Montana's largest classroom: Montana PBS for 40 years has served as electronic town square

The day before the 2024-25 academic year begins at Montana State University, members of the incoming freshman class gather to be formally welcomed and hear a special address by author Tommy Orange at the First Year Student Convocation in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse.

As freshmen, family, faculty and community members arrive for the celebration, student employees of Montana PBS make final preparations to show the event on the Fieldhouse’s large video board. For more than 24 hours, they and members of PBS’ professional staff have been testing and troubleshooting equipment as they set up the six cameras that will capture the occasion from all angles.

In the Montana PBS production control room, located about 200 yards north of the fieldhouse in MSU’s Visual Communications Building, former film student-turned-Montana PBS associate producer Nico Miller keeps tabs on technical details as he manages the production.

“There’s always one thing not working right machinery-wise,” he says. “Today we have an issue with Camera 2 blinking in and out. We figured out there was dust in the connection left from when we had rodeo here in the spring.”Tanner Stichman, a senior majoring in film in MSU’s College of Arts and Architecture, has been assigned to operate Camera 2, which sits atop a platform on the floor of the venue, stage left. Stichman is no stranger to live-action camera work, thanks in part to previous Montana PBS sports productions and a summer freelance gig for a Professional Bull Riders event. He and handheld camera operator Jordyn Rae, a senior majoring in film, await commands from the control room delivered by director Michael Allen over their intercom headsets.

“Camera 2, can you widen out a bit? Slowly zoom out,” Allen tells Stichman before he calls for the Camera 2 shot to go live.

“Jordyn, can you get me a different shot?” Allen asks, turning his attention to what’s happening on another section of the fieldhouse floor. “Reframe, show me different students.”

Miller, sitting directly behind Allen in the control room, closely monitors the script to make sure everyone in the room knows what to expect.

“Cruzado is about to make a short speech, then they want the ‘M’ photo shown again,” Miller advises after Orange finishes speaking. Earlier, Miller had quickly uploaded the image of the freshman class standing in “M” formation on Bobcat Stadium’s 50-yard line, which was taken just minutes before the ceremony began. 

Throughout the production, three more students take direction from Miller and Allen from their various stations in the control room. Most have rotated through all the roles over time.The production represents more than one aspect of Montana PBS’ mission: to be an electronic town square that encourages the sharing of ideas, opinions and information. Orange’s message to the class of 2028 about the value of lifelong learning dovetails nicely with the education-centric vision of Montana PBS pioneers, whose efforts to provide free, over-the-air access to public television in the state gave birth 40 years ago to the award-winning, grassroots network that bills itself as “Montana’s largest classroom,” now attended by 275,000 viewers across Montana each week. 

Today, that classroom also provides real-world training opportunities like these. At MSU, between 40 and 45 production students are on the station’s payroll during the height of the college sports season, according to Scott Sterling, Montana PBS’ director of production. This afternoon’s event is the first of many these students will produce over the coming semester. Next week, they will bring viewers at home the first Bobcat home volleyball match of the season on EPSN+. The following week, they will produce the stadium video board show for the football home opener. 

“It’s a cool way to get a lot of real-world experience,” said Audrey Schied, a graduate of MSU’s School of Film and Photography now employed at the station as a live content producer. “This provides a career path where you could go anywhere.”

“When the students are done working for us, they’re ready to be hired by a national production company like ESPN,” agrees Aaron Pruitt, director and general manager of Montana PBS, who is helping to write what will be the next chapter of Montana PBS’ history with a major construction and programming expansion over the next several years. “Something we want to preserve is our engagement with students. It’s an extension of our educational mission, but it also supports the institution. We provide a very hands-on experience for students. It’s the vision Jack Hyyppa had.” 

HYYPPA, WHO came to MSU in 1973 to join the film and television department’s faculty, remembers being frustrated by the lack of a place to air locally produced programming in Montana.

“The film faculty were making films of interest to people around the state of Montana. We had no constant place to put those programs, but there was always an interest in providing them,” said Hyyppa, who also managed the campus television services center, then located in McCall Hall, which produced televised lectures for multisection classes on campus.

So when Hyyppa was approached by Nancy Flikkema, a rural Gallatin Valley mother who was advocating for over-the-air access to PBS children’s programs like “Sesame Street,” he was ready to listen. The two hatched a proposal in the early 1980s for a campus-based television station to fulfill both educational missions. The television station KUSM was created after the opening of the new Visual Communications Building, which boasted the most modern television production facility in Montana.

In those days, cable TV customers in Montana’s larger cities could watch public television piped in from either Spokane or Salt Lake City, depending on which side of the Continental Divide they lived. But there was no PBS affiliate to produce local programs, and nobody was sending PBS over the air for rural customers.

That changed in 1984, when the state Board of Regents, the governing body for Montana’s university system, approved Hyyppa’s proposal to rebroadcast over KUSM a cable-provided signal from KUED, the PBS station in Salt Lake City. Joseph S. Sample, a renowned Billings broadcaster and philanthropist who owned the MTN stations in Montana, made it possible by donating a used, 100-watt transmitter to deliver the television station’s signal to the Gallatin Valley. 

The broadcast antenna, perched atop MSU’s 11-story South Hedges residence hall, “wasn’t very powerful, but it got out around Bozeman and got us on the air,” Hyyppa said.

Montana PBS’ first broadcast was on Oct. 1, 1984, and for the next three years, KUSM worked to wean itself from the Utah station. KUED continued to raise funds from Montana viewers but split the money with KUSM, which used the proceeds to hire staff and begin to manage the broadcast signal.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit Friends of KUSM (now Friends of Montana PBS), was formed to raise funds and serve as an advisory group to the station. Hyyppa was named Montana PBS’ first general manager, a position he held until 2006. 

In 1987, KUSM became a full Public Broadcasting Service affiliate. By then, it had extended its service to over 200,000 cable customers in central and eastern Montana, and efforts to provide over-the-air signals in other Montana communities were ongoing. Donors helped raise funds for equipment to pick up and rebroadcast the signal to numerous communities, including Billings, Great Falls, Butte and Kalispell, while some smaller communities created tax districts to raise funds to support their own translators, Pruitt said. Today, most state residents can access Montana PBS over the air, via cable and satellite TV, or with newer online streaming services. Montana PBS continues to add broadcast facilities when possible to fill the few coverage gaps that remain in more rural parts of the state.

WHILE BOZEMAN and eastern Montana residents were seeing their access to public television expand in the early 1990s, Montanans served by Missoula media were still unable to receive public television broadcasts over the air. Cable subscribers in that part of the state could watch a public television feed from KSPS in Spokane. Inspired by KUSM’s success, a plan was formed at the University of Montana Broadcast Media Center in Missoula to forge a relationship with the Spokane PBS station, similar to what KUSM had done with the Utah station a decade prior.

“I found out about it and went to the administration here and said this could be disastrous for both of us,” said Hyyppa, who feared that Montana, then populated by fewer than a million people, couldn’t support two public stations. 

Hyyppa took his concern to the Montana Board of Regents and requested that it require the two universities to jointly provide public broadcasting in Montana. William Marcus, who became the UM Broadcast Media Center director in 1993, supported the idea.

“I thought that if we were going to be able to get support from this part of the state, which is what KSPS had offered, we needed to make sure that people could watch us and see Montanans and see Montana stories,” Marcus said. 

The Regents approved the proposal, and KUSM and KUFM joined forces in 1997.

It was obvious that the major control point for Montana PBS was going to be in Bozeman, because that’s where the infrastructure was,” Marcus said. “Meanwhile, the basis of the UM Broadcast Media Center has always been journalism. We had a staff working to produce news and public affairs programs, as well as long-form storytelling projects out of the university.”

Hyyppa and Marcus agree that the arrangement has blossomed into a strong, cooperative partnership that serves Montanans well.

The award-winning educational and entertainment programs produced by the stations include “Montana PBS Reports: IMPACT,” featuring in-depth reporting on issues important to Montanans; “Backroads of Montana,” which tells stories about unique people and places; “Montana Ag Live,” a call-in information program about agricultural and gardening issues; and “11th and Grant with Eric Funk,” which brings performances by Montana’s accomplished musicians into living rooms all over the state. 

For those programs, and for the dozens of historical and cultural documentaries about Montana and Montanans that it has produced since 2005, Montana PBS has won a loyal audience and numerous awards, including 43 regional Emmys. 

“We’re always focused on telling stories of the highest quality,” Pruitt said. “When you do that, they last forever.”

AS THEY celebrate Montana PBS’ 40th anniversary this year, those who have worked to build its reputation are excited about its future. Marcus, who retired from UM in 2015, believes Montana PBS viewers will be even better served when current programming is augmented by additional news and public affairs shows made possible by the facility expansion in Bozeman. Kristina Martin, director of development for Montana PBS, said those priorities are being addressed with funds raised through Montana PBS’ “Building Possibilities” campaign, which has raised nearly $21 million from donors and viewers. The campaign aims to raise $3 million more.

“This is about more than a building. It’s really about building capacity for the future of the organization,” she said. “We want to serve our viewers and members, not just in Bozeman but statewide.”

Pruitt said the “soft portion” of the vision—the part that isn’t made up of equipment, bricks and mortar—is already underway.

“We have three times as many news producers now as three years ago, IMPACT is starting its third season, we have a Billings-based producer, we’re growing our staff in Missoula and we now have an additional senior (documentary) producer at PBS in Bozeman,” he said.

Montana PBS also plans to make additional investments in its professional development courses for Montana teachers, which earn them license renewal credits from the state. And this fall, the station launched a new initiative to provide an authentic audience and publishing opportunities for youth interested in storytelling, journalism and media-making.

In addition to investments in programming and educational outreach, $20 million of the campaign proceeds are slated for an approximately 15,000-square-foot expansion of the Visual Communications Building. The additional space will house offices, updated technology, the campus radio station KGLT, and additional Montana PBS control rooms needed to meet increasing live-production demands. But the most notable element of the expansion—and the one most aligned with Montana PBS’ commitment to its higher-education roots—will be the largest dedicated classroom within a College of Arts and Architecture building, Pruitt said. It will accommodate at least 150 students and be equipped with retractable seating and fold-up desks, making it possible for core classes like Film 101 to meet in the building. It also will double as a broadcast studio space or for events, screenings and town hall meetings.

Pruitt said the building’s new footprint will extend to 11th and Grant instead of sitting back from the intersection as it does now. That’s by design, he said, to give PBS a public face and to raise awareness of Montana PBS’ presence and role on campus and across the state. But he promised that Montana PBS’ presence will manifest most visibly not in a building but in the programming it creates to serve Montanans.

“Community engagement for us is about storytelling. It might be a cultural film, an important news or public affairs issue, an arts profile or a historical documentary, but it’s always long-form storytelling,” Pruitt said. “It’s part of our DNA: telling great Montana stories, always with a focus on lifelong learning.”

    The Montana PBS master control room in the 1980s.
  

    Jack Hyyppa, Montana PBS’ first general manager, is pictured in the studio during KUSM’s second year on the air.
  

    Brian, Lisa and Kristi Flikkema watch a Montana PBS broadcast of “Sesame Street” soon after the Bozeman station’s first over-the-air broadcast in 1984.
  

    Musicians and the show’s namesake, at right, confer in studio during a production of “11th and Grant with Eric Funk.”
  

    Montana State University agriculture experts answer viewer questions during a live production of “Montana Ag Live,” 2022.