A trip through time

Though visual media, television, film and digital, is a relatively new field, much has happened in its short history. Trends have been defined, redefined, and lost repeatedly through the years. Joel Tator was a producer and director for The Tomorrow Show. At the show’s peak, it had a viewership of 6-7 million viewers. We travel down memory lane to learn how he helped define late night television.

“We went on in October of 73, there was a very bad recession in America, and a lot of people were thrown out of work. Now, when you’re thrown out of work, you don’t have to get up early to go to work, so you can stay up late and watch television till 02:00. A.m. And when the first ratings came in, everybody, including us and everybody in the sales department, were amazed that there were six, 7 million people watching every night.” Tator said in an interview with Full Frame host Mike Walter.

 Warming oceans and ‘all the small things’

With many available perspectives, a story can be told in many ways.

“it’s very concerning that we are in a place where you can have the same news story and here are told ten different ways based on what somebody’s opinion is or what they want you to take out of it. And so being a PBS station is really important for us to be a trusted source. And so we really believe in being honest and truthful with the facts of what’s going on. We don’t need to make up your mind for you. Our job is to give you the facts of the story and make sure they’re accurate, they’re truthful.” Sean Plater General Manager of General Manager of WHUR 96.3 and WHUT-TV told us.

For Sean there’s only one, the bare facts. Through removing the fluff from his reporting, he’s grown to manage one of the Washington DC region’s highest rated radio stations. Now he’s also turning his decades of experience towards television.

The value of being flexible

Full Frame embeds with family-owned independent Welsh production company Afanti to learn how local businesses can grow and thrive in a changing media landscape. We travel to Cardiff as they work to produce a star-studded Christmas show for the BBC.