- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, support from Springhill Senior Living, the Regional Science Consortium, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

This is WQLN.

- I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day.

Without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet, or a rating book to distract you.

Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off.

I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons; and endlessly commercials, many screaming, cajoling, and offending; and most of all, boredom.

- Before WQLN, before PBS, before Newton Minow's speech to the giants of American broadcasting in 1961, special interests and corporations took advantage of the unregulated television airwaves to sell the American public on the latest fads and newest products.

This "vast wasteland" of programming was diametrically opposed to the morals of the post-war white suburban, middle class.

However, there were some who saw the potential of television as an educator.

- Dr. James Killian returned from Latin America to report on the vigorous use of science and technology to speed economic and social development.

Dr. Killian is serving at the request of President Johnson with the group of experts convened by the Presidents of the American States who met at Punta del Este in April.

Dr. Killian figured prominently in another milestone of progress early in November.

As chairman of the Carnegie Commission, he had proposed that the airwaves belong to the people.

A proposal that now becomes law with President Johnson's signature on the Public Broadcasting Act.

The Act establishes a new institution that will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting, who seek, through television, to enlighten their audience.

President Johnson applied America's... - When President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, he had some stipulations in there.

The idea would be that funding for public broadcasting would happen two years before a particular public TV station or public entity would be able to receive that money.

And the idea was, if you pledge money two years out, well, that's about the length of a term in Congress, and if there was some sort of like a, a moment in history that was shifting away from public broadcasting, it was protected for at least two years.

And so WQLN is really the most interesting of all broadcast stations because of the business model that WQLN exists under.

And part of our due diligence with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is that we have to demonstrate that we can raise money from our viewers and our listeners here in Erie.

- I think public media has a real role to play, always has and still does, by the way, a very important role to play.

And I think it- either covering, maybe, the things that commercial media doesn't.

The big difference is that we are not beholden to advertisers in the ways they are.

I mean, increasingly big media is owned by fewer people.

So you know, you have the Murdochs, you have other people like that, who are controlling bigger and bigger swaths of media.

So it's not as likely, maybe, that you're gonna see a diversity of opinion and maybe people talking against certain things.

And that's really coming to play right now, isn't it?

With the stuff going on with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the interest in the current administration in rescinding all of the funding for the corporation, which, of course, helps fund public media.

I think it's all a concern, and I think citizens, an informed citizenry, is pretty important.

- In 1953, there is one educational television station in the country, and that is on the University of Houston.

It's on their campus, broadcasting from there.

The next one that would come on the air, a few months later, was WQED in Pittsburgh.

They're the first private public broadcast station, but here in Erie, we had one TV station that was on the air, and that was WICU, and Erie, Pennsylvania is a very interesting part of the world, but it's a part of the world that goes unnoticed because we're not a big city.

- In 1953, the journey to educational television in Erie began.

- People have an affection for WQLN.

There was so much buy-in from people that we were going to, we were gonna get this educational television station.

This was a really important big deal about who was gonna be involved in that.

- A group of people got together, a partnership between the people that educate and all of the people addicted to watching television.

And they thought, you know what?

We can do better.

And so they did.

Our first board president was an attorney in town, Enoch Filer.

He brought together George Schaefer and another businessman, Maurice Kolpien.

But the board was completely overwhelmed by how much work it is to put a television station on the air and really didn't get their act together until the 1960s.

- By 1966, John English, the president of Educational Television of Northwest Pennsylvania and Bob Chitester, head of the Northwest Pennsylvania Broadcast Council, aligned their organizations to get the fledgling station on air.

Even though it had already reserved Channel 54, the organization had floundered for over a decade, but with renewed spirit from local PTA leaders like Ethel May DeMatteo and Elaine Richter, the wheels started turning.

The Federal Communications Commission finally approved the broadcast license and construction permit.

WQLN-TV broke ground in Summit Township on Erie's first non-commercial broadcasting station in 1967.

- John English was head of Educational Television of Erie, so he and I had several meetings.

I was head of the Northwest Pennsylvania Broadcast Council, but on one of those occasions when I met with him, he said, "Bob, we're really moving ahead now to start applying for a license, and it's time for us to start thinking about hiring somebody to run this."

I said, "That's a great idea, John, and certainly we've got to do that, but I, I want you to know I'm gonna be an applicant for that position."

His response was, "Oh, well if that's the case, Bob, you can have the job."

So, it was probably one of the shortest job interviews for a position as general manager, head of a, of a broadcast station, that one could have imagined.

- When we got the new call letters, WQLN, we had to come up with some sort of a meaning of what it meant and those early WQLN folks came up with "we question to learn."

- I had, had been a recent graduate of the University of Michigan.

University of Michigan produced programs for educational television on the air.

And I was a young father had children.

I was aware of things like Fred Rogers' program.

So, I would say that, clearly, my motivations were to help build a television facility in Erie that would be educational in, in character, but also that would be local in its focus.

And one of the things that characterized QLN was our obsession with doing as much production as we could and providing information to the general public that helps them act in a more responsive way as citizens.

Going beyond the arts, going beyond children's programmings, to being a place where one can become better informed.

- If you like it, play it.

- Despite not being part of the original mission of the station, many of WQLN's productions were, and are, radio shows.

91.3 FM found its niche playing jazz, classics, and other alternative genres among Erie's many top 40 stations.

The voices of local celebrity disc jockeys imprinted themselves on listeners young and old.

- I don't know how you catch the radio bug, but I can vouch that there are several, maybe, hundred kids of Erie that grew up listening to 1400 WJET, Frank Martin, the Morning Mayor in the morning.

- [Harmonizing] ♪ WJET, Frank Martin ♪ - I literally as a child, thought that Mayor Tullio handed him the reins from 6 to 10 and then took over when he came to City Hall.

- Not living far from there, when I was 13, I rode my bicycle down to Jet Radio Studios at 16th and Ash and I leaned my bicycle against the window, stood up on the seat, looked inside and there was the one and only Johnny Holiday in there playing music, in his shorts and a t-shirt, and I'm thinking, that's what I want to do.

[laughing] Ha ha ha ha!

- I first learned from news reports of the Watergate Break-in.

I was appalled at this senseless, illegal action.

- I decided that I wanted to get into journalism about the time Watergate hit, which is when everybody in my era decided they wanted to get into journalism, obviously.

- I think that what Bernstein and Woodward did is the high watermark for American journalism.

That is the standard.

So, whether it's local, regional, national, you follow the money.

- I originally thought I was gonna do newspaper work.

I thought I'd do print.

And I got into radio thinking, well, you know, I'll do this for a while and I'll either do television or I'll do newspaper because that, really, was kind of where things, at that point, were happening.

Now, it's hugely ironic to me that I'm ending my career where I started, which is in radio.

- Radio news was very competitive back in the late sixties and, and early seventies.

And so if there was an accident, if there was a fire, if they heard sirens, they knew where to, where to listen to get it and Jet Radio was always the, the dominant powerhouse in news.

When I got to WRIE, we started to challenge that, seriously, because we now had somebody on the street every day covering events, and when something was going on, they didn't run to the TV, they ran to the radio to turn it on.

- There were a lot of pretty influential guys running around, people who knew a lot.

Between WJET Radio, working with Myron Jones.

I worked at WRIE with Brady Lewis.

So, I've worked with a lot of really great people.

Erie, it played a big part of my career, was a huge part of my career.

I really would say that I learned everything I learned about media here.

- It's always about the people.

In fact, the best story writers are the ones who get it, that they let the people tell the story.

It's not about the reporter.

It's not about the anchor.

It's about the people.

- One time, I was going down to Florida to visit a friend and I had a car with just a radio 'cause I think that's all I had at that point.

And I was switching back and forth between stations and I picked up NPR and I started to listen to it and it was Noah Adams doing a piece about the guys who fly the airplanes at the beach with the banners.

So I started listening to this piece.

I'm like, oh, it's kinda interesting.

Pulled in a gas station, went in, got a snack, got water, whatever I got.

Came back out, sat in the car, the piece was still going on.

I'm like, this is crazy.

I just never heard anything like this.

I was just fascinated by it.

And after that is when I started to listen to NPR, and that's sort of what NPR's overarching credo is.

We're trying to give you things...

Yes, we're trying to give you the news, we're trying to tell you what's going on, but we're also trying to give you things you're not gonna get somewhere else.

- You're listening to the Sunday Night Jazz Party with Joe DiGiorgio at 91.3, serving Erie, Northwestern Pennsylvania, and the great tri-state.

- Sunday evening, January 7th, 1973, WQLN Radio signed on the air with a ceremony that began in the television studios of WQLN Channel 54, at exactly 6 o'clock, with Channel 54 viewers able to watch the proceedings.

The transmitter was turned on by engineer Robert Lindsay, under the watchful eye of Chief Engineer Don Hain and General Manager Bob Chitester.

Dave Roland, manager for the new radio station, was the first official voice to speak on WQLN Radio.

He read congratulatory letters from state and local representatives and other public stations in Pennsylvania.

Rob Hoff, host of New Music Now and Maiden Voyage, was one of the hosts on Contemporary Music from Mercyhurst.

- Erie is a jazz town.

I learned very early on from people like Joe DiGiorgio that Erie has a long history of interest in jazz.

Even New York City, there still are no commercial jazz stations and very few elsewhere.

If you want to hear jazz, you're gonna have to go to a non-commercial station because the mission is more artistic than it is monetary.

- Throughout WQLN's history, we've had volunteer hosts produce programs, they make all the programming decisions and whatever those decisions are, they make them and it goes from their imagination right to air.

And I always thought that that was the thing that made WQLN most special.

When I think of those monsters of the airwaves, Gary Finney, Aubrey Dillon, Al Lubiejewski, Joe DiGiorgio, and Rob Hoff has been on the air for 53 years.

I'll argue, and I think I'm right about this, that no one in Erie, Pennsylvania comes close to how long Rob has been on the air.

The only person that I think might come close to that would be Frank Martin and the Morning Mayor was on air in Erie for 42 years, - I think it's been a constant in WQLN'S programming, and its support for programming throughout the years, from 1973, day one, right through to now, and that is an openness to trust the jazz host, to do whatever they think is workable.

And basically, given that kind of license means that we are pretty much free to explore the music and the genres of the music that that we find most meaningful to us and hope that if it, if it works for us or it's gonna work for other people as well.

- It was a program schedule and continues to be a program schedule that just makes no sense.

- WQLN has a unique niche in what it offers to the community.

- There's just so much that this organization brings to our community, from the news in the morning, and of course, you know, those who are fans of classical music have nowhere else to turn.

Those who are interested in jazz have nowhere else to turn.

I love big band music, and so every Saturday night from 8 to 10 o'clock, I'm listening to Phil doing his show on, on WQLN and, and the kids who grew up watching all those programs on Channel 54.

My gosh.

My kids grew up watching all of those shows, and, and generations of kids.

- I absolutely did watch PBS growing up.

My favorite shows, Arthur, Clifford the Big Red Dog, all the good shows.

My whole childhood.

[Laughing] Hahaha!

- I was a kid who had to jump up off the couch and switch the channels for dad between 2, 4, and 7 over in Buffalo.

If I was lucky, if I was lucky, I got some Canadian channels, always PBS though, I mean, grew up on Sesame Street and, and everything that was PBS and the QLNs of the world here in Erie.

- My family all grew up on Dragon Tales and Wishbone.

Oh my gosh, we love Wishbone.

- I'm an original Electric Company kid.

When those came on the air, I was right in that age group.

- Yeah, I did watch PBS.

I watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

I watched Sesame Street.

I watched all those programs.

Because as a kid, you know, you either had cartoons or you had those shows.

- I think what the most important thing is, is with public media, is for the children, where we can actually educate them in a way that strengthens them, that makes them more emotionally cognizant.

Fred Rogers had it right.

- It's very important to me.

I care deeply about children.

- Okay - My first children's program was on WQED 15 years ago and its budget was $30.

All of the affiliated stations, each station pays to show our program.

It's a unique kind of funding in educational television.

I'm very much concerned, as I know you are, about what's being delivered to our children in this country.

This is what I give.

I give an expression of care every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique.

I end the program by saying, "You've made this day a special day by just your being you."

- I think it's wonderful.

I think it's wonderful.

Looks like you just earned the 20 million.

- The house will be in order.

For what purpose does the gentlewoman from Michigan, Ms. McClain, seek recognition?

- Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 499, I call up the bill HR 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025, and ask for its immediate consideration.

- I rise today in strong opposition to this reckless attack on public media contained within this rescission bill and the millions of Americans who rely on and treasure their local public television and radio stations.

Every state will feel the impact of this $1.1 billion recession.

These stations literally saves lives.

If there's an emergency in your town, chances are the local public media station is sounding the alarm and giving you the information you need to stay safe.

The purpose of public media is to inform, educate, engage.

It makes people's lives better.

This is about one thing.

The president's vendetta against the free press and his authoritarian desire to control the media.

Public media enriches our lives, nourishes our minds, and makes our communities safer.

It deserves to be preserved and protected, not gutted to score political points.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on this rescission and I... - The kind of freedom that this country is built on is being compromised.

And that's freedom of information.

The freedom to do what we do, the freedom that would be afforded to people in news and, uh, media.

I think we are in a, in a dark space right now, and I, I don't wanna be pessimistic about it 'cause I'm, I tend to be an optimistic person, but I am, I am pretty concerned.

I, the, the prospect of returning to pre-1967 levels when we didn't even have QLN-TV is a, is just alarming.

Are you serious?

No, no classics with Brian Hannah.

No Weekend Edition.

No Nova.

No Nature.

No Saturday Night at the Movies.

How could I live without Morning Edition, you know, All Things Considered, all of those great, you know, Performance Today.

I mean, I could go on.

The whole litany of great programming both on the TV side and the radio side.

So, to answer your question, yeah, I'm quite concerned.

- I, good question.

I mean, that's a great question, right?

How would Watergate played out in today's environment?

Much differently.

There are people on social media who do investigative work.

I don't know if they get quite the attention the Washington Post got, but they do do it.

The problem is you have to know who's doing it legitimately and who's not.

Who's really doing the work and who's just making things up or just shouting.

If everybody's gonna get their information from the web, that might not be ideal.

Things can be easily manipulated on the web.

There's no barrier to entry at all.

I can go out with this iPhone and shoot a whole made up story and put it on the web if I want to.

To some extent, corruption does tend to grow in environments under lack of scrutiny, right?

Lack of scrutiny can certainly help foster corruption.

I don't know.

How would Watergate play out now?

Um, very differently, I think, probably.

- You know, if you value the constitution of this country, we are being bombarded and that's a very slippery slope because once it's gone, it doesn't come back.

You need to stand up and fight for it.

If you believe in free speech, you need to fight for it.

If you believe in a free press, you need to fight for it.

If QLN doesn't do it, who's going to?

And once you lose that history, it's gone.

You know, once there's no longer a record, where are you gonna get it?

All right?

Is, is somebody else gonna write that story?

If they do, they're not gonna get it right.

How important is, is it for you to record the actual history?

It's very important that we know where we came from, how we got there, and where we're going, and how we're going to keep going.

Alright?

So when it's the news of the day, that becomes tomorrow's history.

There's a continuum.

It doesn't stop.

It never stops.

But if you lose the beginning, you have no place to start from.

- Yeah, I think it would be devastating to lose WQLN because again, they do things that no one else does, even though supposedly Congress says that, oh, you can get, you can get children's programming on Nickelodeon and you can get, you know, there's these, you know, million-viewer YouTube channels of somebody on a couch, you know, you know, doing crafts or something like that.

It's not the same at all.

I think we need to keep these strong and I think it's appropriate for there to be funding for public media.

And also I think it's gonna be appropriate for the public media establishment to have a fair conversation about representation from the ideology spectrum.

- As a community, we live in silos and inside of our silos, we can look at anything.

We can look at the food that you eat and be critical of that.

We can look at the media that you watch and listen to and be critical of that.

The webpages that you go to.

We can be critical of that.

But we're only critical from the boundaries of our own silo.

And that's where I think that we've fallen into a, a bit of a trap these days.

We've got all this wonderful gear and wonderful communication devices, but we're using it to construct pieces of duct tape that we put over ourselves - On this vote.

The yeas are 214, the nays are 212.

The bill is passed.

Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

- Now more than ever before in broadcasting's history, the times demand the best of all of us.

We need imagination in programming, not sterility.

Creativity, not imitation.

Experimentation, not conformity.

Excellence, not mediocrity.

We cannot permit television in its present form to be our voice overseas.

There is your challenge to leadership.

You must reexamine some fundamentals of your industry.

You must open your minds and open your hearts to the limitless horizons of tomorrow.

- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, support from Springhill Senior Living, the Regional Science Consortium, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

We questioned to learn.