these microwave radio gear.

18:55 - The interconnects were there.

18:57 - They were all from those points except Lock Haven.

19:02 - We're serving subscribers.

19:05 - So it was, you know, a point

19:06 - in case where, okay, we go to Berwick or we go to Williamsport.

19:10 - Now we have the signal there and they would put a dedicated channel to it

19:14 - and the signal was put on to the cable system

19:19 - so they'd have to give us channel space

19:21 - and then a place on the tower, and then we would need some room

19:25 - inside our building to for a little block with some racks of equipment,

19:31 - microwave equipment inside the buildings to put

19:36 - on the eastern section.

19:39 - Wouldn't that all heat up in Los Angeles?

19:42 - No, no, that was that's before we went with Hughes.

19:46 - When we did the when we put the entire loop together.

19:49 - Yeah.

19:49 - We had three companies build Hughes microwave one with the successful view.

19:53 - They won the bid, but, uh, no, when we built the eastern part,

19:59 - we built with Make It Macomb, I was given the task of figuring out

20:02 - what would be the best radio gear and then most affordable cost

20:06 - to install this to get to get it in operation

20:10 - for the for the price and

20:12 - the type of equipment.

20:16 - Well, we chose Macomb

20:20 - that we get into.

20:21 - Hughes. It was a different story.

20:23 - And I told you get mentioned last night that I you with my thoughts

20:26 - why we went with Hughes but Macomb came in

20:30 - they provided the equipment, redundancy, battery supplies.

20:34 - And what for for the for the network was a one way system.

20:38 - Now we only carried signals distribution wise from State College out,

20:42 - so we couldn't do what Panorama was designed to do.

20:46 - Okay.

20:46 - Which is a far, far more reaching for a more aggressive network both ways.

20:51 - Okay.

20:52 - But that that was that was in the beginning.

20:55 - That was in the early eighties.

20:57 - That's that's what that message came.

20:59 - That letter started.

21:01 - We worked we worked at that.

21:03 - We got it in operation.

21:05 - I think that network

21:09 - man, that network probably did that in

21:14 - two stages.

21:16 - We started off it, we started off in Scranton.

21:20 - We put these three links in first,

21:24 - then we went to Williamsport, Lochaber, and then we put the AVA system in.

21:28 - So we kind of backtracked.

21:30 - We had more subscriber base here.

21:31 - Yeah, we put that on

21:33 - because we were still sending signals from Scranton through the loop.

21:36 - Oh, it's started in Scranton.

21:38 - Yeah, we started it in Scranton.

21:40 - And we, we satisfy the needs of the subscribers here.

21:44 - While we were building from the Wagner Building out

21:49 - in one

21:50 - one incident or well antidote to this, the first

21:54 - dedicated use of a fiber cable

21:57 - in in the country was Pirelli Optronics.

22:01 - We installed a link from the Wagner building,

22:04 - probably optronics over to center video.

22:07 - You know, we don't really optronics the first ever use of fiber

22:11 - through video delivery.

22:13 - I probably didn't know that.

22:15 - No, that's a great story.

22:17 - Yeah.

22:17 - How did how did you get tapped to be the one to figure this out?

22:21 - I don't know.

22:23 - I guess the right place at the right time.

22:25 - Yeah. Yeah.

22:27 - That fell to the two of you to put this thing together.

22:30 - You. I mean, I just helped him, and I did all the hard work.

22:36 - Yeah,

22:37 - well, when.

22:38 - When when Pex was formed, it was the vision, the heart

22:45 - and the soul of all of the cable operators that were on that list.

22:49 - And they truly felt that this was a good thing

22:52 - and not want, and only was if they believed in it.

22:56 - So they were looking for, how are we going to do this?

23:00 - I said, Well, you get the money together, I'll build it.

23:03 - And that's true statement.

23:04 - They said, okay, George Berkeley said, We'll get you the money.

23:07 - You tell us how much you need for whatever.

23:11 - And that's when we that's where we started.

23:13 - But they whatever,

23:16 - however, the cable operators, however they envisioned

23:19 - and whatever help we needed they provided, if we needed a warehouse space

23:24 - or we needed a couple of guys to climb the towers, we got help from them too.

23:28 - They would provide that assistance

23:30 - and you know, I have to say that

23:33 - till today, I mean, no matter

23:36 - what you you know, you pick up the phone, you need some help from an operator.

23:39 - It's there because this is this is how good this network is.

23:43 - Can you talk a little bit about what cable was like at the time?

23:46 - You talked a little bit

23:46 - about your family business was it was called the cable company Cable TV.

23:51 - Cable TV.

23:51 - We had the trademark cable TV and 1950

23:56 - my father started in 1954 with his first operational system.

24:01 - He worked for Mountain City Cable Television Company,

24:04 - and that was 1951,

24:08 - Hazelton, Hazleton, right next door to us was John Walsh and all,

24:12 - which in my noisy city in 1949, that's when he established it.

24:16 - And he did too. Dad worked there too.

24:19 - Well, we were not work for Johnny, but my father would build amplifiers.

24:23 - We had our own little manufacturing facility

24:25 - because you couldn't buy them, you had to make them.

24:27 - And then he we had our own manufacturing facility

24:31 - and there's just a couple of guys in a little workshop putting things together.

24:34 - And we developed so we sold equipment to John.

24:37 - We sold we actually sold from New to middle.

24:40 - Yeah. Then, you know, we put that together.

24:42 - I kind of grew up with, with the whole concept of cable

24:47 - and it was change was evident.

24:50 - You know, whatever you buy

24:51 - today was not going to work tomorrow and you have to change and make it better.

24:55 - And that's what

24:57 - almost as

24:58 - much as stuff that said it to say make it work

25:01 - and then you have modifications and it is a lot of change

25:05 - and going back and forth to work

25:08 - with the equipment finicky, I mean you had to mess with it all the time.

25:11 - Did break a lot. No.

25:13 - Pretty reliable.

25:14 - Well,

25:17 - I guess off and on. But

25:20 - when we were 21,

25:22 - the Starline 20 and John Roberts, they came down,

25:26 - lived in Meadville to make the modifications about 66.

25:30 - He was there for at least Liam Nick in

25:34 - the engineer.

25:36 - Yeah, yeah. He passed away too.

25:38 - But he yeah he was, he lived in the what would happen

25:43 - Brian was interesting as

25:46 - manufacturers you have this rapidly growing industry

25:50 - so the manufacturers are coming up with like how are we going to make this work?

25:54 - And they

25:54 - said, well, we put all this engineering time and effort in it.

25:57 - Now we have a box, but you need to test it.

26:00 - So reliability test answer your first question.

26:03 - Reliability was from four it was poor

26:08 - testing and operational parameters to make it better.

26:12 - So they say, okay, we'll try this this out.

26:15 - You make a deal with Gerald

26:17 - or we make a deal with Magnavox or whatever the suppliers.

26:21 - Sylvania was a big Lindsay Electronics.

26:24 - They come down, we build these amplifiers, so they produce.

26:27 - How many of you needed

26:29 - you put them in the system, say, Well, this isn't working, what's wrong?

26:32 - We'll figure it out.

26:34 - So they sent an engineer down

26:36 - and you would work with the engineer to buy to make the equipment

26:39 - you just purchased, operational or more reliable?

26:43 - Yeah.

26:44 - Don't forget, today's every thing is microprocessors,

26:48 - and the technology is so robust and so well-proven that is very reliable.

26:54 - Back then, they were vacuum tubes.

26:56 - Vacuum tubes has a not only did they have a longevity,

26:59 - they had a life cycle, power fluctuations, all kinds of you know,

27:04 - there's all kinds of problems, lightning, temperature changes, everything.

27:08 - Temperature changes would make the cables longer or shorter, would change

27:11 - attenuation and change signal strength and qualities.

27:14 - And it was it was a it's a technical nightmare to keep it

27:18 - in operation, in a sense.

27:20 - But it was something you did.

27:21 - Is that what you had?

27:22 - You know, today you get like Jim's car, you push the button, the car starts,

27:26 - no more keys than anything.

27:27 - And one of these days you're going to get it and say,

27:29 - Take me to McDonald's, it'll drive it for you.

27:32 - But you got to remember, a

27:34 - cable came around

27:35 - because people couldn't receive television signals.

27:38 - I mean, that was the driving force of cable.

27:40 - People don't think about that now,

27:41 - like where we sit here in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

27:43 - We're in the French Creek Valley.

27:44 - You might get Pittsburgh and you might get Erie,

27:47 - but if you with an antenna on top of your rooftop antenna,

27:51 - but depending on where you were, you might not get any television signal.

27:54 - So that was really the driving force.

27:56 - And behind cable television, it provided people

28:00 - with television stations that they couldn't appreciate without it.

28:04 - What was the cable company in Meadville like at the time mean?

28:07 - It's sort of a thing with cuts thing now.

28:10 - Is it is it

28:14 - people?

28:15 - People just couldn't see television down here in town.

28:18 - And when we started, the philosophy was that

28:22 - what we were doing was just make was an extension of your roof top antenna.

28:27 - So put it on your roof,

28:29 - put it up on the mountain, then bring it back down by cable.

28:33 - A lot of the rules were based on that and that's it.

28:37 - A lot of rules were made here, right here in Meadville, nationally, federal law.

28:42 - But anyway, it

28:45 - we started in

28:46 - the year 1953, something like that.

28:49 - We had a

28:52 - when we got it built,

28:56 - we had a show at school

29:00 - and we get television sets from all the dealers

29:03 - and put it on the first day,

29:06 - signed up 300 people,

29:09 - the second day 700.

29:11 - I can remember those too, but it was just

29:14 - until we had our people

29:17 - bring people in from other cable companies

29:22 - to put it hook it up.

29:24 - And it was

29:26 - it was unheard of that

29:30 - I think it was the biggest thing that ever hit me, though.

29:33 - The activity that we've created,

29:36 - when you start selling television sets and

29:40 - people were begging to get on your roof,

29:42 - what you charged $125 and 350 a month,

29:48 - $125 would help underwrite the costly system.

29:52 - But it should be noted,

29:53 - was such a good idea at the time that the television

29:57 - telephone company said, well, just go ahead

29:58 - and attach your lines to the poles and we'll figure it out.

30:02 - You know, down the road.

30:03 - And you could imagine these

30:05 - sort of attorneys trying to figure this out

30:08 - and what kinds of papers and documents.

30:11 - But that was kind of the the ground swell of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

30:16 - Let's just get this down to Wichita.

30:17 - Was the president of the telephone company

30:20 - immediately. So it was not part of AT&T?

30:22 - No, no, no. Immediate help would come. Yeah.

30:25 - So if they get the person

30:27 - put it on and we did that for a long time

30:30 - without any kind of legal contracts or just

30:35 - what was the to find that amazing

30:38 - to think about what the business was done and you think about how it ended up.

30:41 - Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

30:43 - We didn't have that paperwork, but we had to do it later.

30:47 - Well, how did that what was the telephone company in Hazleton, was that

30:51 - it was Bell Atlantic or not Bell Atlantic.

30:54 - It was just a Bell operating company.

30:56 - Did did your dad get along okay with the local bell people?

31:00 - And he was starting to attach when he was when his first system was in Weatherly,

31:04 - PA and Weatherly had its own power company and they had their own generating plant.

31:09 - They owned their own poles.

31:11 - So we went to the city council and got permission attached to the poles

31:16 - that were that's where we started was in Weatherly

31:19 - with the, with the borough Weatherly Borough Power Company.

31:23 - As we grew, you know, we weren't unfamiliar

31:26 - with the problems other operators had.

31:28 - John Walton actually spearheaded

31:31 - getting pole agreements with Pennsylvania Power and Light.

31:34 - He worked for them. He was a lineman. Yeah.

31:37 - So he,

31:39 - you know, he came up, he had a quite good story.

31:41 - He and his brother had a white goods store in one way city that is big black

31:46 - box television set with a cathode ray tube in it and then nothing on it.

31:51 - How am I going to sell it?

31:53 - So they went up the top of their mountain, put a couple of antennas up, were able

31:57 - to get some signals out of Philadelphia, Channel three, Philadelphia, and had

32:04 - an old style cable.

32:07 - You probably remember railroad track.

32:08 - Yeah, K-12.

32:10 - They had the K 12 come down a mountain

32:12 - and he would say, You bought a TV, I'm going to give you the pictures.

32:15 - But did your dad get involved in that? Yeah.

32:17 - Yeah, that's right.

32:19 - I thought it was a he's the one is just like the cable on the trees.

32:25 - Didn't even attach it just later on.

32:27 - Yeah well that's that's true but this K-12

32:31 - and he had amplifiers that were left

32:33 - over from World War Two, this VHF, an amplifier just to boost

32:38 - the signal in the deal was there John had would you buy the television set for me?

32:43 - I'm going to give you pictures first. Okay.

32:47 - But I need to put this amplifier in your basement to get the signal

32:51 - so they plug it in the outlet, you know, like pull channel on it

32:55 - and they turn it on.

32:56 - And that's how he got the signal to the house.

33:00 - Interestingly enough, they go down, people would turn the light bulb off

33:05 - and call and say, Well, we're healthy.

33:07 - We did have TV.

33:10 - So John came up with the theme, okay, well, we'll

33:13 - put these amplifiers on a box on a pole and I'll put a meter on.

33:17 - And then he started charging people because he had this power.

33:20 - Now he had to pay for, say, using the power out of the basement.

33:23 - He put this box up all that he had worked through.

33:26 - He was a lineman for people, put the meter on it and now he's charge.

33:30 - He was started to charge people because he had to pay the power bills.

33:34 - So that's how he became the first operator in this.

33:39 - But where he saw everybody it and in any system anywhere

33:44 - in the United States, he is recognized as the first operator to charge for cable.

33:48 - So he he has that claim to fame.

33:51 - Well, I asked last night when we were talking,

33:52 - you brought up Milton Chap's name.

33:54 - How did he fit into this?

33:56 - Well, he was

33:57 - he was making amplifiers in Philadelphia, so we got involved in it.

34:02 - In fact,

34:03 - we had a little shop in Meadville

34:07 - that was making the housings for the amplifiers here in Meadville.

34:11 - Okay.

34:12 - Before we even had a cable company, Atlantic City was a is it still is.

34:18 - But in its day, Atlantic City was a prime vacation

34:22 - spot in Atlantic City Hall with the convention hall.

34:27 - Convention hall right next to Steel Pier.

34:30 - There were there was a

34:34 - a shows electronics like in the like today's in Las Vegas the biggest you know,

34:38 - consumer electronics show television sets were becoming popular.

34:42 - The television receivers were huge then.

34:45 - This was in the early fifties.

34:49 - And they had this show, I think, Atlantic City Convention Center.

34:53 - They couldn't get signals to show the people how these TVs work

34:56 - with Gerald or Millichap had an amplifier that he put in on top of the roof

35:03 - of the convention center with a signal with a with a set of antennas.

35:06 - Looking at Channel three, Philadelphia was able to drop these

35:10 - with Jimmy laid later tube

35:13 - very wire down and hook these television sets up.

35:16 - And if people saw these pictures,

35:18 - well everybody wanted one of those little booster amplifiers.

35:21 - It's called an ideal.

35:23 - And I have one up at the house.

35:25 - I'll give it to you.

35:26 - I have I have a tool.

35:27 - But that's how Gerald got started.

35:29 - Jerrold Electronics was selling these amplifiers to people

35:33 - to put on to their television sets with an antenna to boost the signal.

35:37 - That's. Well, that goes way back.

35:40 - Well, George, George

35:42 - found this system in Atlantic City.

35:46 - Uh, it didn't work his hotel room.

35:49 - And so he ended up getting the people to talk to.

35:53 - And he said the.

35:56 - The man he was targeting was part of RCA, I guess.

35:59 - And he said, if you can do this in a hotel, why can't you do it in a town?

36:05 - And the guy said, What's so happened to a young man in Philadelphia

36:09 - starting to make amplifiers for what you're asking?

36:13 - And maybe you should talk to him.

36:15 - So George went to Philadelphia.

36:18 - That's where he met Millichap.

36:20 - And how involved was Milton Sharpe with the whole process of building the story?

36:24 - Is he backed his car out of the garage, made it to the shop.

36:29 - That was his shop, the garage.

36:31 - And very then then he moved down to a warehouse area

36:37 - along the river and became for making an amplifier

36:41 - and he directrizes was a good

36:46 - and that's how we started.

36:48 - We started with zero lead

36:51 - with a competition to your amplifiers.

36:53 - You were building.

36:54 - I don't think you were a competition.

36:57 - Yeah, they were.

36:58 - But there weren't because they were.

37:01 - So Joe, there are so few manufacturing facilities

37:05 - and my dad built them primarily for ourselves and then

37:08 - our neighboring systems would purchase them

37:11 - because well, if you need something fixed, they knew where we were.

37:14 - If we, you know, we could supply the supply and demand.

37:17 - And uh, we grew with, with amplifiers.

37:21 - We also grew and built bigger cable systems.

37:25 - I think that between the early fifties and mid-sixties,

37:30 - cable became of age in a sense, where there was

37:33 - it was a significant impact in the country viewership.

37:36 - People always want to see something.

37:38 - Now they want the best news.

37:40 - Now, today you have a cell phone in it.

37:42 - You can find anything in the world you want a very, very powerful tool,

37:46 - that little iPad or iPhone, whatever you want.

37:50 - Back then with newspapers, newspapers perceived us as the enemy.

37:55 - They hate us. They hated it.

37:56 - They didn't want any parts of it.

37:58 - Even the theaters.

38:00 - Yeah, theaters had Citizens Against US.

38:03 - They said somebody standing outside the theater when you go inside is

38:09 - to try to put cable out of business

38:12 - digitally, because we were providing entertainment

38:15 - instead of having buying and some popcorn and a

38:18 - soft drink, watching a movie or at home, watching

38:22 - whatever is on ABC, CBS or NBC.

38:25 - And then we wouldn't have movies today, but look how strong they are today.

38:29 - Did the telephone companies try to put cable out of business?

38:32 - Not at first, no, not at first.

38:35 - They didn't they didn't perceive us as an enemy until much later we go.

38:40 - We were I mean, they cooperative.

38:43 - They say we here.

38:44 - These are the power company, too.

38:47 - They had to make changes on their poles to cause room to go out.

38:52 - They would they charges for it, but it was never any kind of a fight type thing.

38:58 - Just want to get back to building the microwave system

39:02 - because we got to the point that Pepsi said they're in

39:06 - and then everybody looked at you and said, okay, Joe, we build the system.

39:10 - Well, what happened?

39:12 - What was that? 60 days like?

39:14 - All is a lot of fun.

39:16 - 6:00 in the morning, 11:00 at night.

39:19 - But no, it it started off before that.

39:22 - We needed a we needed a network,

39:25 - we needed equipment.

39:27 - And, you know, we had a vision and we had to make the vision work

39:30 - by the eastern route.

39:32 - This piece of paper right here worked well as a distribution network,

39:37 - but it was not what we wanted.

39:38 - We, Jim and myself, my dad, leaders of the industry, we sat down,

39:43 - we said, well, look, we can make this something pretty great if we could.

39:48 - We don't need to stay with traditional delivery signals.

39:51 - We could we could do this.

39:53 - And this is pie in the sky and talking out loud to why?

39:58 - Well, we can go from that point to Jim, and Jim could go from that point back.

40:02 - So we could have two way communication in what was unheard of.

40:07 - It was explored in a telephone.

40:08 - Works two ways.

40:09 - You have answering frequency, but when you start

40:12 - delivering video signals and it becomes more complex

40:16 - because you have a frequency one one with a bi directional and I have

40:20 - there are some engineering problems that you have to work out.

40:23 - And we put together a framework,

40:27 - sat down, we talked to the people at Penn State that

40:30 - you could deliver signals to your campuses and we could deliver them

40:33 - to the different counties in the state of Pennsylvania

40:36 - into different and interconnect different schools.

40:39 - East Stroudsburg University, Bloomsburg, we got those

40:44 - those educational entities involved and they were excited.

40:48 - Oh, you mean I could put something?

40:50 - My program is really good.

40:51 - My whatever program, accounting or English, it doesn't matter.

40:56 - My programs pretty good.

40:58 - I can distribute this.

40:59 - Yeah, we can. We can do that.

41:01 - And this is when Panorama became, let's say,

41:05 - a vision that needed more than that distribution network.

41:10 - So we came up with a plan.

41:12 - We look at that aeronautical chart and we decided how to interconnect in a

41:17 - and a communications factor in a circle.

41:20 - So we had that way, you see like a figure eight,

41:23 - we could transmit from one point, actually have a go around a loop,

41:26 - come back to the origination point and vice versa.

41:30 - So any one of those connecting points can insert in receive signals.

41:36 - Just this, this is this is the beauty of the network,

41:41 - the frequency maps.

41:43 - At the time we were operating in what was called Cars Band, cable

41:47 - antenna, relay service, and they had so many channels available,

41:51 - they use different modulation techniques.

41:53 - There's a lot of technical stuff that we were able to come up with a 24

41:57 - channel bidirectional network to serve the state of Pennsylvania,

42:02 - which means 24 different points can talk to 24 different points.

42:08 - So if you wanted to had a teleconference

42:10 - and you had a group of doctors in one building

42:14 - and you had a group of doctors in another building, it would be able to

42:18 - teleport and talk back and forth real time,

42:21 - which was not heard of back then.

42:24 - We're just not feasible.

42:25 - This is the late seventies, early eighties.

42:27 - This was in the early eighties.

42:29 - Yeah, we put this together.

42:32 - So my challenge by the board,

42:34 - the tex board, to go out and get this, you know, let's get the George, Georgia,

42:38 - we'll get you the money, you figure out what we need.

42:42 - So we put together a,

42:45 - an RFI RFP request for proposal.

42:48 - We did some engineering on it and I, I had this

42:51 - put down, I had had the thought we looked at

42:55 - microwave associates, looked at the

42:59 - linker, G.T., Linker Collins

43:02 - Radio and Hughes Microwave.

43:06 - Hughes microwave started off.

43:08 - Hughes

43:10 - did not make the microwave equipment and they bought the system.

43:14 - Okay. Howard Hughes, pretty smart, sharp guy.

43:17 - And he saw what was happening with telecommunications.

43:20 - He bought this.

43:21 - This was theta com AML initially it was theta com eml guy out in California

43:27 - came up with a microwave system very smart engineer and Strauss

43:31 - his name was and he worked for Hughes, but he sold the company to Hughes.

43:36 - Hughes had the money behind it.

43:38 - And what it was is cable could only go so far with Kovacs.

43:42 - Kovacs because you have to start to amplify noise

43:46 - or a non good a not good picture as you would go so far.

43:51 - So you run out of room you just can't go anymore with microwave you could transport

43:57 - a further distance, come

43:59 - up with the same signal quality and then redistribute.

44:02 - So that's what they call amplitude modulated link for cable antenna relay

44:07 - so we could put more microwave points out that served more subscribers.

44:12 - When you look at the Panorama network,

44:15 - there are two problems in my mind with a robust network like this

44:19 - and all of these points of communication, I thought about redundancy, reliability

44:23 - and service.

44:24 - Anything that you have, the more points of communication,

44:28 - the more chance of failure.

44:29 - So if I started off at Wagner and went all the way through the Western

44:32 - Loop, every transmitter, every receiver, you know,

44:37 - high frequency source, all of these things became components

44:40 - that could fail and you would lose that signal.

44:43 - So the reliability became a big factor in my mind because that was

44:46 - that was the kind of the bummer in that thing.

44:49 - If you had one site that went down, everybody down the line was done.

44:53 - Yeah, that's until you got that one site back up.

44:57 - I mean, that was an inherent weakness in the microwave hop

45:01 - and some of the sites were pretty inaccessible.

45:03 - Right? Right. Well, eventually you had a helicopter.

45:06 - Yeah, we talk about that, how you lived in it.

45:11 - You. Well, we'll get into that.

45:13 - But let me finish this.

45:14 - We'll talk about the helicopter,

45:17 - what my problem was as an engineer or and saying, okay,

45:21 - let's make this loop work and I can envision this being coming more

45:26 - if a network, you know, have high reliability telephony

45:31 - or telephone systems had battery, big battery banks, everything worked on

45:35 - 90 volts, DC everything, and it was extremely reliable.

45:40 - Cable was designed as an entertainment delivery network.

45:43 - It was not designed with that type of, let's say, quality or importance.

45:48 - To me,

45:48 - it was important that this thing we make, communications need to stay in place.

45:53 - Not only can we deliver signal, we also could do telephony over it.

45:57 - We could we could deliver computer

46:00 - interface interfaces

46:02 - in every everything that was important in my mind I had.

46:05 - We got to make this the best in it.

46:06 - If microwave associated equipment

46:10 - huge microwave or microwave associates,

46:13 - this equipment is superior in quality to use.

46:18 - But Hughes has

46:21 - equipment available

46:23 - to regular cable systems.

46:26 - HUGHES Microwave was very popular.

46:29 - You need no special test equipment, a steel strip meter.

46:34 - You could test this.

46:35 - We had how many cable companies were already.

46:38 - We had all the test equipment we needed.

46:40 - Hughes Microwave had a school every month.

46:42 - We already had a field force of engineers and people to service this.

46:47 - So if I was in Hazelton, I didn't have to go all the way out

46:50 - to Bethel Park to fix an antenna or fix a receiver.

46:53 - We had our own built in workforce.

46:56 - That's why I was happy that they chose Panorama

47:00 - or Hughes, because I didn't have to go out and train 500 people.

47:05 - Our class factors went down exponentially.

47:08 - We didn't have we have to have all these guys sitting around.

47:11 - Yeah, we have need all these technicians.

47:13 - I already had them.

47:15 - They could pick up a phone, talk to our chief engineer.

47:17 - Yeah, go up there, do This, do that, and that's back in operation.

47:20 - So that's the key point to the, to the network.

47:23 - That's why that's why it was as successful as it was,

47:26 - because it was very reliable for, as you said,

47:30 - the kit itself was pretty reliable, very few breakdowns very much in it.

47:37 - You know, maintaining it, just tweaking it.

47:39 - We'd have all those service people in place.

47:41 - It was nice, you know,

47:42 - and it was important to them because that was part of their network.

47:45 - That was part of their signal.

47:46 - They wanted it think they,

47:49 - you know, they needed that signal.

47:53 - So the 60 days and you're helicopter 60 days started off

47:57 - after about a year of design work and in these books

48:03 - that I'm going to give you there's every every antenna site has a profile.

48:08 - So we start off at an altitude, go to a receive point.

48:11 - Oh, this is the the ground level, right?

48:13 - These are the these are particular points with trees.

48:15 - And you had a you had a signal.

48:17 - It has to be line of sight for microwave.

48:20 - So we needed to make sure that each point of communication

48:23 - had a reliable path.

48:28 - This could have taken many months, many,

48:30 - many months to do what we what we did.

48:33 - We we had that aeronautical chart.

48:35 - We picked out two points.

48:37 - Jim and I would jump on a plane,

48:39 - and there were points that we knew work

48:41 - and there were points that we weren't sure.

48:43 - So the technique would be

48:45 - you get topographical maps, you sit down, study the map

48:48 - and design the course, and then you send the field surveyor out to check it.

48:53 - Well, that didn't work.

48:54 - We didn't have that kind of luxury of time.

48:57 - So we would get in the airplane and it set the set to a figure, trigger

49:02 - the angle descent, how many feet per second or per minute

49:06 - that we'd have to go to fly these points or how we climb,

49:10 - getting the airplane, get over top of the tower, we fly the path.

49:13 - And he was my he was my stick man as they would say with the surveyor

49:17 - if he started going, I know we're getting close.

49:23 - Right. But that was far from here.

49:26 - It put a

49:28 - pencil dot on the map, had enough to go find it.

49:32 - We when we when we were figuring where to put these,

49:35 - not every thing was accessible, okay?

49:38 - Not every community had line of sight

49:42 - on in Pennsylvania for these antenna sites.

49:45 - So we had to build some and we'd fly around.

49:48 - We say, okay, Jim, we need one here.

49:50 - This isn't going to work, which we put aside there.

49:53 - And we just started short circuited many, many weeks of engineering by doing that.

49:59 - And now we need one.

50:00 - There because now we know it will work.

50:02 - So we work it on a road map to figure out how to get there.

50:08 - And then Jim's job was to go down on the ground

50:10 - and knock on the door and get the property to hello.

50:16 - And then we need the property,

50:18 - but that's where we very much problem that.

50:23 - So you would get your your plane at the point

50:27 - that would be the top of the one tower and fly it to where

50:30 - the top of the next tower would be and say okay, we didn't hit anything.

50:34 - No, we didn't hit it.

50:35 - Yeah, it was you know, Jim would start going like this.

50:40 - I guess we got to find a for me.

50:43 - We start looking for a different point.

50:46 - We did. We use the aircraft.

50:47 - We use aircraft extensively to do the path profiles.

50:51 - It saved us a tremendous of time

50:53 - when we would run into problems and we knew distances and you know,

50:57 - we could only go 30 miles maximum with the equipment.

51:00 - We we put points in it, communications, we reroute wherever we had to

51:06 - and go out to L.A., where the engineering staff was.

51:09 - And we do the design work, you know, to back up

51:12 - with our field work for us or vice versa.

51:15 - Sometimes the engineering work we'd back up with, with the flight path.

51:19 - And you said a lot of the sites were state game plans?

51:22 - Oh, some were not so much the ones on the mountaintops.

51:26 - We stayed key months and they were well, we did that for a reason.

51:32 - We had the let's say we had the we had the light

51:36 - Pennsylvania State University, which is a land grant University,

51:39 - the state of Pennsylvania, the political environment was correct.

51:43 - We had contacts in Harrisburg that were working with us.

51:46 - And for us to help make this occur, this was a good thing.

51:50 - What we made a connection with the State Gaming Commission.

51:54 - They they really

51:56 - cooperated with us a lot.

51:59 - And there were certain things you had to do

52:02 - to get permission to it.

52:05 - But there were times they'd been here, but they knew what we were.

52:10 - They they were cooperating, I think, because they knew what we were doing.

52:14 - They knew we were trying to make this communications system

52:19 - so that some of the

52:23 - some of the courses we flew were specifically aimed at game lands.

52:29 - Yeah, because we

52:31 - you go up to knock on the door.

52:33 - No, we don't want you.

52:34 - We were not going to sell any property.

52:36 - We already knew we could get the game land property.

52:39 - So that's that again saved the steps,

52:42 - you know discovery well whether or not we can have that site.

52:46 - So then you had to build build a road to it and.

52:50 - We had an electric up to it.

52:52 - I mean, it was a big undertaking.

52:54 - You know, can you talk about what was involved once

52:55 - you said, okay, it should go there, what you had to do?

52:59 - Well, this is a job you get get it done.

53:01 - That's what this book tells you. It's

53:04 - the Texas of what we had to do

53:07 - with the logistics.

53:10 - Yeah, logistics were

53:13 - once we once we located the property,

53:16 - once we knew we had a secure facility, the first with power,

53:21 - we had to find out where the power, how to route power to it, initialize

53:25 - that phase and you can elect

53:28 - people, rural, electric companies,

53:32 - all of those had all of those

53:34 - had to be employed.

53:37 - Order towers came form.

53:39 - I have some stuff I'll give you.

53:41 - You'll laugh when you read them.

53:43 - Steve Vitellius from Camp Foreign Tower.

53:45 - I went out and put towers, alphabet strands, steel, pyrite.

53:49 - All these guys came form was the kind of guy he came in

53:53 - is down to earth, blue jeans and work boots on.

53:57 - And he said, I'll build your tower.

53:58 - And I said, How fast can you build it?

54:00 - And let me see him.

54:01 - I went, I fell Ohio and they saw them

54:03 - and they we shook hands and he gave us a price.

54:06 - You wouldn't beat the price. I mean, it was a good price.

54:10 - We go back, Scott Curtis and,

54:12 - um, he was the treasurer of Milt Schmidt.

54:16 - Yeah. So.

54:18 - Oh, they were very mean.

54:20 - Well, how much are you going to spend?

54:21 - Well, I think this.

54:22 - What do you mean?

54:23 - You think we got to have the exact figure,

54:26 - but they would have to coordinate the tower.

54:28 - And how many feet the tower needed to be in

54:32 - cement pad and maybe a road, a bulldozer, or to get the road up to it.

54:36 - And chainsaw Harry over here.

54:39 - Telephone poles to run to the

54:42 - so the line up to it

54:45 - once we started in earnest once we had board approval and a board meeting

54:49 - was in February, I think it was 1982, 81, somewhere in there

54:55 - we had the board, we had we had an estimate.

54:57 - We knew, we knew rough costs.

55:00 - We weren't finite, yet we're still under some sort of discovery.

55:05 - We started putting in placing orders.

55:07 - He was got a contract. Uh,

55:12 - you could tell that

55:12 - story with Yolanda and George

55:16 - Hughes, who's won the contract.

55:18 - Tell that story. Well, what?

55:20 - Go ahead. Who wins that now?

55:24 - Which ones?

55:24 - That that were the one where you were like the guy from Macomb

55:28 - said you as his wife.

55:30 - Remember I told George about Yolanda?

55:36 - I can't remember that.

55:37 - Oh, the guy from Macomb.

55:41 - Tactical error in his part made mention to

55:45 - Yolanda.

55:46 - Yolanda is George's daughter

55:48 - and he didn't call you more like Yolanda was George's wife.

55:53 - Well, that didn't go over very well.

55:55 - It goes in that way.

55:58 - But I could tell right away they're out of the game.

56:02 - The guy from Collins radio

56:06 - call reason.

56:07 - I like Hugh so much.

56:09 - Again, it was not the best of the best equipment.

56:11 - The college, all of the other suppliers were for frequency, modulated, common

56:16 - carrier length, and they had big clients

56:19 - Easter Microwave, TCI. TCI.

56:22 - And we were not on their radar screens, but huge because it was big player

56:27 - in cable, big in the industry, already had a workforce built in.

56:31 - A lot of the cable operators were using using the Hughes email system.

56:36 - I was very pleased to see them be awarded the contract.

56:40 - Once we once we started, we started three phases of construction.

56:44 - First was the design phase, which we identified all our links,

56:48 - the engineering ordered towers.

56:50 - Jim went out and acquired property.

56:53 - He started the land clearing, getting the roads and getting the power in place.

56:57 - So we had a

56:58 - three frontal approach as equipment became available.

57:02 - You know, we coordinated Gemini coordinated.

57:04 - Where where are we going to start from?

57:06 - Where is our first strikes where we put the antennas up first.

57:09 - So now have all of this massive equipment coming in

57:13 - and we had different distribution points

57:15 - state college down

57:18 - the of Armstrong the butler we had warehouse Meadville

57:22 - we had Meadville we had all these points of distribution.

57:26 - We had chem form tower guys come in as the tower pads were being poured in cured.

57:32 - After nine days they started erecting towers.

57:34 - Well, now we had waveguide, all kinds of equipment.

57:37 - Antennas had to be put in place, you know, it was a huge

57:40 - undertaking that I don't know how many thousands of pieces of equipment.

57:43 - Oh, my God.

57:45 - It was it was extensive stuff would come in.

57:48 - Now, somebody had to go check it out.

57:50 - Well, that was mostly my job to wherever this equipment was being delivered.

57:55 - We'd have to get there in.

57:56 - In a hurry,

57:57 - unload it, check it, find out what's broke, which damage,

58:00 - how do we get replacements?

58:01 - And this was a this was not only a

58:04 - one part, this was the entire state of Pennsylvania.

58:07 - So this is where the helicopters and airplanes came in,

58:10 - when one morning we're in Meadville, next afternoon in Williamsport

58:14 - or we're up in Scranton and then back down to Harrisburg, hitting all these points.

58:20 - Yet it all coordinated.

58:21 - We started we started assembling

58:25 - probably I think it was somewhere the end of May, beginning of June.

58:30 - It was just summertime in the beginning of June.

58:32 - We had tactical reasons for that long days.

58:37 - Look, very, you know, very appropriate weather conditions.

58:41 - You know, when we started, we actually started on point to point

58:44 - to point where the engineers dropped one guy off.

58:47 - We started firing up the equipment, setting the setting the antennas.

58:51 - Do a test, go down, pick him up, drop him off.

58:53 - 30 miles.

58:55 - Okay, 35 miles sometimes.

58:56 - Maybe even some a little closer,

58:58 - which you could fly there in about ten, 12 minutes.

59:01 - And you take your 45 minutes to an hour, maybe 2 hours to drive there.

59:05 - So we started going point to point to point with these helicopters,

59:08 - dropping people off, picking them up fast, pretty equipment.

59:11 - Around one time, we even took the eight foot

59:14 - light fluorescent light bulbs for the antenna site.

59:18 - So we taped them on the skids.

59:19 - That helicopter flew light bulbs,

59:21 - light bulb lower. How

59:24 - could you always find a place to land the helicopter, the sites and let spots?

59:28 - Well, what once we could

59:32 - as I said, we had the clear cherry trees

59:35 - and bulldozers to clear the site.

59:38 - That's when we start bringing the equipment in.

59:41 - Yeah, pretty much.

59:42 - We provided the space, you know, to do that for two reasons.

59:46 - One is, you know, protection for fire if you're too tied to the trees.

59:51 - And if there was a brush fire or something like that, you can cause for alarm.

59:54 - But they cleared we pretty much cleared about an acre or more.

01:00 - 03.166 But let me just show you

01:00 - 10.740 some of these.

01:00 - 13.710 This is we had we had a company building buildings

01:00 - 16.713 like this for buildings, building each tower site.

01:00 - 20.149 And with your play right

01:00 - 24.487 we designed the building there was nice we free stuff them

01:00 - 29.459 custom metal products remember them yeah that's a name.

01:00 - 32.261 We had equipment delivered,

01:00 - 36.065 we build a building and we put back these equipments came in racks.

01:00 - 37.166 So we had

01:00 - 41.204 as the walls were being put in place, we put the electronics into the building,

01:00 - 44.240 we free wire them Brazil electric.

01:00 - 45.775 We're going we'd wire this stuff up.

01:00 - 48.711 We set it up for redundant power or generator, whatever we needed.

01:00 - 54.417 These were all pre-made, put on a drop deck trailer, slipped trailer.

01:00 - 57.954 As the antenna sites were being finished, the pad was poured.

01:00 - 01.290 We back up, put the building in place, everything's in there.

01:01 - 03.459 All we had to do is hang the wave.

01:01 - 04.360 Great. Well,

01:01 - 07.730 we got pretty good at estimating costs of.

01:01 - 09.899 You can tell by this discussion.

01:01 - 11.100 It was a heck of a lot easier

01:01 - 15.605 if we could attach to a cable operators tower than than doing this.

01:01 - 17.140 But the higher the

01:01 - 19.842 tower

01:01 - 22.578 was required, remember we had a Buy More Waveguide

01:01 - 27.150 which ran the cost up this building to house or equipment power to get up.

01:01 - 28.351 It was a

01:01 - 33.156 as you can imagine was a lot better to look at line

01:01 - 35.792 of sight between cable companies as opposed to for example

01:01 - 38.928 it is a router.

01:01 - 41.564 We had to build that road. Yeah.

01:01 - 43.433 Sounds expensive. Yeah.

01:01 - 47.070 Well, and oftentimes if you had, you know, on the sales

01:01 - 51.674 part of it, you want to get all the cable operators involved and in signing up

01:01 - 54.410 the to get the subscriber fees.

01:01 - 57.447 Well oftentimes we'd have a cable system

01:01 - 02.218 that was far from our trunk line who who may want it.

01:02 - 05.488 And we just had to say, you know, you just we can't get it to you.

01:02 - 10.259 I mean, we have to build a tower or two to get that signal to them.

01:02 - 12.562 And we just had to hit a small glitch.

01:02 - 17.500 Scotts Expertize was we had to look at if we charged the $0.06 a subscriber.

01:02 - 21.671 No, on an annualized basis, you only have 10,000 subscribers.

01:02 - 26.609 Well, going to the cost value versus actual to build it to get to

01:02 - 28.811 there was a couple of we just couldn't go, you know.

01:02 - 31.013 Scott, how did you get involved with this?

01:02 - 34.317 Actually, I, uh,

01:02 - 36.719 I was I came from the CPA,

01:02 - 39.355 was a CPA with a regional firm here in Meadville.

01:02 - 43.192 And we had some I had a client in common with Georgia, Atlanta.

01:02 - 45.895 BARCO And I rubbed elbows with them

01:02 - 48.631 through this client in common.

01:02 - 51.501 And one day she called me into the office, and

01:02 - 54.604 I thought she was going to start referring clients to me.

01:02 - 59.175 And, you know, she said has some exciting things going on.

01:02 - 02.612 I remember her showing me this this figure eight

01:03 - 05.348 map and

01:03 - 07.784 explained that I could be getting in on the ground floor

01:03 - 10.019 or something that could be, you know, very exciting.

01:03 - 12.421 And so that's how I got involved with it.

01:03 - 16.592 When did it become a corporation?

01:03 - 21.264 Well, I, I came on board in 1983, and at that time,

01:03 - 26.068 uh, the business had been formed.

01:03 - 28.204 Uh, the players were involved,

01:03 - 31.307 but we hadn't filed anything with the Internal Revenue Code yet.

01:03 - 35.511 We weren't did file any tax returns and we didn't know.

01:03 - 38.781 This was very interesting, the nature of this.

01:03 - 41.250 It really wasn't a501c3

01:03 - 45.988 There were some talk about maybe utilizing the, uh,

01:03 - 50.993 the trunk or the network for maybe some business aspects.

01:03 - 54.697 And of course you couldn't do that if you were, were of nonprofit.

01:03 - 00.336 501c3 So I bet we fussed around probably for a year to 18 months,

01:04 - 06.142 going to talk to various attorneys and CPA, trying to figure out

01:04 - 10.746 exactly what type of filing we should make with the Internal Revenue Service.

01:04 - 16.919 And we ended up going with a501c4, which was not a for profit entity

01:04 - 19.622 or where you could

01:04 - 22.592 charitable organization, but it was a nonprofit, but

01:04 - 26.295 that was my first

01:04 - 30.433 kind of assignment to figure out exactly what we should file with with the IRS.

01:04 - 34.470 And it was we have varying opinions depending on who you should talk to.

01:04 - 36.606 And that was kind of fun because we were on charter

01:04 - 40.109 water there and wasn't, uh, uh, you know,

01:04 - 44.747 to get that figured out and we finally made application was approved by the IRS

01:04 - 48.317 and then I had to file like two or three years of tax returns, right?

01:04 - 52.622 Because we had, again, we didn't know how to file and or what

01:04 - 55.958 type of entity we actually were going to end up as.

01:04 - 00.930 And because of that, we were delinquent and it wasn't a big deal.

01:05 - 03.933 We filed finally we were approved.

01:05 - 04.967 Then I just filed

01:05 - 07.670 a couple of returns.

01:05 - 10.873 Uh, uh, did you have a five year business plan?

01:05 - 13.709 I mean, was the idea to make money on it?

01:05 - 18.614 Well, different people had, uh, uh, remember George Barclay.

01:05 - 21.918 He had no interest whatsoever on any kind of business aspect of it.

01:05 - 23.886 He just wanted to he thought, Hey,

01:05 - 26.722 what's Penn State's going to provide the educational programing?

01:05 - 29.191 We're going to find the distribution network.

01:05 - 32.028 And you guys all have your own cable companies and

01:05 - 34.797 he had no interest in any kind of business

01:05 - 39.235 venture or utilizing the system for anything other than distributing

01:05 - 43.572 the educational and other people were, uh,

01:05 - 47.443 you know, depending on where they came from, other people thought that they could

01:05 - 51.113 maybe parlay this into some kind of business venture.

01:05 - 56.218 But that really never transpired.

01:05 - 58.054 George was in a position

01:05 - 01.257 that when all the merger started happening,

01:06 - 03.059 he could have been right in the middle of it.

01:06 - 07.697 But he was not interested in, you know, the 1980s, early eighties.

01:06 - 11.334 That was that was a franchise boom franchising.

01:06 - 13.903 Everybody was out franchising and promising

01:06 - 18.341 anything that they could think of and they had the franchise from the city.

01:06 - 21.877 Yeah, everyone. So and we finally did. But

01:06 - 24.180 remember

01:06 - 26.849 George with a very accomplished guy,

01:06 - 29.518 remember he told me and you got to remember, I was

01:06 - 33.889 25 or 26 years old at the time doing all this stuff.

01:06 - 35.157 It was very exciting.

01:06 - 39.328 But he told me one time that the importance of television

01:06 - 42.732 as far as a media, he always thought that if

01:06 - 46.268 if you were able to sit in your home and watch a politician or whoever

01:06 - 51.941 give a speech or give a talk or tell you what he thought it you could see it

01:06 - 55.077 with your own eyes and listen to that person with your own ears.

01:06 - 57.279 Or if you read it in a newspaper,

01:06 - 01.250 whoever was writing that could twist it around a little bit.

01:07 - 05.888 And so he always thought it important that the power of television

01:07 - 08.657 where you could actually see it and you could make that call yourself

01:07 - 11.894 what that guy was trying to tell you first out, that he would never

01:07 - 14.330 listen to the analyze after somebody's speech.

01:07 - 16.932 So I know I know what I think about it.

01:07 - 18.968 I hear what he thinks about it.

01:07 - 21.370 He just he felt what he thought.

01:07 - 23.439 Right. Right. What he thought.

01:07 - 25.074 You know, if you read the newspaper,

01:07 - 28.277 a person could leave out a paragraph or two or some comments at that.

01:07 - 32.648 You know, they could kind of edit out, edit that speech to a,

01:07 - 36.385 uh, you know, kind of put it in there later.

01:07 - 40.189 What he thought that it should be said or what that editor wanted or

01:07 - 41.924 the writer wanted you to, uh

01:07 - 44.260 where if you were

01:07 - 46.328 watching it yourself and listening to it,

01:07 - 48.631 that wasn't going to happen.

01:07 - 51.567 So George Packer wanted to do it for educational reasons.

01:07 - 53.836 What what what motivated your dad?

01:07 - 55.371 Joey, say that again.

01:07 - 56.639 What motivated your dad?

01:07 - 59.241 Why did he want to go through all this?

01:07 - 03.379 Programing, programing, programing motivated everybody in the state.

01:08 - 07.116 You know, this is a this is something that's unique to Pennsylvania.

01:08 - 09.085 It's programing at my state.

01:08 - 12.288 You know, it's my my people are people,

01:08 - 15.758 you know, providing something good to our customers.

01:08 - 17.460 It's not that.

01:08 - 18.494 Yeah, we're paying for it.

01:08 - 19.428 They're paying for it,

01:08 - 22.598 but we're providing them somewhere, something they couldn't get anywhere else.

01:08 - 23.833 Interesting.

01:08 - 25.835 You're doing what George wanted.

01:08 - 28.170 Yeah. You just wanted to do.

01:08 - 33.309 There were many opportunities out there and that, that was a

01:08 - 36.245 public commercial free public radio.

01:08 - 36.545 Right.

01:08 - 38.481 And they wanted to, we could provide them

01:08 - 41.750 a interconnect with some carrier on the microwave network.

01:08 - 47.189 They were at that point in cable's history, there was this

01:08 - 51.494 big box of empty seats, and we were trying to fill them up with programing.

01:08 - 52.828 That's all it was.

01:08 - 55.531 And you know, you have a letter here from

01:08 - 58.567 1982 from

01:08 - 02.104 Pennsylvania Public Television Network where they were concerned.

01:09 - 04.206 There's a note on the bottom about George.

01:09 - 05.941 Can you talk about that?

01:09 - 08.611 Oh, I can't remember the details,

01:09 - 11.547 but the Pennsylvania public television network,

01:09 - 14.550 where they were concerned, that

01:09 - 16.819 Panorama would put them out of business

01:09 - 22.424 and they put themselves out of business in a long and short sense of the term.

01:09 - 24.360 But we were not there to do that.

01:09 - 29.098 We were there to augment and help help public television and to help people

01:09 - 32.935 get the value like like I just mentioned.

01:09 - 35.337 See it for yourself. Make your own opinion.

01:09 - 37.006 That's what the newspapers

01:09 - 40.409 that's why they didn't like us, because they're editorializing things.

01:09 - 42.077 It was their idea.

01:09 - 45.414 And this is what I heard instead of, what we all heard

01:09 - 50.252 on public television in our area, George

01:09 - 52.588 raised money from

01:09 - 55.391 Crawford County to the one in Erie.

01:09 - 58.661 In fact, he was the first president of the one area.

01:09 - 02.765 So he felt very strongly

01:10 - 06.302 at the table to be educational.

01:10 - 08.604 But there's never any there was never any cooperation

01:10 - 10.539 between public television around the state.

01:10 - 13.742 And, well, this never happened, I guess.

01:10 - 17.046 And it it did and it didn't.

01:10 - 19.815 They they were kind of competing a little bit with us.

01:10 - 21.083 It didn't it didn't they?

01:10 - 24.119 PHILLIPS Was public television

01:10 - 29.558 sex and sex was a it was a prime source of programing for us.

01:10 - 31.660 So there was there was there was.

01:10 - 33.095 And there was not cooperation.

01:10 - 36.966 It wasn't like, uh, public television was promoting us

01:10 - 39.969 and we really weren't, in a sense,

01:10 - 43.272 promoting public or public television.

01:10 - 43.672 That's right.

01:10 - 46.842 We were supplying we were supplying a similar product,

01:10 - 51.113 but in a different sense, you could not watch public television

01:10 - 54.183 and get accredited degree or get accredited courses.

01:10 - 55.284 So that was the idea.

01:10 - 57.686 You could sit at home and take a course from a college.

01:10 - 58.420 Yeah, yeah.

01:10 - 59.755 Penn State University.

01:10 - 01.890 Yeah. So how many people did that?

01:11 - 04.093 Oh I don't know.

01:11 - 08.264 There was one state would be a big bench of them, but it was quite a few.

01:11 - 11.100 But if you actually got credit for it,

01:11 - 13.902 East Stroudsburg had different courses on

01:11 - 18.307 and Penn State actually accepted East Stroudsburg credit for their course.

01:11 - 21.410 I mean, there was cooperation that never existed before.

01:11 - 24.079 After we started that were that was yeah.

01:11 - 28.884 That surprised you and that's kind of where that moral of fro he got involved,

01:11 - 32.454 you know, he handled the educational part it

01:11 - 38.627 so the cameras like this in the classroom and and it kind of promoted

01:11 - 42.097 uh uh the making of these courses

01:11 - 45.200 that could be put on the marlowe's chain.

01:11 - 47.670 Marlowe changed his job description.

01:11 - 53.175 His job description was changed by, uh, Bryce Jordan.

01:11 - 56.245 He was a president of the university.

01:11 - 58.681 He change once. Once this started,

01:11 - 01.884 he saw the value, and he

01:12 - 05.321 changed Marlowe from a director of communication to

01:12 - 09.091 and I don't remember the exact term they used, but he was to go out

01:12 - 13.829 and get these other universities to participate and make the program or not

01:12 - 17.032 program, make their courses

01:12 - 21.003 not seamless but compatible so that I will accept your credit.

01:12 - 23.972 You'll accept my and you know, we'll just get these kids studying

01:12 - 25.541 because they were in there.

01:12 - 26.342 There were a number.

01:12 - 29.878 And although I know East Stroudsburg had a significant number of students

01:12 - 33.716 that were taking of courses, do they did it at their at their leisure.

01:12 - 36.719 We had a four hour programing block in

01:12 - 39.955 in that block of programing was repeated so many times a day,

01:12 - 43.792 not like what you're doing today, but this four hour block was repeated.

01:12 - 46.628 So, okay, I need to get math one on one.

01:12 - 50.833 So trying to be on at 3:00 in the afternoon, 6:00 at night, 9:00 at night.

01:12 - 53.669 I'm going to watch it now so I could set my schedule

01:12 - 57.005 versus trying to sit in a classroom or get thrown.

01:12 - 59.041 I got to drive. Here you go. There now. I'm at home.

01:12 - 00.609 I'm doing homework or whatever.

01:13 - 02.745 I can watch this and I get my credit.

01:13 - 03.479 So it worked.

01:13 - 04.079 You know,

01:13 - 08.617 it was a value to not only the students in these different universities,

01:13 - 10.819 but anybody that wanted to watch these courses.

01:13 - 13.021 Yeah, anybody. Anybody.

01:13 - 15.057 But you got some resistance from the.

01:13 - 17.192 The state system.

01:13 - 18.460 From the teachers.

01:13 - 18.927 Yeah.

01:13 - 21.730 Yeah.

01:13 - 23.098 Again, you're going to lose the job.

01:13 - 26.769 Apparently you that wasn't in the book

01:13 - 30.038 what they were trying to do to support their job to help.

01:13 - 34.243 But Jim McCormick was the president

01:13 - 37.946 and he when he was offered the

01:13 - 44.286 they didn't want so they stacked up.

01:13 - 45.521 So what was the programing like.

01:13 - 48.056 What what were some of the classroom.

01:13 - 48.991 Yeah,

01:13 - 53.629 they had courses basically.

01:13 - 56.598 First year college is a pretty much a basic course.

01:13 - 58.634 I mean, the credits you need.

01:13 - 03.305 So there are a lot of basic credits on Panorama, probably some even

01:14 - 07.276 I was looking in here too, but they had a like math

01:14 - 10.446 101 English reading

01:14 - 13.949 public speaking,

01:14 - 15.784 all kinds of yeah.

01:14 - 20.622 Here's the course selection for spring in 1990 uh, faces of Culture.

01:14 - 23.358 And that was provided by Indiana University

01:14 - 27.329 and the Western tradition to Panorama.

01:14 - 30.299 That was Indiana University.

01:14 - 34.169 And then Penn State provided ethics in America, for all practical

01:14 - 39.708 purposes, was another course principles of accounting and computer works.

01:14 - 41.610 So there was,

01:14 - 45.013 what, six different courses that were offered in spring of 1990.

01:14 - 47.583 What's interesting there is two of them were provided

01:14 - 52.187 by an Indiana University and the other four was by Penn.

01:14 - 55.891 But this is kind of where Marlo got involved, trying to, uh,

01:14 - 01.763 you know, encourage either one out, trying to drum up the other schools interest.

01:15 - 03.165 Yeah. Yeah.

01:15 - 05.801 He and Yolanda work very closely together.

01:15 - 10.038 They would visit these different universities in schools

01:15 - 14.076 to, you know, in colleges to, you know, say, this is what we have.

01:15 - 16.278 How can we help you and can you help us?

01:15 - 18.247 And we were very successful.

01:15 - 19.414 Yeah, they worked well.

01:15 - 21.884 They did well. I didn't care about that.

01:15 - 25.354 I just cared to make sure the pictures got there in in gym.

01:15 - 28.524 We just kept it. Kept it in operation.

01:15 - 30.058 Was there some moment when you threw

01:15 - 33.729 switch and lit up the whole system and started programing for the first time?

01:15 - 34.930 Do you remember when that was

01:15 - 38.166 it really started like that?

01:15 - 42.571 It was kind of a gradual start and uh,

01:15 - 46.375 we did have a ceremonial flip the switch thing,

01:15 - 48.911 but I didn't have a lot money for promotion.

01:15 - 54.049 We had a, I was out in Torrance, out at the Hughes plant,

01:15 - 58.887 and we were developing some equipment to operate with the network.

01:15 - 04.459 And Strauss had came up with these modulators that were

01:16 - 08.764 then made by cartel, but we had two that were experimental.

01:16 - 10.866 So I called him up.

01:16 - 14.036 We, we, I put these in my remember

01:16 - 17.539 the old briefcases you had to do look like little suitcases.

01:16 - 20.609 They steal these out of the engineering lab from my briefcase.

01:16 - 23.679 I come home and say, Come on, Jim, we're going to we're going to set this up.

01:16 - 27.082 We fly to fly out of the University Park.

01:16 - 30.052 We got Dave Philips, and I told Dave what we wanted to do.

01:16 - 30.919 So we get a camera

01:16 - 35.424 and we set the modulators up in the link was the western route was

01:16 - 37.759 almost complete.

01:16 - 39.795 We we're not done and we're still doing.

01:16 - 43.498 We had some engineering questions and so we set the one camera up

01:16 - 47.369 with one modulator and a link with Latin Evil and Jim studio.

01:16 - 50.639 And we used the other modulator system with another camera

01:16 - 53.275 and we had a television on, on a table.

01:16 - 58.180 So we had Dave Phillips get Marlo through to come the effects,

01:16 - 01.350 and he put them down in front of the camera.

01:17 - 05.887 Meantime, George, George and Jim had George and Yolanda come to the studio.

01:17 - 09.625 They were just making the tape.

01:17 - 11.460 So they come in and there's

01:17 - 13.829 there's Marlo sitting there just like you're looking at me

01:17 - 15.364 and George.

01:17 - 17.299 You wonder what they're looking at.

01:17 - 19.601 If it was a videotape and

01:17 - 24.006 and I'll never forget, Marlo says, Hi, George Hi, you.

01:17 - 27.442 And they forgot that we didn't even know we were in the room.

01:17 - 29.945 They were they sit down, they started a conversation.

01:17 - 35.317 And that was the first as far as I know, first bi directional use

01:17 - 39.688 of a microwave network in Pennsylvania you're just is part of

01:17 - 45.327 can you see me now?

01:17 - 48.363 Well the funny thing is so you know what?

01:17 - 52.567 So you see me so commonplace now with technology

01:17 - 57.472 and the Internet and Skyping and all that, you know, I mean, that was 35 years ago.

01:17 - 00.342 That was the day I was that was big stuff, man.

01:18 - 02.477 When I saw that, I was excited.

01:18 - 06.314 Yeah, I was excited to see, you know, distance learning or just

01:18 - 08.083 distance education. That's

01:18 - 11.920 started in Penn State.

01:18 - 15.357 There was do you remember

01:18 - 18.593 what as a company had employees and who?

01:18 - 22.764 Not many Ernie Baker, who was a Hughes engineer, he ended up coming on board

01:18 - 26.001 to kind of maintain the Hughes, you know, the system.

01:18 - 30.872 He was the main fellow, but there wasn't many paid employees.

01:18 - 35.811 No, I think most of the cable companies have right cells.

01:18 - 36.578 Right. Right.

01:18 - 38.947 And as for the cable operators,

01:18 - 43.085 if the first line of defense of the system was down at a particular,

01:18 - 47.189 uh, tower site or cable,

01:18 - 51.460 they would be the first guy on, on

01:18 - 54.563 at the scene to and if they could fix it, great.

01:18 - 57.599 Then we wouldn't have to send Ernie or somebody else out

01:18 - 58.900 if they could fix it themselves.

01:18 - 01.903 So then if they couldn't do it, then

01:19 - 05.907 Ernie would go to the tower site or that location to try to figure out.

01:19 - 07.642 So that was the beauty of the Hughes network,

01:19 - 09.311 because the cable operators had

01:19 - 12.147 we had everything there, I didn't have to do anything.

01:19 - 14.983 Did you eventually put Hughes stuff in the eastern part of the state?

01:19 - 17.152 Yeah, we did. We use it all

01:19 - 21.022 and were you working for the law firm?

01:19 - 24.960 I was working for Pax.

01:19 - 27.329 I was working.

01:19 - 28.330 I got wages.

01:19 - 30.766 Ah, uh,

01:19 - 33.135 pecs, meter master antenna.

01:19 - 36.538 I was working for three or four

01:19 - 38.540 companies related to Jim and,

01:19 - 41.777 and the park was at that time they would meet in.

01:19 - 44.312 Uh, so yeah.

01:19 - 46.081 Do you remember what the budget was for?

01:19 - 49.384 For no, I do not remember that.

01:19 - 55.123 Well, I want to ask you about some people who you've mentioned peripherally.

01:19 - 56.458 You talked a little bit more about them.

01:19 - 03.331 First of all, Yolanda BARCO, what should people know about her?

01:20 - 06.301 Uh, well, they were,

01:20 - 07.135 I think,

01:20 - 11.072 between her and her father, George, they were probably the most influential

01:20 - 14.810 people for probably the first 20 years.

01:20 - 19.347 And in the cable industry, they were, uh, as far as like legal type things.

01:20 - 22.651 They were what chief legal counsel were the national cable television

01:20 - 25.654 they were involved in like whole attachment

01:20 - 30.358 to issues, copyright issues, uh, that kind of thing.

01:20 - 34.629 There were no rules when we started, and that's what they became

01:20 - 37.199 very strong in developing the rules,

01:20 - 43.572 and they would talk to other operators, they'd go to the state meetings,

01:20 - 46.842 they'd get the groups, they all get together

01:20 - 49.878 here all the because there were a lot of problems.

01:20 - 53.114 It was just very it was really a mess.

01:20 - 58.253 And George and they both knew that had to be straightened out.

01:20 - 00.555 It can't continue to go that way.

01:21 - 02.991 So they immediately start doing it.

01:21 - 06.962 And I would say that 75% of the rules

01:21 - 10.498 that were made were made right there for the whole nation.

01:21 - 15.537 They championed they championed the cause for cable across

01:21 - 20.041 the United States, not just Meadville, but not only Pennsylvania, but everywhere.

01:21 - 24.012 Uh, copyright tribunal in Georgia, the copyright

01:21 - 26.147 excise tax.

01:21 - 27.949 I mean, I could go on and on and on and on.

01:21 - 30.852 There was a lot of fights and that was went on for years.

01:21 - 31.653 Oh yeah.

01:21 - 35.223 In its infancy, cable was an unknown and all of a sudden

01:21 - 39.928 it became perceived as a valuable tool in how we use the tool.

01:21 - 43.932 Well, no one knew we were interpreters

01:21 - 47.002 like John, my dad, you know, John Regas.

01:21 - 49.905 Everybody got together and it was sit down,

01:21 - 55.043 you know, after we'd have a meeting and everybody sit down and okay,

01:21 - 56.444 what are we going to how are we going to make this?

01:21 - 59.614 Is this going to work like HBO started in Wilkes-Barre.

01:21 - 02.751 John Wall says now it's all over

01:22 - 06.688 with those types of devices, those types of entities came from

01:22 - 10.625 people like George and Yolanda and said, well, listen, make it work.

01:22 - 12.127 Well, good. What do you need?

01:22 - 12.894 How do you do it?

01:22 - 18.433 And therefore, it was we can talk about the legal side and I'll get you the money.

01:22 - 20.435 They didn't know how to build it.

01:22 - 22.771 I can build it. You get me the money.

01:22 - 24.205 And this is what?

01:22 - 29.110 This is how that's how cable what today is a multi multibillion dollar,

01:22 - 32.280 very well oiled financial machine.

01:22 - 36.384 You know the big the the the difference VP you see

01:22 - 40.822 and if the FCC who's going to be the controller

01:22 - 42.324 that was

01:22 - 46.061 big it was I remember they always thought the distribution network

01:22 - 48.763 should be separate from whoever owned the programing.

01:22 - 51.466 Yeah, that was a big. Yeah.

01:22 - 53.935 And of course now that, you know, the copyright people were they

01:22 - 58.840 were well vertical, they had to up for all the stuff.

01:22 - 02.143 So they thought the cable companies should have to pay copyright

01:23 - 02.877 and all the programing.

01:23 - 05.280 They were retransmit in their early days.

01:23 - 06.548 They had a weather channel

01:23 - 08.917 that was a little machine that went around on a carousel

01:23 - 10.986 and showed temperature, wind speed and this and that.

01:23 - 12.787 Will you put a radio station on?

01:23 - 16.524 Well, now the new music people came and they want their share of the

01:23 - 18.626 to all of that stuff.

01:23 - 20.128 George and Yolanda were involved with

01:23 - 21.596 this.

01:23 - 22.831 There was just

01:23 - 26.868 so many different things that were happening at the same time,

01:23 - 28.136 trying to get them straightened out.

01:23 - 31.740 It was it was the job and they did a good job.

01:23 - 35.210 So you said George's interest was in the education side of it.

01:23 - 37.379 What was Yolanda's interest?

01:23 - 39.180 Why was she interested in it?

01:23 - 42.851 She shared her father's vision

01:23 - 46.755 more because of George than anything for Yonder.

01:23 - 49.858 But when she saw how strong he thought about it,

01:23 - 53.928 she wanted to help them do it. And

01:23 - 56.598 the. Yes, yes.

01:23 - 59.901 But then she got involved in it.

01:24 - 04.239 But not the the managerial type involved,

01:24 - 06.408 but she got involved in it to keep it going.

01:24 - 10.779 And it just what happened?

01:24 - 13.815 I, I, I stayed in it because of her

01:24 - 19.621 and the who I thought was a good idea.

01:24 - 23.758 But I wanted it to work and I wanted to be successful.

01:24 - 26.561 And it has thanks to you.

01:24 - 27.228 Yeah.

01:24 - 29.531 Well oh, yeah.

01:24 - 34.169 And Joe, you said last night that a lot of times you just

01:24 - 39.874 you didn't wait for permission or wait for regulations or you just plowed ahead.

01:24 - 43.912 You never, never wait for somebody to say you can or can't.

01:24 - 47.115 Just go ahead, do it, then figure out how to ask for permission.

01:24 - 50.585 And to the that's how we did things.

01:24 - 52.020 It had to be that way.

01:24 - 52.821 Is that the letters

01:24 - 55.490 that they're going to ask about some of these other names on here

01:24 - 58.259 and get you to talk about it a little bit?

01:24 - 01.496 Oh, well, let's just go down the list, Joe and Joe Eamon was

01:25 - 04.899 an employee of Telecommunications Incorporated

01:25 - 08.670 who is based in state college, later moved to Pittsburgh.

01:25 - 12.073 His counterpart, Mary Ann Novak, was in charge

01:25 - 15.677 of the state of Pennsylvania. So,

01:25 - 22.117 Jim, Peter S.A.

01:25 - 26.821 Palmer, Jim Palmer of the former home of

01:25 - 31.259 Jim Palmer, own center video

01:25 - 35.130 center video was bought by Bob Magnus and John Malone.

01:25 - 38.099 And they also bought

01:25 - 41.970 an old shaft system in quarry off with Pittsburgh area

01:25 - 45.473 and they consolidated and that's when telecommunications was formed.

01:25 - 48.943 Kay Marion Novak was their statewide manager,

01:25 - 53.648 so Marion, when we started building the Panorama network,

01:25 - 57.252 you know, TCI was involved with center video.

01:25 - 00.088 We utilized some of their antenna points.

01:26 - 05.760 So Joe Eyman was given to me by Marion Novak and John Malone, J.C.

01:26 - 09.764 Sparkman and Bob Magnus to work on a around the project.

01:26 - 13.801 So he was put on the board, you know, because know you put on the board.

01:26 - 16.070 So we all everybody knew what was going on.

01:26 - 19.274 My work with him was I knew

01:26 - 22.377 every where TCI was and I knew every one of their warehouses.

01:26 - 23.711 I knew every one of their managers.

01:26 - 25.914 So if I needed something, I pick up the phone.

01:26 - 30.018 Joe, I need this guy he knew would call up, have that system manager,

01:26 - 34.422 have that truck or individual or whatever I needed was there.

01:26 - 36.658 That's how cooperation was there.

01:26 - 38.860 There's another one.

01:26 - 40.461 Marion Novak, you mentioned him.

01:26 - 42.530 Marion Novak was a state manager.

01:26 - 43.798 He was like that.

01:26 - 47.402 He was in charge of the state of Pennsylvania, Maryland, for the.

01:26 - 48.903 Yeah, he was for

01:26 - 53.675 he would be more of a pulley for Penn State or Pennsylvania State University.

01:26 - 56.044 Yeah. And James Peters.

01:26 - 00.081 Jim Peters was a chief engineer for Vertical Corporation in Scranton,

01:27 - 02.517 Pennsylvania. Don Rinehart.

01:27 - 05.653 Don Rinehart was is

01:27 - 09.691 CEO actually chairman, the board of Right Blue

01:27 - 13.728 Ridge Cable, Penn Course Services, were they, you know, on the ground?

01:27 - 14.862 Yeah, they were on the ground floor.

01:27 - 17.966 They were one of the they were initial contributors.

01:27 - 20.668 Yeah. They were big supporters of the cause.

01:27 - 22.437 Still are. Yeah. Yeah.

01:27 - 26.374 And Milt Schmidt, your Schmidt was the treasurer.

01:27 - 28.710 He worked for Dawn Rinehart for Blue Ridge Cable,

01:27 - 33.047 Bob Charlton we haven't talked about Bob Charlton.

01:27 - 35.850 No, we built the first cable system.

01:27 - 39.320 Yeah, well we can't say that,

01:27 - 42.690 but Bob Charlton, Bob

01:27 - 47.962 Charlton, John Walton, all which were vying for the first cable up

01:27 - 52.033 through cable system, operational cable system.

01:27 - 55.103 And in the United States, Bob Charlton was

01:27 - 58.439 had a system of Marysville outside of Pittsburgh.

01:27 - 01.109 He was one of the leaders, the industry.

01:28 - 04.779 He's one of the very, very was the one the first one with Lansford,

01:28 - 09.150 Bob built Lansford, Pennsylvania, same thing.

01:28 - 11.953 Put an antenna on the mountain and ran cables into the valley.

01:28 - 15.623 Bob. Bob was a true gentleman of cable.

01:28 - 19.994 He was one of the first firemen, very friendly, you know, one of the first

01:28 - 24.332 the Marty Malarkey, all the old names.

01:28 - 28.469 The first cable association meeting was held at the Nickel Island

01:28 - 30.371 Hotel in Plainfield.

01:28 - 32.707 I'll give you a I'll give you a original picture.

01:28 - 33.908 I have two of them.

01:28 - 37.545 I just received one from my mom and dad's house, so I'll give you one.

01:28 - 40.081 It is the original minister for real.

01:28 - 41.983 True thing. It's not a copy.

01:28 - 43.451 You might even have it.

01:28 - 45.219 I have seen copies of it.

01:28 - 47.822 Yeah, well this is a that's the for the National Association.

01:28 - 50.325 Their first meeting was right in Pottsville.

01:28 - 52.827 Bob Charlton I believe was one of the first

01:28 - 55.963 if you ask the first president of Pennsylvania Cable Association to

01:28 - 59.100 talk was on our board.

01:28 - 01.302 And then the other name is Jim Tedesco.

01:29 - 03.404 Jim Tedesco with some very odd corporation.

01:29 - 08.943 And very early on he was one of the founding founders of Pax.

01:29 - 13.481 He's one of the.

01:29 - 18.920 So looking back on it, what went right and what went wrong?

01:29 - 21.689 Nothing went wrong.

01:29 - 23.691 Well, no.

01:29 - 26.060 Let me take a first shot at.

01:29 - 28.062 Nothing really went wrong.

01:29 - 31.933 We were too innovative, too futuristic,

01:29 - 37.105 too much in advance for what was then education thought.

01:29 - 41.309 Okay, educators believe in I corral

01:29 - 44.112 my students and put them in one room and they listen to me.

01:29 - 46.581 They never had the concept.

01:29 - 50.551 I can talk to everybody in this state and that scared them.

01:29 - 52.253 And that's that's what went wrong.

01:29 - 56.791 So you think, for example, a proposal we made to reconnect,

01:29 - 00.661 interconnect, interconnect, all those things turned down?

01:30 - 03.064 Oh, she was turned down by the schoolteachers.

01:30 - 05.867 That was that was a mistake.

01:30 - 09.771 If that was 40 years ago, I a

01:30 - 15.610 but if they'd accepted the difference that that would have made,

01:30 - 20.615 surely it would have made who we were trying to come up with new ideas

01:30 - 23.985 now to bring it back to where it was but not going.

01:30 - 28.289 Could have said I often think they would have accepted that.

01:30 - 30.992 I don't know what we'd have been doing.

01:30 - 31.626 We've been on

01:30 - 35.430 we thought they were the teachers or the professors felt threatened

01:30 - 40.034 because if you were a math teacher teaching math one on one, you could have

01:30 - 45.506 what math teacher that could teach of 14 or 13 of those campuses were.

01:30 - 46.741 If they weren't interconnected.

01:30 - 50.178 You're going to have 13 or 14 professors at each one of those campuses.

01:30 - 54.215 We were reading between the lines, but

01:30 - 56.150 we really we had that sense.

01:30 - 59.587 You know, we had a sense of opposition

01:30 - 00.188 in them.

01:31 - 02.890 In some cases, no, they were accepted as the library.

01:31 - 06.294 People like this, there there were good and bad, you know.

01:31 - 10.698 But on the other hand, too, we wish we switched

01:31 - 15.036 from educational to what you're doing now.

01:31 - 19.974 And I think it probably in retrospect,

01:31 - 24.479 it's not a bad idea what we're doing now compared to education.

01:31 - 25.179 Well, it has more

01:31 - 27.448 appeals to more people.

01:31 - 28.349 Certainly the.

01:31 - 32.820 Yeah, you know what you're doing now as opposed to I think are or

01:31 - 35.790 certainly high school students.

01:31 - 38.926 I mean that's like for high school students,

01:31 - 42.029 that was a big thing in my mind, I think,

01:31 - 46.534 because those kids never get recognized and they were recognized.

01:31 - 49.036 So I think it's a good idea.

01:31 - 51.339 I mean, it's a good change.

01:31 - 54.041 We've we can go in for an hour and a half so we could wrap this up

01:31 - 57.011 any other any other stories you want to tell.

01:31 - 01.682 Well, there's a lot I mean, I know we're not far as I'm sure we can tell you

01:32 - 05.286 and anything you do cable.

01:32 - 07.822 You know, the history of cable is so

01:32 - 12.193 like I said, early, we went from dark to bright

01:32 - 16.197 and we went from dark to bright to futuristic.

01:32 - 20.001 Uh, not that what we built in.

01:32 - 23.070 Not that what we envisioned didn't work.

01:32 - 23.971 It did.

01:32 - 24.338 Yeah.

01:32 - 29.877 I think the concept, you know, the acceptance was, was probably the worst.

01:32 - 32.613 You know, it was it stepped back and

01:32 - 35.283 we didn't present it.

01:32 - 37.518 I don't think we presented it properly.

01:32 - 40.254 Well, in fact I agree

01:32 - 43.357 with what you're saying is

01:32 - 45.893 I often think of

01:32 - 49.263 what would happen if we just stayed to cable television and that

01:32 - 52.934 there wouldn't be anything more to do.

01:32 - 55.870 So we switched to get broader

01:32 - 58.172 and broader and broader and Internet and

01:32 - 02.643 all the other things we're doing now.

01:33 - 06.581 Sometimes I wonder how far we're going to go.

01:33 - 09.183 Where is it going to stop?

01:33 - 11.786 It doesn't look like it's going to stop any place.

01:33 - 15.623 It just keeps going, well, I'm not so sure that's

01:33 - 17.925 the way to go.

01:33 - 23.631 I just say to myself, you know, you've been successful.

01:33 - 26.801 Just accept that success, keep it what it is.

01:33 - 27.969 There's

01:33 - 32.740 too many things happening for to change.

01:33 - 33.207 Yeah. My

01:33 - 36.644 Yolanda one time told me, said, you know what?

01:33 - 39.947 In the infancy that the cable owners are operators.

01:33 - 44.552 They were climbing poles, you know, when the industry first started.

01:33 - 48.689 And then as the thing grew and the industry matured, she said that

01:33 - 52.927 the MBA types came in and kind of, you know, kind of took

01:33 - 55.930 and that's a natural progression of a business or industry.

01:33 - 00.034 But probably if you took the president of the big cable operators

01:34 - 03.037 and told them the climb that pull and install an amplifier,

01:34 - 06.273 I'm not so sure they think they might not even know what it is.

01:34 - 07.642 Yeah.

01:34 - 11.512 Then they wouldn't know how to make a tab for example.

01:34 - 12.013 Right.

01:34 - 15.883 I thought that a bad thing, but it's just a few things.

01:34 - 17.018 It's not that important.

01:34 - 19.987 It's how far, that's how far we grew as an industry.

01:34 - 23.924 We became from an infancy to what it is now is huge.

01:34 - 26.427 I see cable operator,

01:34 - 30.965 you know, an older cable operator and you know, guy that around

01:34 - 35.403 and you go to these meetings are people they don't have any concept

01:34 - 39.240 a technician today can take his iPhone and adjust audio

01:34 - 43.010 levels and adjust video levels and and change channel maps.

01:34 - 45.012 It's just it's what it is, you know?

01:34 - 46.714 And I think it's great.

01:34 - 49.383 I think it's you know, it's not going to stop there. No.

01:34 - 52.553 But what this was originally designed to do,

01:34 - 55.122 it would have done and it could have done it very well.

01:34 - 58.993 We can't you talk about

01:34 - 01.796 writing regulations or we didn't have any regulations.

01:35 - 05.066 And do we need to we needed them.

01:35 - 10.271 We needed to not only protect ourselves, but needed a fence and a direction.

01:35 - 12.573 Everything is gray

01:35 - 15.743 until somebody says, Oh, I don't want you to do this, or we need to change.

01:35 - 20.281 You know, now we start putting things in place and this is where this is.

01:35 - 24.351 The exciting part was when we designed this and we built it well.

01:35 - 28.189 To go back to what he said earlier about the car

01:35 - 31.392 driving itself, think of the changes that are going to take place.

01:35 - 36.564 Once that happens, the laws are going to change the different rules.

01:35 - 37.431 And so

01:35 - 40.634 change just happens.

01:35 - 43.904 Speaking of climbing poles, you told the story last night

01:35 - 48.509 about Blairsville, about the Blairsville intent when you went up the tower

01:35 - 52.680 and you said it was like linguine.

01:35 - 54.181 Oh, yeah.

01:35 - 57.852 Well, we had to use the tower.

01:35 - 00.354 We had. Yeah. This true story.

01:36 - 01.789 We're very

01:36 - 05.159 Blairsville is a key point into Pittsburgh.

01:36 - 07.595 Yeah. I'm not Washington. Pittsburgh.

01:36 - 10.531 This could be signals to multiple cable operators.

01:36 - 13.801 The system was owned by Adelphia Corporation.

01:36 - 16.537 So we have the equipment and the antennas.

01:36 - 19.140 We have it all loaded up on a on a flatbed and a truck.

01:36 - 22.409 We come up with our with our crew, myself and like four or five other guys.

01:36 - 25.713 We go up there, I climb up the tower,

01:36 - 29.450 put a block on with the rope, get everything work, and I'm looking down.

01:36 - 32.653 This tower was substantially smaller than than

01:36 - 36.624 what was told that we had the okay, this could be a problem

01:36 - 41.762 so we're getting ready to had we redesign the antenna mounts we we fabricate

01:36 - 44.698 we didn't fabricate them right there but we modified them to accept it.

01:36 - 47.968 So I'm about 100 feet on this tower.

01:36 - 49.470 I'm getting ready to lift this.

01:36 - 51.172 And I could see the tower

01:36 - 54.508 twisting who's talking, you know, and I was getting the load

01:36 - 58.679 starting to come up and I looked at, I said, I'm going to work, put it back down.

01:36 - 03.350 Now, we're all brokenhearted because this is this is this point right there.

01:37 - 07.321 Blairsville And it's the key to the whole Pittsburgh area.

01:37 - 11.792 So Jim, Jim and I, we get the flow.

01:37 - 15.930 The guys are loaded, intended back onto the truck or taken equipment down.

01:37 - 21.101 And we're like, we've got a problem in a lot like the one we've ever faced before.

01:37 - 25.573 But this is significant because we're we're at the end of the game.

01:37 - 29.410 We have a tower we can't use, so we go off on top of the hill.

01:37 - 31.512 And I had a telephone in a briefcase

01:37 - 35.749 that you get ready to call my dad, tell him we're,

01:37 - 39.186 you know, we've got a big problem and look aggressive.

01:37 - 40.721 Jim owns this.

01:37 - 42.022 Who do you think owns this property?

01:37 - 44.792 There's an old fire base there.

01:37 - 49.129 And, uh, Jim, I think I can get that property through.

01:37 - 52.333 That goes by phone.

01:37 - 53.334 Yeah, by phone.

01:37 - 57.271 I can't remember exactly the details, but it was private property that we needed.

01:37 - 00.374 We had had to get a self support tower.

01:38 - 04.111 Well, this guy was Jim said he knew who we can get the property

01:38 - 06.847 for the next call with.

01:38 - 10.818 They came for him or the tower and the guy said what.

01:38 - 13.754 I said I want a tower and I want it in three days.

01:38 - 15.990 This is no bill.

01:38 - 18.359 This is no bullshit story in three days.

01:38 - 21.929 Dave Grazier standing there, I said Yeah, powerful.

01:38 - 22.363 Yeah.

01:38 - 25.666 He said, they know what you want, you want power in the building.

01:38 - 29.470 I said The building was on custom metal products.

01:38 - 32.873 I called the Cramer up, I them how to equip the building.

01:38 - 34.608 They want the building.

01:38 - 37.845 And four days and nine days

01:38 - 43.183 after we stayed on top of that hill, not only was the tower up in

01:38 - 45.185 the microwave, was in operation in nine days.

01:38 - 49.990 Wow, I'm not even on it

01:38 - 51.558 now. Having a concrete

01:38 - 53.694 excavated for it and all this stuff.

01:38 - 57.164 Put in a tower, put up there, putting it, putting the last pieces of the tower on.

01:38 - 00.567 We had the building deliver

01:39 - 02.870 ten electricity in the power up.

01:39 - 03.938 Now it's going up the tower.

01:39 - 08.509 Put the antenna on and you said it had to be self-supporting.

01:39 - 12.179 Our guy was how do you decide whether it gets guy

01:39 - 15.316 wires or not and what's the problem?

01:39 - 17.284 Besides, it was no place to put guy was

01:39 - 19.219 we had to get oh it's better to have guy wires

01:39 - 22.523 the property was a lot more expensive to get the self-supporting know

01:39 - 25.926 it was might you be limited to land

01:39 - 29.396 access you have an acre you might have.

01:39 - 31.565 That's all we have. It's 50 by 50 foot.

01:39 - 35.402 We had a 50 by 50 foot piece because that was where the fire tower was.

01:39 - 36.403 Fire Tower

01:39 - 39.707 was a Department of Forestry and water.

01:39 - 41.542 You know, I can't remember.

01:39 - 43.711 I knew I knew him, but I couldn't remember.

01:39 - 47.514 He he called his friend up in Harrisburg and the guy has checked in and records.

01:39 - 49.817 Yeah, we still own it. Well, not anymore.

01:39 - 52.786 Was that location from the, uh,

01:39 - 56.323 the cable had in, oh, 500, 600 feet.

01:39 - 58.959 Wasn't that far then. Is up the hill bore.

01:39 - 00.995 So there's actually a better location.

01:40 - 02.229 Better location.

01:40 - 05.666 We did better, but, but of course then they rebuilt and did

01:40 - 07.634 get it out of there

01:40 - 10.604 to the we.

01:40 - 12.606 That was the fastest one I've ever seen.

01:40 - 15.442 So the Tower Company just had a tower lying around that they claim

01:40 - 19.513 they stole it from somebody they were selling it to.

01:40 - 22.116 It is loaded up on a truck and shipped it out to us.

01:40 - 26.253 They had a they had a tower was I don't know where it was going,

01:40 - 28.922 but Steve Bertoli has called me up and he told me all cases

01:40 - 31.025 and then they had a remake.

01:40 - 32.459 They had to make another tower.

01:40 - 36.030 Did the guys need

01:40 - 37.464 any other stories?

01:40 - 41.668 People ought to know?

01:40 - 43.470 You know, I don't know.

01:40 - 46.106 Okay. Well, we could we could wrap this up.

01:40 - 48.308 I think this has been great. This has been fascinating.

01:40 - 50.344 It's great to. Get this down.

01:40 - 51.612 Well, all this record,

01:40 - 54.782 all this construction and all the design work and everything,

01:40 - 57.451 panorama

01:40 - 00.320 programing evolved too,

01:41 - 02.389 on a day to day, week to week basis.

01:41 - 03.657 Oh yeah.

01:41 - 06.493 So we would we would our board increased

01:41 - 09.596 from a operation.

01:41 - 13.534 I call these this board the beginning, the people behind us.

01:41 - 16.270 Yeah. We increased then we had

01:41 - 18.005 somewhat

01:41 - 21.008 of a consulting board where I quit Walters

01:41 - 24.978 and Service Electric and they were talking about what type of program we had.

01:41 - 29.249 Yeah, it was very, it was board to review what we were doing.

01:41 - 31.385 And, and

01:41 - 34.988 so you wanted to get involved in that kind of stuff.

01:41 - 39.359 Scott was Also heavily involved when it came on the financing side.

01:41 - 42.796 Now we have a viable network banking big game.

01:41 - 46.867 You know, guys, we're working with different kinds of banks and budgets

01:41 - 49.803 and oh yeah, we started like so

01:41 - 53.440 my famous, my famous last terms were budgets.

01:41 - 57.578 I mean, I never had a budget to, you know, how to offer with one parent.

01:41 - 59.213 I couldn't tell you what we needed.

01:41 - 03.016 Remember, I could just we need this, we got it.

01:42 - 05.752 And then we got more formal in business.

01:42 - 09.022 We went from the, let's say, the fun part of building

01:42 - 12.159 to do the more mundane part about running.

01:42 - 14.261 Do you remember when you started talking about

01:42 - 17.030 building

01:42 - 19.800 your own building and doing your own programing

01:42 - 24.838 and hiring a staff and production?

01:42 - 27.374 Well, first that first we had we had

01:42 - 30.511 doing your own programing and just relying on

01:42 - 34.081 we had to move us from where we were that

01:42 - 37.518 the building was going.

01:42 - 42.789 It had been a barn at one time and then

01:42 - 47.127 who had bought a piece of property

01:42 - 50.364 and we started looking for another piece of property.

01:42 - 54.301 We had a piece of

01:42 - 57.070 where the ability is now and

01:42 - 58.739 they said,

01:42 - 02.276 do use that for the building and go ahead.

01:43 - 04.745 We had we had to make a move.

01:43 - 07.814 So didn't want to go out of town.

01:43 - 09.917 It wouldn't stay in town.

01:43 - 12.653 This is Meadville mess, right. Tell us that.

01:43 - 15.489 So that's what we decided

01:43 - 17.724 to architect and see what they could put up there.

01:43 - 20.527 That's. That's why we did that.

01:43 - 21.795 That was almost a month

01:43 - 26.166 old. But I can't remember when

01:43 - 27.134 what it did.

01:43 - 30.370 Did Penn State dropped the ball on the program or when to

01:43 - 33.307 when was a decision made to go more of a public affairs type?

01:43 - 35.042 What happened? I can't remember.

01:43 - 38.412 Or I might have been out of the picture, but Pennsylvania was one

01:43 - 41.481 it was one of their turns down.

01:43 - 44.084 Okay, that interconnect. Right.

01:43 - 47.588 What happens if I think they're going to stop this?

01:43 - 50.657 Why should we continue to go with education?

01:43 - 51.825 Okay.

01:43 - 54.328 Yeah, it's coming back to me because that was you were still there

01:43 - 58.665 because you were still working for the bar when I came on, which was 94

01:43 - 03.537 and they had already started doing original programing a year before that.

01:44 - 06.573 So it must have been well then the YMCA.

01:44 - 09.243 Well, that's the building.

01:44 - 10.744 What happened?

01:44 - 14.414 Pennsylvania was chosen as the home of the Cable

01:44 - 16.516 Foundation Museum.

01:44 - 18.719 Okay.

01:44 - 22.623 What happened was cable operators and my mom and dad

01:44 - 26.159 and George and but that was that was it Penn State.

01:44 - 26.627 Right.

01:44 - 28.228 They were going to have Penn State

01:44 - 32.833 going to be the home of the National Cable Television Museum, Denver.

01:44 - 38.605 We said a seed up on in Penn State, money was put an endowment.

01:44 - 41.842 A lot of money was put in millions of dollars to put it into Penn State.

01:44 - 45.345 They hired a director of communication from England

01:44 - 52.619 and he put all the money into the paper.

01:44 - 54.621 He figured it into the term,

01:44 - 58.525 nothing into television, nothing into television for broadcasting.

01:44 - 00.060 It was all

01:45 - 02.963 journalism or print journalism.

01:45 - 03.797 Okay.

01:45 - 07.534 And that was not taken very well by the cable leaders.

01:45 - 11.071 Not too many months after

01:45 - 13.540 we had a meeting, state college and

01:45 - 15.909 wife.

01:45 - 18.745 What was his name? English. That English guy.

01:45 - 20.147 I can't remember his name.

01:45 - 22.649 They said, No, we're not going to do anything for communications.

01:45 - 24.051 We're not going to teach anything.

01:45 - 26.286 It's all about journalism school of journalism.

01:45 - 29.256 Well, that didn't go very well with cable.

01:45 - 32.159 I didn't know that guy. Yeah, you knew him?

01:45 - 33.927 I met him. He just.

01:45 - 37.631 He was very stubborn and very staunch, known to George.

01:45 - 41.535 We all had meetings, and he decided to move the museum to Denver.

01:45 - 45.405 And Bob Magnus was he had endowed

01:45 - 48.608 the University of Colorado in Denver.

01:45 - 51.645 And that's when the museum when when that happened,

01:45 - 56.850 that's when Panorama became no longer affiliate for educational programing.

01:45 - 59.019 And that's when you moved.

01:45 - 01.088 And that's when we started developing our own programing.

01:46 - 03.390 You came on board not too many.

01:46 - 06.860 Not too long after that, it was well, I was going for about a year

01:46 - 07.961 before I started.

01:46 - 12.899 And so you must have been around when the business plans were put in place

01:46 - 15.669 to borrow the money to buy the equity because I'm a real on the know

01:46 - 19.473 we went down visited with satellite with Brian LAMB brand

01:46 - 22.509 and you might have been were you with Brian at that time?

01:46 - 24.511 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember going down.

01:46 - 28.615 We met with him and at that time we were, you know, the concept was kind of a

01:46 - 30.684 Pennsylvania C span

01:46 - 35.055 was the model, so to speak.

01:46 - 37.524 And in fact

01:46 - 41.395 one reason was to build a new building was for the studio.

01:46 - 42.662 Mm. Yeah.

01:46 - 45.132 What we were doing, was not

01:46 - 47.601 the YMCA attempt.

01:46 - 50.303 Somebody was on the diving board

01:46 - 54.107 television. Yes.

01:46 - 58.145 But George had in mind we're going to have our own studio

01:47 - 01.915 and we did, you know,

01:47 - 05.218 the concept of the bi directional microwave network

01:47 - 10.490 was still in play with quality, not quality, but the the content of it.

01:47 - 12.125 Now it's going to change.

01:47 - 14.194 We no longer utilize Penn State.

01:47 - 18.331 Matter of fact, we shut down center point and we moved to,

01:47 - 21.535 uh, we moved down into Harrisburg.

01:47 - 24.671 We had to put a link in and that's when they started.

01:47 - 27.541 We started making programing changes.

01:47 - 32.913 Brian LAMB We met with Brian LAMB at State College and he said

01:47 - 36.216 it would be very difficult for for Tex to evolve

01:47 - 38.618 into what with C-SPAN is.

01:47 - 43.123 And I think we proved him wrong in that sense because it's very successful.

01:47 - 45.792 Well, he's he came to us.

01:47 - 48.528 Yeah, well he suggested to move the operations

01:47 - 51.565 to here closer to the to the center to the Capitol.

01:47 - 53.600 Right. You know, to get people.

01:47 - 54.801 Brian LAMB suggested.

01:47 - 59.039 Yeah, well, to get people to run up, you know, politicians run to Harrisburg

01:47 - 01.775 State College and, you know, limit yourself

01:48 - 05.178 also became very difficult to find a place

01:48 - 09.349 to connect them to our microwave unit.

01:48 - 13.420 Yeah that was a we finally we were ready to give up.

01:48 - 16.723 You're ready to give up every place.

01:48 - 21.161 It was a little every place we went wouldn't work.

01:48 - 23.630 We didn't have path. Microwave path.

01:48 - 26.233 Lamb's Gap was a saving grace right there.

01:48 - 26.833 Yeah.

01:48 - 32.172 And then the, the piece that we got was kind of accidental.

01:48 - 35.709 We parked there to do some work,

01:48 - 38.812 so I said, Well, we're parked here.

01:48 - 40.780 Let's run a check

01:48 - 42.682 the antenna.

01:48 - 44.117 And it worked.

01:48 - 47.153 And we still have a dish on that tower now.

01:48 - 47.721 Yeah.

01:48 - 52.726 And I walked in that building and tell you, but breaks for luck.

01:48 - 56.096 Who walked into the building and

01:48 - 00.100 the side door and the the desk?

01:49 - 04.237 I said, I'm not trying to take over here, but I'd like to buy this building.

01:49 - 09.876 This is what's happened for sale.

01:49 - 13.380 Three 333 Markets Street was the point that

01:49 - 16.049 whatever video

01:49 - 17.050 systems that

01:49 - 20.921 the state capital had at the time, that was their operational key point

01:49 - 24.691 333 Market Street and we had to get in and out of there.

01:49 - 27.494 You know, Sammons, who sold

01:49 - 31.698 it, was sold twice in between.

01:49 - 35.302 There's a lot of good a lot of change in, you know, cable grew

01:49 - 39.839 and so did a little piece in, you know, intensively cable network.

01:49 - 46.680 But it came we separated ways when the museum moved and there was some

01:49 - 49.916 there was a fallout between Penn State and cable.

01:49 - 51.685 Yeah.

01:49 - 54.220 What happened there, Scott?

01:49 - 57.891 Were you involved in going to the banks and getting them lend money for this?

01:49 - 01.561 I would do projections and that sort of thing.

01:50 - 04.531 My last assignment there was, uh,

01:50 - 08.234 negotiated the contract for the transponder on the satellite.

01:50 - 10.337 That was the last.

01:50 - 13.440 So that was probably 94, 95.

01:50 - 14.641 I think

01:50 - 16.309 that was probably the last thing I did there

01:50 - 19.679 the company didn't have much money at the time you no like none

01:50 - 24.918 of I can't remember what it was

01:50 - 25.151 you know.

01:50 - 28.888 So I had to learn all about transponders and how all that or the,

01:50 - 32.759 you know, beam it up, catch it and turn around and be well.

01:50 - 38.798 But that what that did is opened up systems were in the microwave.

01:50 - 40.934 We would have to build a tower or two to get there.

01:50 - 42.669 Now all of a sudden were there

01:50 - 45.839 simply by that was the big advantage of the satellite

01:50 - 49.175 was a medium Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh airport

01:50 - 54.481 and there was a discussion on whether we should continue with land

01:50 - 59.586 based microwave and terrestrial microwave or go to a satellite geostationary orbit

01:51 - 03.657 and I said exactly what I mean.

01:51 - 06.026 The best thing to do, I say, if we're not going to use this,

01:51 - 08.995 we buy directional communications and teleporting, you know,

01:51 - 10.897 digital information.

01:51 - 13.767 We go to satellite and we did

01:51 - 14.868 that.

01:51 - 16.636 We're back to what we were.

01:51 - 19.305 We started this delivery network

01:51 - 20.640 because it wasn't being used.

01:51 - 24.077 Why should we maintain it inadequate with the satellite kind of old

01:51 - 26.880 at that time and it needed more maintenance needed.

01:51 - 30.316 The microwave stuff was starting to go

01:51 - 31.885 but it it

01:51 - 36.956 again, it was a vision ahead of its time and then not reality,

01:51 - 41.695 but practicality stepped in and stated that, okay, we could hit more

01:51 - 45.031 or deliver more quality programing to more subscribers,

01:51 - 49.002 use the satellite technology and now we're about to evolve.

01:51 - 53.707 If you'd to go the other way and go back to fire, which is should happen.

01:51 - 55.508 You know, it will happen

01:51 - 59.546 then look at the changes fiber made to

01:52 - 05.085 and that's that's that's been the history of the whole industry.

01:52 - 07.620 It's just you know, you get

01:52 - 12.058 settled down there was a change so the start over again, it's

01:52 - 15.328 like three channels, five channels,

01:52 - 18.331 12 channels, 21 channels.

01:52 - 21.234 That's how it grew that it was for everything.

01:52 - 25.705 Know you get so many that's a good way to change every

01:52 - 55.168 one of those times.