Leading by example: Anchorage business woman builds successful television station
by Pamela Eldridge

Carol Schatz says she selected the call letters of KYES for her locally owned television station because they sounded upbeat, but they could also represent Schatz’ personality. From her start as a volunteer disc jockey on KYUK radio in Bethel, to owning KYES UPN 5 television in Anchorage, Schatz meets challenges with a “yes” attitude. Schatz spoke at the Alaska Press Women’s October luncheon meeting about how she and husband Jeremy Lansman became owners of the only locally owned television station in Anchorage.

Barbara Brown presents Carol Schatz with an Alaska Press Women mug.

In the beginning, though, Schatz thought her first night at radio station KYUK in Bethel would be the end of her fledgling career. Around midnight, Schatz heard the only other person in the office leave for the night and realized she didn’t know what to do when her shift was over. Schatz ran outside to ask her departing co-worker for instructions when she heard the door lock behind her. Eventually, Schatz found a way inside. “I was sure this would be the end of my broadcasting career; that I’d never be allowed back into the building. But a few years later,” Schatz said, smiling, “I ended up being the general manager of the station.”

In 1983 Schatz moved to Washington, D.C. to be near family, and found work with the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Schatz had met Jeremy Lansman by this time. Lansman, in Anchorage and who had radio experience in Alaska, learned the FCC had made five stations available for permitting, including television channel 5, formerly reserved for military use. Lansman asked Schatz if she wanted to apply for the station permit. “Sure,” she said, and without knowing what owning a commercial television station meant, she bought it.

Lansman moved from Anchorage to Washington, D.C. to work in consulting, and Schatz and Lansman eventually married. The couple began learning what they needed to start the station and Schatz researched how to purchase commercial television programs. “I had no experience with commercial television. I had never been in a commercial television station. I’d watched a lot of TV as a kid, though,” Schatz said. She laughed.

The FCC assigned call letters for the new station, but Schatz thought they were dull and uninspiring. Because the Anchorage economy in 1985 was in a downturn, Schatz wanted call letters that sounded positive. While still in D.C., Schatz and Lansman researched for better call letters. When they discovered KYES was available, they jumped at the chance to register it. “With everything so bad in Anchorage some upbeat call letters (were) like “YES!,” Schatz said. “So I got on the Metro, ran over to the FCC, and did whatever I had to do to claim KYES.”

Schatz and Lansman arrived in Anchorage ready to begin work. First on the list was an antenna site and they found one in Eagle River. Lansman took care of equipment acquisition, while Schatz purchased their first programming. “I looked for programs that I could get for barter or for very little cash because the economy here was so bad that there was very little hope for selling a lot of commercials.”

In 1992, the cable company gave them coverage, but KYES was unfavorably placed on channel 53 and later moved to channel 51. Schatz recalled one attempt to get the cable company to move the station to a better placement. “There was a big meeting in Boston. I had pizzas delivered to them where I had people take out a piece of each pizza so they could see that without including us there was a missing piece of the pie.” Her efforts worked, and now KYES UPN 5 is at channel 5 on the cable lineup.

Their big financial break came in 1995 with their first big risk; they made a major investment in programming with Buena Vista’s Home Improvement. She recalled thinking how much they had just paid for this program and wondered if they could make the payments. What Schatz didn’t know at the time was that by airing this popular program in prime time, the station ratings went up and national advertisers began calling her. They said something surprising; they didn’t even know channel 5 existed until she bought Home Improvement. Advertising revenues went up.

About this same time, UPN started offering programming. Schatz said they made “an agreement with UPN to run their network, in large part because they were going to have Star Trek Voyager. I wasn’t going to pass that up.”

Becoming an affiliate with UPN gave the station solid evening programming. Soon, however, Schatz faced a serious threat. Station consolidation into broadcast groups began at this time and independent stations found themselves cut out of some opportunities to purchase quality programming. “For a while I thought I couldn’t compete (with groups) so I just grabbed everything I could. I became very aggressive,” Schatz recalled. “The result is we have a lot of great syndicated programs; Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, Frazier, Fear Factor. I got all of these because I thought, “I’m not going to let them beat me and cut me out of the market.”

“Advertisers are the lifeblood in commercial television,” said Schatz, and she keeps this in mind with every programming decision. Only once did an advertiser temporarily pull their ads, and none permanently. Some advertisers request their ads not be shown with certain programs. This has resulted in careful programming decisions and reduced risk taking.

The future of broadcast is wide open with digital television and radio on the horizon. Schatz explained they can probably take risks she has not felt comfortable with in the past because digital channels offer “several programming streams,” enabling them to maintain solid relationships with advertisers for traditional programming, while being able to try new things through the digital channels.

KYES UPN 5 has met the current FCC requirement to have a digital signal; they broadcast on channel 22, and have an Internet radio station using equipment Lansman set up in their garage and on the roof. Schatz said she gladly accepts the challenge of digital broadcasting. If her past successes of meeting challenges is any indication, her future has no boundaries.

Barbara Brown and Carol Schatz

Doogan happy here and now
by Elizabeth T. Hedgepeth

The foremost orator and political speechmaker of the late 19th century, Robert G. Ingersoll, is noted for having said, “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.” Somewhere in Mike Doogan’s past he must have read Ingersoll because he is a living spirit in the way to live happy, in the here and now.

Doogan was September’s speaker at Anchorage’s Alaska Press Women meeting. He gave his audience the gift of laughing and thinking and pondering the meaning of happiness as he continues his transition from newspaper columnist to the new career he is carving. That new career will surely include writing because Doogan isn’t Doogan if he isn’t stringing a bunch of words together. He already has two books to his credit and a third at the publisher’s. That doesn’t include a collection of his columns, which was published as a book, simply titled Doogan.

Mike Doogan is a third generation Alaskan and an Irishman. When you think through this rich combination, you can understand why his readers have a love/hate relationship with him. That he is no longer available three times a week to share our morning coffee is a personal trauma each of us must deal with. He certainly has and he’s no worse for wear.

He didn’t realize, he told his audience, how much stress he had been under until he resigned from the Anchorage Daily News. The resignation came after 14 years with the paper in a position, he admits, for which he was adequately compensated and pretty much left alone.

Doogan realized that he just wasn’t having as much fun as he used to. This realization came to him after another in a series of differing opinions with his editor about the column. And, he said, since they are both Irishmen, he felt they were really reasonable during the discussions. While the latest discussion was not in and of itself that important, it did cause him to pause in one of those rare moments in life. In that pause, reflection became a surprise mirror and what he saw was not what he wanted to see.

So, after 14 years, more than 2,000 columns and 1.3 million words, Mike Doogan is making his appearance wearing a Hawaiian shirt and, to quote the man, “To hell with ’em. One of things about being unemployed is that you can wear Hawaiian shirts whenever you want.” And so he did—and does.

So a happier, decidedly more relaxed Mike Doogan shared his recollections with us over lunch. If you have your own column at a newspaper, Doogan said, most journalists would feel they’ve died and gone to heaven. However, writing a column puts a high premium on dependability. It also exacts a high toll. He explained: if a reporter’s story doesn’t come together by deadline, that reporter simply tells his editor the facts and they get something else to fill that space and nobody’s the wiser. If you’re a columnist and you’re supposed to be in the paper three times a week, you can’t go to your editor and say it’s not happening today. You learn to find your column material anywhere, anytime. Even your personal life and your family are column fodder. You live your life in a fish bowl of column leads.

He misses writing the column when materials present themselves and beg to be written. Like Governor Frank Murkowski’s airplane. Doogan explains, �What you could do with the idea of flying Murkowski Airways! And then I saw in the paper recently that the state of Alaska’s been given $500,000 to support marriage. Now, what is it that you do with $500,000 to support marriage. I suppose if a couple was having a lot of arguments about finances you could given ’em the $500,000 and you’d probably make the problems in that marriage go away. What? You have an advertising campaign: Get married. It’s good for you. And the other thing I’ve noticed because I’ve been watching all this stuff on the Internet is George Bush. He’s running based on what he’ll do in the next four years. What about what he’s done in the last four years? He doesn’t want to talk about that.”

So, what’s Doogan doing now? Basically, he says, he’s not doing much of anything. “People were always telling me that it’s great to spend the summer in Alaska. And, you know what, they’re right, particularly when you have a summer like this one” I’m hoping there’s something to this global warming stuff.”

Other than enjoying his favorite state, he’s got a new book that he says is floating around in New York somewhere and he’s looking for a job. He’s also enjoying reading newspapers. He’s cultivated a different perspective on the news. He’s becoming one of those people who used to tell him how to do his job.

On a serious side, he tells people he misses three things about his job. He misses the people he worked with because it’s fun being in a room full of smart people who are engaged in the world and doing something. He misses the benefits and he misses the money he got paid.

And most of us miss him. To his credit, he kept this group alert, even after lunch, delivering another quality product and entertaining us with his knowledge, his charisma and his shoot-from-the-hip style.

Passionate Alaskan filmmaker speaks at APW luncheon
by Marilyn Blumer

Lights! Camera! Action! Alaska filmmaker Mary Katzke was the guest speaker for the Alaska Press Women luncheon, held June 3 at the Golden Lion Hotel. She spoke with enthusiasm and great reverence for her craft and the subjects in the films she creates. Katzke is a graduate of the University of Texas and founded Affinityfilms in Alaska in 1983. She left Alaska to obtain her master’s degree in filmmaking from New York University. After completing this degree, she returned to Alaska in 2001. Lucky for us, Katzke has chosen the Last Frontier to be her base camp where she films mostly documentaries.

Many of her films have appeared on PBS including her very first film, “No Word for Rape,” on the (once) hidden subject of rape in Alaska. To name a few others, she has also written and directed: “Beyond Flowers,” a personal story of facing and triumphing over breast cancer; “Sea of Oil,” about the Exxon-Valdez oil spill and the devastating effects on the community of Valdez; “Wings of Recovery,” about mental illness and “Crescendo,” which deals with domestic violence. Her films either explore previously taboo topics, or edify, educate, or encourage the viewer” or accomplish all of the above. No matter what her work may originally set out to accomplish, they all come from her heart. They are gifts on celluloid wrapped in images, music, light and thought.

Asked by a member in the audience if she ever has a difficult time finding actors for her films, she replied: “In New York that was never a problem.” When she was a student at NYU and creating many student films, people would line up around the block to appear in a film for free.

Katzke was eight years old when the filmmaking bug first bit her. She and her dad, an engineer, would film family gatherings on an 8 mm Bell & Howell. After documenting a 4-H project, she was hooked. The rest, as they say, is her story.