It’s
funny how a job can turn into a career.
I was a “real” journalist once, one of those
guys who wrote and reported news stories
about fires, wrecks, city council meetings
and school board elections. I even spent time as
a news and sports photographer, traveling for
several years with The Dallas Cowboys during
the Landry/Staubach glory days. I was even
shooting on the sidelines for NFL Films. This
was all exciting stuff, but my heart wasn’t in it.
One man ruined me when it came to “real”
reporting. His name was Charles
Kuralt. You may remember him best as
the anchor on the CBS Sunday Morn-
ing News, but before that, he did a
series for CBS called “On the Road
with Charles Kuralt.” Walter Cronkite
liked to end his news on Fridays with a
Kuralt piece. After reporting about
Watergate and Vietnam, Cronkite
knew his audience wanted to hear
some “good news.” Kuralt brought
them stories about people. Ordinary
people who were doing something
extraordinary with their lives. As a high
school kid growing up in Dallas, Texas,
I never missed an episode.
When I was 18 and a freshman in
college, I got a job as a “gopher” at
the Dallas CBS affiliate, KDFW-TV. I
would “gopher” this and “gopher” that,
but I
also learned how to use a Bell&Howell Film
camera and got pretty good at it. In three
months time, they hired another gopher and
gave me a job as a news photographer. One
Sunday afternoon in March of 1970 I was
sitting around the newsroom waiting for a
wreck or something so I could go out and
shoot some 16mm film, bring it back to the
station and process and edit it and put it on the
evening news. A call came in about a possible drowning at an
area lake and I was Johnny On-
the-Spot. Since there was no reporter available
to do an interview with the kids they thought
had drowned (they were found clinging to a
tree where they had been all night long), I set
up the camera on a tripod, aimed it in the
general direction of the kids and did the
interview myself. Then I did a “stand-up” the
same way and son-of-a-guy if they didn’t use
my news “package” on the air. Bob Phillips the
reporter was born. From then on, I did my own
photography and reporting on stories, what
they call in the business a “one man band.”
At first, I stuck to the hard news stories that
every news director likes to see on his news,
but on weekend shifts I would often do stories
about ordinary people, just like the ones my
idol Charles Kuralt was doing on the network.
Well, not just like the ones Charlie was doing.
His were incredible. Mine were the product of
a kid wannabe. But I was learning the ropes
and having a great time doing it. Then, in 1972, after pleading
with management for
months, they finally let me and a ragtag bunch
of reporters and photographers try an idea we
had. We thought we could do stories in the
Kuralt vein but, instead of airing them on the
nightly news, package them all together on a
weekly half hour show.
“
Go out and do one,” the news director
said.
I’m pretty sure he thought it would flop and
that would be all he’d hear of that idea. Hon-
estly, we thought it would, too, but at least
we’d get to do that one episode and have a lot
of fun. So, on the first Saturday of October,
1972, the first episode of 4 Country Reporter
(we worked for channel 4) went on the air. It’s
been on the air ever since that time.
About a year after we started our program, I
got a call from my idol Charles Kuralt. At first I
thought it was a joke the guys at the television
station were playing, but there was no mistak-
ing that voice of Kuralt’s.
“
Bob, you do the best copy of what I do
I’ve ever seen,” he said.
He may not have meant it that way, but I
thought that was quite a compliment. We met,
ate chicken fried steak together and became
friends. We often shared story ideas and even
did promotional pieces together (“Phillips and
Kuralt, only on Channel 4!”). He was a real
sport to share his techniques, his ideas and his
spotlight with the likes of me, a still wet behind
the ears kid who just wanted to be like him.
In 1986, I left that television station and
started producing the show, re-titled Texas
Country Reporter, out of my own production
company. The other reporters and photogra-
phers who started out working with me on the
show had long ago tired of the “fluff report-
ing” and had gone back to hard news, but I
stuck with it. We syndicated the program in every market in
the State of Texas (22 of them)
and the show is still on in all those markets
today.
But a couple of years ago an interesting
thing happened. A man named Patrick Gottsch
called me asking if he could air my programs
on something called RFD-TV.
“
What’s that?” I asked.
"It’s a new channel that is just for folks in
rural America," he told me.
“
Heck, I’ve been reporting on rural Texas
for almost 30 years,” I told him.
“
That’s why I want your shows,” he said.
Patrick Gottsch and I ended up working
together to launch RFD-TV. I thought he had
come up with an incredible idea to offer a
special channel to some of the hardest working
yet least recognized folks in the country. My
company, Phillips Productions, still helps out
with some of the logistical issues of running a
television network, but traveling the back roads
of Texas is what I still love…and what I still do.
You see the result today on RFD-TV.
If you haven’t watched our show, well, it’s
just stories about people you’ve probably never
heard of before and possibly will never hear of
again. Ordinary people who often are doing
extraordinary things with their lives. Hey, come
to think of it, that sounds a lot like someone
else I know. Here’s to you, Charles Kuralt.
Thanks for pioneering the idea of reporting
from the backroads…and for sharing that idea
with me.
Contact Information:
Texas Country Reporter
Phillips Productions
100 E. Royal Lane
Irving, TX 75039
214-741-1300
www.texascountryreporter.com |
