A Kentucky TV treasure is threatened

This state doesn’t lead the nation in many aspects of education.

But Kentucky Educational Television has, over the past 40 years, been one of America’s most innovative and admired public TV systems.

KET produces more hours of programming and creates more instructional materials than almost anyone else.

“Around the country, everyone wants to grow up to be KET,” said Mac Wall, the executive director.

But that could change, if Kentucky isn’t careful.

State budget cuts have hit KET especially hard. About $2.4 million was sliced from KET’s appropriation for the coming year. Changes in state employee benefits have given many of KET’s veteran staff members little choice but to retire. About a fifth of KET’s 220 employees will be gone by December, including 10 who were laid off last week.

Among the biggest hits: Half of KET’s 12 program producers are leaving.

“These are really invaluable human assets that they are going to be losing,” said Leonard Press, KET’s founding executive director, who retired in 1992. “The loss of what they could have done for Kentucky will never be recovered. Time lost is tragic.”

It’s too early to say what all of this will mean to KET consumers in schools and living rooms across the state. Network executives are working on a plan that will be presented to the agency’s governing board in October.

State funding accounts for 52 percent of KET’s $25.5 million annual budget. The rest comes from fund-raising (17 percent), federal money (15 percent), grants and other revenue (16 percent).

“We will be helped a lot by new technology and what that will bring in terms of efficiencies,” said Shae Hopkins, KET’s deputy director. “But it still takes a producer to find a story and tell that story.”

What is happening at KET has set off alarms across the Public Broadcasting System.

“I’m deeply concerned about the impact these budget cuts may have,” said Paula Kerger, who has toured KET twice since becoming PBS’s president two years ago.

“If the long-term consequences of these cuts are not carefully considered, I worry they may diminish the impressive gains KET has made — especially in serving the state’s children. If further cuts are made, it would be a great loss not only to Kentucky, but also to public broadcasting as a whole.”

More than TV shows

I remember when KET first went on the air in September 1968. Cardinal Valley Elementary got several big black-and-white TVs on carts that teachers wheeled into class. If Mrs. Dawson timed our fourth-grade class just right — and if she could get the rabbit-ear antenna adjusted just so — we could watch a dowdy lady on KET’s one channel do science experiments.

Believe it or not, at the time, that was impressive.

Of course, that was years before Sesame Street helped teach my daughters to count and spell, Reading Rainbow fueled their love of books and Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect hooked me on British detective dramas.

Most Kentuckians know KET through those shows, and some of the 1,200 hours of original programming the staff creates each year: Kentucky Life, Comment on Kentucky, Kentucky Tonight, On to One, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the General Assembly and documentaries such as Where the River Bends: A History of Northern Kentucky.

KET has aggressively explored Kentucky’s history, celebrated its culture and created the kind of public affairs programs that commercial TV news has all but abandoned.

“Local production is the most expensive programming you can put on the air,” Wall said. “But it’s also the most important, the most relevant.”

What’s on your TV is only the beginning of KET.

In addition to the KET1 and KET2 channels, the network operates a channel just for schools and a new digital Kentucky Channel.

KET’s new EncycloMedia is a comprehensive online service with thousands of videos, photos, quizzes and lesson plans that Kentucky teachers can download and use. KET produces for-credit college courses, educational content for state prisoners and professional development materials for teachers.

KET developed study materials that have helped more than 1 million adults nationwide — including more than 20,000 in Kentucky — earn their high-school equivalency degrees. The staff will soon begin a $6 million project to update those materials to reflect changes being made in GED tests in 2012.

New Equipment

Ironically, KET’s loss of staff and experience comes as the network is installing millions of dollars worth of new digital equipment, bought with money appropriated by previous legislative sessions.

“We’re now able to do the things that Len Press envisioned 40 years ago, but the technology and the capacity didn’t exist then,” Wall said.

KET will have the equipment, but it will have a smaller staff with less experience left to use it.

Times are tight, and Kentucky leaders face difficult decisions about how to raise and spend taxpayers’ money.

Can this state still afford to maintain a first-class educational resource like KET?

It can’t afford not to.

Do you have Kentucky’s first newspaper?

As a small crowd looked on, the ceremonial reopening of the Lexington Public Library’s Kentucky Room ended Wednesday with two white- gloved librarians carefully placing in a glass display case a copy of Kentucky’s second-oldest newspaper: the Kentucke Gazette of Aug. 18, 1787.

So where’s a copy of Kentucky’s first newspaper — the Kentucke Gazette of Aug. 11, 1787? That’s a good question.

“I just have to think somebody, somewhere has one in their attic or an old trunk,” said Library director Kathleen Imhoff. “And I hope if somebody ever finds one, they’ll let us know.”

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Lexington was one of the major cities in what was then the West. Several local newspapers sprang up soon after John Bradford began publishing his then-weekly Gazette.

The library has a substantial collection of old Lexington newspapers, including the most complete archives of the Gazette. Except for that first issue.

One story holds that somebody, many years ago, was looking at the library’s copy of the first Gazette, let it get too close to a coal stove and — poof! But that may just be a story, said Jan Marshall, the library’s assistant manager in charge of the reference department.

No other copies of that first issue of the Gazette, which measured about 8 x 10 inches and probably contained four pages, are known to exist.

The Kentucky Room reopened Wednesday after an extensive renovation made necessary by a water leak that  flooded the library on Feb. 21, 2007. Of course, the room containing the library’s most precious books and manuscripts was the most heavily damaged. But quick, tireless work by the library staff enabled everything to be salvaged — even waterlogged books that had to be sent off to Chicago to be freeze-dried.

All it needs now is a copy of Kentucky’s first newspaper.

Who has America’s best-tasting water?

One of the old arguments against building a water pipeline from Louisville to Lexington now appears to be all wet. You know, the argument that went something like this: “We don’t want that nasty Ohio River water. You can’t even eat fish out of that river!”

The American Water Works Association, meeting this week in Atlanta, has declared that Louisville has the nation’s best-tasting water. The selection was made by a panel of judges that included a newspaper dining critic, a wine educator, a chemistry professor and the chair of the association’s “Taste and Color Committee.” Second place went to the Mal Paso Filtration Plant in Puerto Rico and third place went to Blythe, Ga.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson celebrated today by passing out free bottles of tap water to people at Waterfront Park, and he credited the win to the fine work done by the folks at the Louisville Water Co.

So here’s the question: Does Louisville’s water taste better because the water company is publicly owned? Or did the years of fighting over condemnation of Kentucky American Water Co. in Lexington just leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth?

Tiny road kill

Dead cicadas have replaced live tent caterpillars below the tires of my bicycle. That’s good for baby horses — and my ringing ears.

Idea Festival: Top thinkers converge on Kentucky

What if someone brought several dozen of the world’s smartest, most innovative people to Kentucky?

And what if you could spend three days listening to them talk about ideas that may change the world?

Sound unlikely? It’s not.

It has happened five times since 2000, and it will happen again Sept. 25-27, when the Idea Festival returns to downtown Louisville.

Scott Jones, the man who invented voicemail, will be there. So will J. Richard Gott, a Princeton University astrophysicist.

Richard Kogan, a psychiatrist and world-class concert pianist, will perform and lecture on the genius of Mozart. Immaculee Llibagiza, the international peace activist, will talk about what it was like to survive genocide in Rwanda.

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky will discuss her book The Physics of NASCAR, which examines how race cars can go so fast. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk-management expert and derivatives trader, will discuss his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, the top-selling non-fiction title of 2007. Will Shortz, the crossword editor of The New York Times, will talk about puzzles.

The European architect Emiliano Gandolfi will launch the Curry Stone Design Prize, a new $100,000 award for innovation in architecture, to be administered by the University of Kentucky’s College of Design.

Vova Galchenko, a world-champion juggler, will demonstrate his skill and discuss the thinking behind it. Amy Chua, who analyzes global politics and economics, will discuss the rise and fall of hyperpowers.

They are among more than 30 presenters recruited for this year’s festival, said founder Kris Kimel, president of the Lexington-based Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. Program details were announced Tuesday.

“They’re all either doing something or thinking about something that’s really cutting-edge,” Kimel said.

They’re also people who think about how ideas cut across all areas of life, and they are good communicators to a general audience.

The big idea behind the Idea Festival is this: In today’s global economy, ideas and innovation are the keys to business success and making the world a better place. If you can bring together a diverse group of innovative thinkers from a variety of disciplines to discuss their ideas, it will stimulate more creative thinking by everyone else.

The Idea Festival started in Lexington in 2000, and it was held again in 2002 and 2004. Organizers wanted to make it a bigger, annual event. In 2006, they moved the festival to Louisville, where there was more access to corporate sponsors and large presentation venues.

The festival costs about $850,000 in cash and $350,00 in in-kind contributions to put on, Kimel said. A big group of sponsors — including Best Buy’s Geek Squad and the universities of Kentucky and Louisville — help keep ticket prices low.

“Business executives pay $3,000 to $6,000 to attend these types of events elsewhere, but we wanted to make it accessible to the public, to all ages, at a reasonable price,” said Kimel, whose private, non-profit corporation works to advance science, technology and innovative economic development in Kentucky.

Last year, about 7,000 people bought more than 12,500 tickets to Idea Festival events. At least 200 of those attending were school children, who can participate in a special program.

After five festivals, Kimel said, the event has gained an international reputation. The 120 or so presenters since 2000 have ranged from Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak to Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer.

Perhaps best of all, the Idea Festival has helped create positive buzz for Kentucky.

“We’ve always been known for a lot of things; innovation hasn’t been one of them — but now it is,” Kimel said. “Many of the presenters we bring in have never been to Kentucky before. They leave with the impression that innovation is valued here.”

---

Idea Festival

What: More than 30 top thinkers from around the world discuss cutting-edge ideas in science, business, the arts and other fields

When: Sept. 25-27

Where: Several locations in downtown Louisville

Cost: Full pass is $298 until July 15, $350 afterward. Tickets for individual events go on sale July 15. Some individual events are free; others cost $15 to $65

More information: www.ideafestival.com

Austin shows us what to strive for

What kind of city should Lexington become?

That’s the big question each year when Commerce Lexington gathers local leaders and takes them to another city in search of ideas.

“Lexington is at a pivotal point — economically, culturally and physically,” Mayor Jim Newberry told the 275 people on this year’s trip as they gathered last Wednesday in Austin Music Hall in the capital city of Texas.

Everyone agreed. They also knew that economic success in the 21st century will belong to those cities and regions that embrace knowledge and technology.

So what was there to learn in Austin? Lexington is a prettier place and has much better weather. Yet, Austin is booming and seems wired for a bright future.

That’s because, over the past three decades, Austin has made smart, strategic decisions about creating an economic and social climate where technology companies flourish and the people who work for them can enjoy a high quality of life. Spinoffs from that climate include a rich live music scene.

Austin has worked hard to preserve its history, protect its environment and embrace creativity.

Creative people can be different — sometimes very different.

Austin’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” The motto might as well be official, because every government and business leader who spoke to the visitors from Lexington touted the notion.

“We have created, maybe you think, a monster,” said Pike Powers, an attorney and former Austin Chamber of Commerce chairman. “But what keeps us on the map is our young people, our creative people. They are the draw for technology companies and bright researchers.”

Some Lexington leaders joked that we should print T-shirts saying, “Make Lexington Weird.”

Others, who know our city better, pointed out that buttoned-down Lexington has always had a weird streak. Many people just don’t want to admit it, much less embrace it.

Someone offered a better T-shirt motto: “Lexington: Show Your True Colors.”

What does embracing creativity really mean? For one thing, it means tolerance.

“The ‘Keep Austin Weird’ thing has become a rallying point for championing diversity, for truly embracing that which is different,” said Ed Bailey, vice president of brand development for Austin City Limits, the successful Public Broadcasting System music show. “In Cleveland, where I come from, that’s not really valued. Here, it is.”

It also means encouraging citizens to become involved in decision-making.

“In Austin, civic engagement is a contact sport,” said Robena Jackson, a consultant who was once the Austin chamber’s “vice president for quality of life.”

Austin residents won’t allow a few elites to make big decisions about their city behind closed doors. There are dozens of groups, such as the Austin Area Research Organization, where issues are studied and debated.

The Austin City Council meets each Thursday, and the marathon sessions can last up to 15 hours. All who want to speak can have their say; no three-minute limits like in Lexington. Oh, and the meeting takes a break at 5:30 p.m. so everyone can listen to a local musician.

“People in Austin demand a voice,” Jackson said. “And leaders in Austin know they have to listen to them to get things done.”

Austin is often seen as a liberal island in conservative Texas. But Austin’s current mayor and two former ones said local government doesn’t try to be the solution to problems so much as a facilitator. Government seeks to help entrepreneurs succeed, not get in their way.

Locally owned businesses are valued. Entrepreneurship is celebrated. The city, state and University of Texas work closely together to develop the economy. Progress is tracked, results are measured. There’s a bias toward action.

Austin leaders were quick to say that their city is far from perfect. Housing is too expensive, air quality is often poor, traffic can be a mess. But they said leaders haven’t been afraid to try things and fail, and they’ve learned from their mistakes.

“We made a lot of this up on the fly,” Powers said. “Sometimes things work wonderfully for us, and sometimes we fall flat on our face.”

Creativity. Tolerance. Entrepreneurship. Early and meaningful public involvement in decision-making.

Some people in Lexington already believe in those ideas. What if many more did?

Lexington might come to see controversy as an opportunity for discussion, rather than an embarrassment to avoid. We might take more risks. We might try to be great instead of just good enough, knowing full well that somebody will always complain if things don’t turn out perfectly. Or even if they do.

That’s what I learned in Austin.

Another thought on Lexington’s music potential

Steve Austin, who directs the new Center for Community Legacy Initiatives at the Blue Grass Community Foundation, formerly headed the “smart growth” group Bluegrass Tomorrow. He is one of those people who tries to think like a hockey player. You know, focus on where the puck is going, not where it is now.

While in Austin, Texas, on the Commerce Lexington trip, he noticed an interview in Austin Monthly magazine with Guy Forsyth, a singer and songwriter. Down in the article, Forsyth was quoted as saying home prices have tripled since he moved to Austin in 1990, pricing him out of many neighborhoods, despite his success.

A generation ago, musicians began coming to Austin because they were being priced out of California. “Austin has peaked, but they don’t know it,” Austin said. “Being the next hot thing has passed for them.”

If young musicians can no longer afford to live in Austin, will they stop going there? Where will they go instead? “Why couldn’t it be Lexington?” he wondered.

Guest post: An Austin perspective on CentrePointe

Here is a guest post from Billy Hylton, a 1998 University of Kentucky graduate who then lived in Austin for six years before moving to Chapel Hill, N.C., where he is a Web designer. He contacted me today after reading my posts from the Commerce Lexington trip to Austin.

* * *

CentrePointe Tower has been ridiculed as bland, uninspired, and elitist. It could be worse. Austin’s glass-skinned Frost Bank Tower was once described as “an enormous set of nose hair trimmers.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones even claimed that Frost was built at the direction of the secretive Bohemian Club. Something about it resembling an owl.

What did Austin’s vaunted creative class think? They wanted to keep the city weird and the “world-class tower” was the antithesis of funky, vibrant Austin. Build it in Houston, they said. But an interesting thing happened after the tower pierced the sky in 2003. Frost was voted “Best New Building” by readers of the influential progressive weekly Austin Chronicle for a whopping five years in a row. Huh?

The Frost Tower story offers a lesson for CentrePointe advocates and detractors. From a visual standpoint, Frost is certainly an impressive addition to the skyline. But what earned the building props in the Chron has more to do with what’s happening at the street level. There are no quasi-public plazas or landscape features set back from the road. Similarly, marble-walled fountains are missing too. Frost is pure urbanism, with retail and restaurants pushed right to the sidewalk. Standing in front of the building’s Congress Avenue entrance, you don’t appreciate the massive scale of a 33-story skyscraper looming above. Traditional urban form and shimmering post-modernism make the tower a success with high-minded architectural critics and the folks alike.

What can be learned from the success of this project? Good architectural design and aesthetics are often debatable, but what everyone in Lexington should agree on is that all four sides of the tower engage and energize the city around it. Here’s what that means:

• Entrances to the hotel, restaurants, and retail should be easily accessible on all sides from the sidewalk.
• Restaurants and cafes should be encouraged to include sidewalk tables.
• No poorly conceived garage parking, surface parking, or blank walls.
• No parks or plazas set back twenty feet, even if packaged as “greenspace.”
• Local businesses should be included in retail plans.

These simple considerations will go a long way to ensuring that this project is an asset to downtown Lexington. In fact, if CentrePointe is properly executed, Lexington’s creative citizens and downtown aficionados may recognize that losing the Dame, Mia’s, and other buildings on the block was ultimately worth the trade-off — just as Austinites now love Frost Tower.

Why the Commerce Lexington trip is worth it

Many of the record 275 people who went on Commerce Lexington’s 69th annual Leadership Visit go year, after year after year. They get ideas for improving Lexington. They make and develop contacts for improving their businesses and careers. And they get a lot of work done.

This week’s trip to Austin, Texas, was the sixth Commerce Lexington trip for Barry Brauch, the CFO of American Founders Bank. He said there’s often an expectation that the group will come back with some big idea that quickly transform Lexington, but it just doesn’t happen that way. What happens is small ideas are planted, germinate and bloom sometimes years later with a distinct Lexington twist.

“It’s like making a mosaic that, over time, gives a picture of what Lexington can be,” Brauch said as the group headed back to Lexington on Friday afternoon.

The best way for people to get to know each other is to travel together. There’s a lot of value in gathering together the mayor, all 15 Urban County Council members, the school superintendent, many of the city’s top bankers and business leaders, a local legislator and the speaker of the state House of Representatives, who lives in Bowling Green and may not otherwise spend a lot of time thinking about what’s good for Lexington and how what happens in Lexington is good for Kentucky.

“I can’t imagine, without this trip, how much more fragmented Lexington would be,” Brauch said. “Some people think Lexington is divided. I think they’ve just never lived somewhere that’s really divided.”

For business people, who often are focused on minding their own business, it’s a time to step back and think about what’s good for the entire city. “You feel plugged in, and when things come up back home later, you know how it fits into the overall things people are trying to accomplish,” Brauch said.

Brauch cited a small example: When artists, performers and creative entrepreneurs come seeking loans, bankers often look askance. They don’t understand the business models, and they worry when the collateral is more intellectual than concrete. But politicians and bankers in Austin explained to that such loans, when done carefully and intentionally, are good for business and good for a city.

Linda Gorton, an Urban County Council member, says these trips teach Lexington leaders as much what to avoid as to emulate. For example, last year’s trip showed that Boulder, Colo., has become such an expensive place to live that many police officers, firefighters, teachers and service workers must live in neighboring towns. “We sure don’t want that to happen in Lexington,” she said.

Lexington leaders whose success often depends on collaborating with other Lexington leaders found the trip invaluable. Fire Chief Robert Hendricks was able to discuss several issues, such as home sprinklers, with a variety of interested parties.

“In order to get a meeting with some of these people in Lexington, it can normally take a month,” said Stu Silberman, the Fayette County Schools superintendent. “Here, you can get those people together in 15 minutes and get the meeting done quickly.”

Susan Rayer, director of career development at Transylvania University, lined up internships for four students. “And that was all done before dinner last night,” she said on the second day of the three-day trip.

“For me, this trip is worth its weight in gold. I’ve gotten so much done,” said Wanda Bertram, executive director of LexLinc, a non-profit that helps poor neighborhoods solve problems. “We didn’t have the money in the budget, but my board chair said, ‘You’re going on this trip.’”

Next year’s trip: Madison, Wisconsin

Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual Leadership Visit next year will be to Madison, Wis.

Woodford Webb, Commerce Lexington’s chair-elect for 2009, said Madison has changed a lot since the chamber trip there 11 years ago.

Madison has may things Lexington would like to have. It has 160 biotech companies, a dynamic downtown, low business taxes, good environmental protection efforts and a highly educated population. The city ranks high on national lists of places to live and raise a family.