Local broadcasters speak at the Topeka Downtown Rotary Club
The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least in the Topeka television broadcasting market anyway.
“If my predecessors would have gotten up and given this presentation in 1971, they would have said there was one license for public television and there was WIBW and one other television station in Topeka,” said Jim Ogle, General Manager of WIBW television in Topeka. “Guess what, it’s back to the future. We are returning as a television market to basically where we were in 1971.”
What Ogle was referring to was the announcements that KSNT in Topeka, which operates the local Fox affiliate, is also planning to operate the ABC affiliate in Topeka, KTKA.
Ogle and KTWU General Manager Eugene Williams were speakers at the weekly meeting of the Topeka Downtown Rotary Club today and both talked about their respective stations, one a public broadcasting company (KTWU) and the other a commercial broadcasting company (WIBW).
“Public broadcasting is a little bit different than broadcast television,” said KTWU’s Eugene Williams with respect to how the station is funded. “Of course one over our largest sources of funds is viewers like you.”
About sixty five percent of the funds that support KTWU’s programming comes from individual and corporate donations.
Both Williams and Ogle suggested that the internet has changed their mission from being just a television station to a content provider.
“We were very aggressive first adopters of social media,” Ogle said. “You have to be able to deliver the content people want in the way the want to receive it.”