Interviewee: Dr. J. Wayne Reitz


B: This is an interview with Dr. J. Wayne Reitz on WUFT history. Dr. Reitz, could you
please give us your recollection on the beginnings of Channel 5, WUFT?

R: May I ask you first of all, what was the year it started broadcasting?

B: 1957.

R: O.K. When I became president on April 1, 1955, it was not long thereafter when John
Allen, who was the executive vice president, mentioned that we should start thinking about
a T.V. station for the university. I told him that I thought it was a good idea and for him to
pursue it. This he did very effectively and very diligently. First we looked for a location,
which we decided would be in the stadium, as a part of the journalism school. Then, of
course, the problem was to get the license and the funding. I do not remember the details,
but John, as I recall, did a very effective job in bringing it to fruition. Our first broadcast was
in 1957.

B: It appears that at the beginning, both under your administration and Dr. Miller's, the
university did not seem to be making an all-out effort to obtain Channel 5 and put the
station on the air.

R: Well, this I do not recollect. I do not know about Dr. Miller's administration at all, but I
know John Allen brought it up and I said, let's move. Maybe we did not move as fast as
some people thought we should, I do not know. But if we did not, it was probably because
of the necessary funding or the possibility of getting a channel assigned and a permit in a
expeditious fashion.

B: When Channel 5 went on the air, programming plans included college-level credit
courses broadcast on WUFT. What changed that original concept, do you have any idea?

R: I think it was just a plain case of demand and the lack of interest on the part of the
professorial staff and perhaps students. At the time we started broadcasting, there was a
great national movement afoot thinking that educational television was just going to be the
solution to the shortage of university professors. The Ford Foundation, for example, set up
that national T.V. broadcasting unit out of Purdue University that covered all of the Midwest.
They were giving courses by television. Our own John Baxter in chemistry here was
chosen and financed by the Ford Foundation to develop a national beginning course in
chemistry, which he broadcasted every morning for a year. There was another person
nationally, I forget where he was, but chosen to do the same thing in a physics course. So
we had nationally running the chemistry course and the physics course. Many universities
set up methods whereby students could listen to them and take examinations and get