We went on the air in October, the last part of October, 1969, and it belonged to the public school system.

We were in the cramped quarters out at McCutchanville School, and here's the great Channel 9 TV Auction and the great Channel nine TV auction, the great Channel Nine auction.

It's important for the community, it's important for the children.

But besides giving me a livelihood for many years, I also met my wife here.

Production funding provided by the Charles and Jan Stanftenagel family and by viewers like you, whether it's been the great Channel nine auction, the WNIN Kids Fest, or just the great noncommercial television, WNIN TV has touched the lives of many people and has a long history of being a part of our community.

The station started with local programing, and that commitment to local content has continued for 50 years.

This is national educational television.

WNIN evolved from an educational TV channel that was owned and programed by the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation established in the late 1950s.

The educational channel was a grant funded experiment providing a decade of educational classes to local teachers and students.

In 1967, the Public Broadcasting Act was passed, which led to the creation of the corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And the Public Broadcasting Service went on the air in October, the last part of October 1969.

It was the creation of the Vanderburgh School Corporation.

They had a number of a task force of teachers and administrators that believed that they could use television as a teaching tool.

It had belonged to the public school system.

Vanderburgh County school corporation, and they had been using that channel to move educational program all over the tri state from the Vincennes down.

A superintendent came in and decided that he didn't want to be in that end of the educational field anymore.

So the channel was available.

So we made inquiry with the school corporation and found out that they'd be willing to turn turn the channel over to us.

So we put up $100,000 and bought the channel.

Distribution of the preceding program was a service of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting while the nation was preparing for the birth of public broadcasting.

Local leaders were looking for options to keep channel Nine alive and growing as an educational tool for both students and general audiences.

In 1970, WNIN formally incorporated as the nonprofit television station Channel Nine, a PBS member station.

WNIN started producing local content in the small township of McCutchanville, just north of Evansville, without a proper TV station to work from.

WNIN found itself in the old McCutchanville School of Hard Knocks.

And I remember when I first came in to interview at the station, it was located out in the old McCutchanville School.

It was a school, I mean, and it was on multiple layers up and down and in and out.

We were in the cramped quarters out of McCutchanville.

School wasn't a lot of room for anything, was very little ventilation.

Working conditions were absolutely horrible.

But we had a ball.

This was a schoolhouse that was built at the turn of the 20th century.

It was not set up for technology at all.

We always had to try to build our sets kind of tight and maybe have baffles.

So the sound then bounced as much.

And I remember when I got the phone call to come in and interview, I went to the station and it was in August and it was really hot.

And I thought, Well, this can't be a TV station because it didn't look anything like a television station.

It was actually an old school building and the classrooms were divided up into offices and they each had their own window air conditioner.

And it was so loud you could barely hear yourself talk.

The board was looking for a new home for WNIN.

And we had spent considerable time, and I think for a couple of summers, Rawling Echels and I, every lunch hour we could get, we would travel around looking at the prospectives.

Biggest challenge was making the the school survive long enough without a lot of repairs.

In the mid 1980s, WNIN board and management began a search for a building that would allow the station to grow.

In 1985, the WNIN board purchased the historic Willard Carpenter home located in downtown Evansville.

We finally found the Willard Carpenter home.

We looked at it and there was no space for a studio.

We put into our budget to build a new studio and started a capital campaign to raise the funds to do it.

The campaign was successful and that gave us another another step up so we could now start doing more live production.

I was on the board when we moved downtown.

We thought we died and went to heaven.

We were able to raise enough money and we purchased the Carpenter building downtown.

Now, I'll tell you, that was a a vast improvement from this old school building to this mansion in downtown Evansville.

The cost was not that bad.

We paid back then I think about 150,000 for the building, which was really a buy, and we spent about 400,000 in renovating it.

When you see the carvings in the ceiling and some of that stuff you could never duplicate it for what we paid for the building.

I think it was such a move forward that it wasn't looked upon us as a problem or disaster, but quite the contrary, as a real opportunity and and a real effort to move forward, to give a lot more space for the auctions and the program than it was.

I think everyone was ready and willing to make that step and that was about 1986, 87.

But we weren't out of the dark yet with offices in the Carpenter home and the addition of a new TV studio W and I in applied for and received a grant for new equipment.

The station was keeping up with the news of digital television that would be mandated for all broadcasters in 2006.

This would require new equipment and a major transmitter upgrade.

And some of the challenge that we saw was going digital and high definition was coming on at the time and very expensive and we didn't really have the money.

And then the state finally came up with $20 million to divide it up amongst the TV stations.

I think they gave us three and a half million dollars and then we had a capital campaign.

Jim Reisinger was the Chairman.

Well, what amount to if we're going to have this five and half million dollar project, we had to raise $2 million.

That seemed like a heavy lift back in around 2000, 2001.

But we've got some leaders in the community like Jim Roeisenger and others, and we just went after it and we got it accomplished.

To prepare WNIN purchased a lot for a new digital transmitter in 2002 and broke ground in April of that year.

The new equipment allowed the station to make the move to digital broadcasting in 2006 and digital production in 2009.

Thanks to many capital campaign donors as elegant as the new facility was, Channel Nine was faced with similar challenges from its past.

It put us more downtown.

We were easier to find than being out in the country, but once again we put ourselves in the situation where we were moving into a place where technology was not even thought of.

After an extensive move to Main Capital campaign, WNIN purchased and moved to its current home in 2017.

Located at two Main Street in downtown Evansville, this new location provides an updated environment for the station more exposure and access for the public and the state of the art Old National Public Theater.

In 2016, we started a move to Main Capital campaign that really set the station up for the future by moving us from the old Carpenter house to a new location at the corner of Main and Riverside Drive, which turned out to be a great facility for us.

And that's where we are coming from today.

That campaign was a great community effort because it took a lot of funding, it took a lot of planning and it took a lot of people who were supportive of the effort to get it done.

And it took us about two or three years to do that campaign.

One of my greatest privileges was working with the team at WNIN in the move here to to Main Street, probably one of the most exciting and transformational projects that I've worked on.

And now that we're here, I can see the impact that this move has had and it's very gratifying.

Thank heavens the community rose up and supported us and gave generously to make the move possible.

Our location now at the corner of Riverside and Main could not be more fortuitous.

It allows us to be right in the heart of downtown Evansville and part of the larger region to tell the story of this region.

And I'm just excited to see what the future will hold.

We were having it at actually it's Carpenter house.

There was somebody had ridden their motorcycle in, so they said, You're going to open on a motorcycle.

I said, You're kidding.

I said, No, we're not kidding.

Jump aboard.

So we were outside.

They fired a puppy up, brought it up a Harley, and we go right in front of the cameras.

And I jumped off.

And it was a great Channel 9 TV auction.

And Warren came in on a motorcycle and with fund raising at the forefront, WNIN launched the first Channel nine TV auction in 1974 from the station's home located in the old McCutchanville School, the WNIN TV auctions became very popular with everyone and was the station's biggest fundraiser for years.

The annual event evolved every year, and by the early eighties, Union was using a remote truck to broadcast the Channel nine TV auction from the Central Turners Building, which provided a more convenient location many, many, many years ago.

My older brother Joe was part of the WNIN staff and actually worked on the very first great Channel Nine auctions, and I'd sit at home and watch him and stay up too late and watch the the Great Channel 9 TV auction.

I worked the auctions, the great Channel Nine auction out at the old McCutchanville School.

And I remember the days when we had auction volunteers that came in the West Side Nut Club, all kinds of groups.

All of the banks had huge groups that came.

Well, I think you can't think of WNIN and not think of the auctions.

They're great fun.

You get to have sort of ham it up with a lot of friends and neighbors from across the region, but it's really about exposing the community to what this facility is all about, and that is arts and culture and education.

Everybody really enjoyed the fact that this was largely being done by amateurs, that is, to the volunteers.

They were working hard at it.

I'd get here about four in the afternoon and we wouldn't leave until two or 3:00 in the morning.

Back then it was really exciting and everybody had a marvelous time.

I mean, it was it was fun.

And you were busy running around doing things you read or on camera selling or you were helping load the space where the items were going to be displayed from.

The auctions always been a very big thing.

It allowed people who wouldn't normally be around television or to see how television works into the studio.

When the different organizations would come in, they felt like they owned that night and were happy and left as a as a pretty good experience.

WNIN was one of the first auctions out there.

Other auctions had taken off from ours.

They watched ours quite closely to see how we did, the good things, the bad things and what have you and how successful it was.

So we were sort of a leader back in the early seventies.

In the station's efforts to fund programing and production costs, the station decides to beef up the annual auction by including the sale of a new home in 1989.

We came up with this great idea that wouldn't it be wonderful if we built a house for the auction.

Good evening and welcome to the first four part series.

This new house this year from Newburgh in Jordan Estates, talking about the great Channel nine auction Dream House.

And with me is Jim Jordan, who is the gentleman who owns Jordan Estates and who graciously donated the lot for the great Channel nine auction Dream House.

Jan, glad to have you with us.

Thank you.

The sale of the house during the annual auction provided substantial income for the station, but proved to be a major undertaking.

So that got to be quite a project because people in Evansville and Newburgh and the Tri-State are very generous.

We got builders and suppliers to donate all the materials for the auction and it was great.

And we built two of those one house on the north side of Evansville and Copper Field Subdivision, and then we had one out on the river in Newburgh, a big two story house.

But that was sort of the end of the WNIN auction house building experiment, from houses to home appliances and even livestock.

The Channel Nine auction lived up to its title of being great.

We did have a live pig.

One night he had his own rug and normally left a little offering which was put out with rose bushes later on after the show was over.

But we got a very nice two or $300 prize.

We had a group of volunteers that was such a cross-section of Evansville, everything from elderly, retired to up and coming young business people, people from every one of those walks of life, all the trades attorneys, doctors, just everyone.

Think about it.

That's that's why Channel Nine has been such a success, because it's had the support of so many of our publics.

And even back then it was just a beehive buzzing with activity.

Over the years, WNIN hosted other events to engage the community.

There have been golf outings, speakers and a multitude of kids events.

The WNIN Kid's Fest started as the WNIN Safety Days and has continued to be an annual event.

The WNIN gala started in 2001 as a radio fundraiser at the Carpenter home and continues today in 2005, the Gala's guest speaker was Ken Farmer from the Antiques Roadshow, who appraised items that guests brought in.

The gala has hosted a multitude of NPR personalities over the years and continues to be a popular event.

This Shoulder’s chair or Shively’s?

That's Pat’s.

where he's a partner of mine.

So I feel comfortable sitting here though I don't agree with anything, he says during the program, when WNIN started broadcasting in the early seventies, cable TV was also very new.

This lack of competition for viewers provided WNIN with a strong audience and membership base.

During this time, PBS was growing its content and viewers welcomed the idea of noncommercial television that provided a local flair.

The short broadcast day started at 3 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m. and included the usual fare of locally produced favorites such as Ride It was a children's reading program that was produced out of WNIN back in the seventies and distributed nationwide.

And school corporations or schools all over the country watch these shows.

I actually watched Ride the Reading Rocket when I was a kid.

I remember I had the workbook.

It was a summer program and I remember sitting there tuning in and watching Miss Sandy and going along in the workbook and watching Rocko the Puppet.

And it was it was a great educational experience.

Well, I was the director of the educational television project, and I guess I think I volunteered myself to do Rocko and did that.

And as I remember this, we did this thing probably about how many, eight or nine years live.

I was interested in writing the workbook and the principal, who was Dr. Martin at the time, suggested I try out and I did.

And not only did I get to write the workbook, but I ended up being the television teacher, which was really a surprise to me.

We were doing maybe three or four shows a week and at least one live one each week.

The live show was prime time nine.

In the mid-eighties, WNIN revived a weekly call in series that had started in the seventies.

Prime time nine with local attorney Jack Schroeder aired live every Thursday evening at seven and featured guests on issues that were timely and sometimes controversial.

Viewers could call in and ask the guest questions live on air.

The audience settles back down in their seats after the national anthem, ready to enjoy the first work On the program tonight, music by the composer who sometimes called the father of Russian music, Mikhail Glinka during the eighties and nineties, W and I and produced a variety of documentaries and live forums.

The 50th anniversary of the Evansville Philharmonic was celebrated in 1984.

The station won an award for a short kid story titled Tootie Tittlemouse and the Lights of Christmas in 1989 and premiered Old Stones in New Harmony in 1990.

The Remember When series in the nineties looked at local history and the station celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Evansville Courier and Press and the 50th anniversary of the Evansville Philharmonic with documentaries.

We did a special on the anniversary of the 37 flood.

We would go out and do the Philharmonic on occasion.

We were willing and ready to almost go out and do anything at the drop of a hat because we had no budget.

I had a telephone call from a person saying they had driven in from Arizona.

They had seen Old Stones, the documentary on the restoration of the granary on public television in Arizona.

They were headed to Washington, DC and they drove through New Harmony to see that.

It shows the importance of a facility such as WNIN to help document the historic features of the region.

Guitar Played Moore Effectively was produced in 1995 and the station looked at health and aging, scholars on nine started in the mid eighties and ran for 12 years, providing a competition of wits for local students.

And there have been political debates for every election.

Live from Evansville, Indiana.

The League of Women Voters and WNIN TV nine present a debate between the candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives from the eighth District, the incumbent Frank McCloskey, and the challenger, Richard Mourdock, and now the moderator for tonight's debate from the League of Women Voters, Ina Freeman.

Good evening, WNIN recognized the importance of providing a unique local service to the community and the value of partnerships.

With cable television now on the scene and becoming popular.

WNIN worked with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation and Insight Cable in 1991 to provide educational programing on cable channels 12 and 13.

That was kind of a one of a kind project, really, for a public television station.

During the daytime hours, we programed in school learning that teachers could call and request on demand.

They could decide on a program they wanted to use.

They would call us and tell us exactly what time they wanted it, and we would put it on.

Evenings were devoted to educational programs for adults such as GED on TV and Annenberg programs in the areas of math, science, history and language.

3, 2, 1...

Happy 2000.

The country celebrated the millennium in 2000 and WNIN and ramped it up even more over the next ten years, producing over 19 live forums, live debates in every election year, and numerous documentaries.

Channel Nine has always tried to keep the community informed when election time rolls around.

They've given members of both parties all the time they wanted to come out here to the station and let the community get to know them.

Just done a wonderful job in that respect.

Are we going to have an earthquake in the central part of the United States?

Yes, we are.

When's it going to be?

I have no idea.

The station focused on earthquakes in 2000 and started a weekly school news series with the EVSC in 2001.

After the 911 attacks, WNIN responded with a live forum addressing the community's reaction to recent acts of terrorism hosted by Brad Byrd.

The forum addressed threats and how our community would be prepared in the event of a disaster.

In 2002, WNIN was approached by attorneys Les Shively and Pat Shoulders, who were starring in a weekly TV program on another station.

They asked if WNIN would pick up their program.

And WNIN staff and management jumped on the opportunity, the duo of Les Shively and Pat Shoulders started every episode with a look at the week's political news and quickly moved to their ever popular bantering as Les defended the conservatives and Pat defended the Liberals with a live call in format.

The series quickly became a local favorite and ran for many years.

Mike, welcome.

Yeah, you don't like one of the things that Channel Nine does for this community is the local programing.

For eight years we were part of that local programming as it expanded.

Evansville at War series, the special on Bosse Field.

It goes on and on.

Absolutely.

WNIN belongs to all of us.

It's public television and Les and I were absolutely honored to have eight years of bringing local candidates.

But you know what?

Every now and then, we had national.

We had some national celebrities.

They realized that they had to be here in the tri state and be on WNIN or they really we're going to slip in the ratings Senate candidates, governor candidates.

But I think the biggest service we did last was if you were running for the school board, if you were running for county coroner, you don't have a TV budget, but you could sit right here between the two of us, answer our questions and allow voters to make an informed choice when it comes to wooden roller coasters.

Holiday world is king of the hill.

The station highlighted the Koch family and Holiday World in 2003 and presented the first of five live Sober Up forums designed to spark action about underage drinking.

Kids are sometimes naive, I guess I sound naive saying that, but parents don't know a lot what their kids do.

Local sports heroes were the topic in 2004 and an FCC approved tornado relief telethon in 2005 brought together all local media outlets to the WNIN studio in an effort to raise funds for those affected.

Good evening.

I'm Jeff Lyons from Channel 14.

And I'm David Dial with WNIN Channel nine and Ron Rhodes from Fox seven will be here in just a minute.

He just got off the air.

What's wrong with this picture?

There's nothing wrong with this picture.

We are all coming together tonight.

WNIN has brought the community together in live forums to tackle and discuss topics such as Alzheimer's disease, autism, underage drinking, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, economic recessions, mentoring, utility costs, safety in schools and breast cancer.

Broadcasting Local government meetings had been on the radar for some time, and WNIN was prepared to fill the need, allowing local government more transparency with the community it serves.

In 2005, it became reality when the Vanderburgh County Council funded the equipment needed for WNIN to air the council's meetings live on television.

The service became so popular with officials and viewers that the City of Evansville decided to include their meetings.

Every week.

Evansville viewers could watch the City Council, County Council, County Commission and other board meetings live on cable Channel 12.

This service continued until 2018.

2008 saw the premiere of another local series titled Newsmakers.

Each week, the series would profile a local personality with in-depth questions and answers.

Welcome to Newsmakers I’m Mizell Stewart.

That same year, WNIN and United Way partnered to produce the first of four Napolean Peacock children's programs.

WNIN explored the tri state in 2012 with the new series Tri State Focus and focused audiences on health and environment, with the series building a Healthier Tri state.

WNIN's focus on Health and our Environment continued in 2013 with the launch of a two year series titled Healthy Air Healthy Communities.

This collaborative project focused on making us all aware of how our environment affects our health.

Between 2014 and 2016, WNIN and premiered four new series and five major specials.

Abby Chat allowed viewers to hear from a panel of local enthusiasts as they discussed the newest episode of Downton Abbey.

WNIN’s Top 9 series ranked and counted down the most popular restaurants, historical events, personalities and places.

Evansville’s Great Kitchens took us inside some of the most elegant and sophisticated kitchens in our area.

Picture This allowed us to travel back in time through historical photos and Shorts by High Schoolers gave us a glimpse at a variety of student produced videos.

The annual series Lawmakers continued, and the station started releasing new documentaries on a regular basis.

The Big Beer Doc focused on our local history of brewing.

Homegrown Heritage introduced us to local farm families that have maintained their farms for generations and won a 2020 Bronze Telly Award.

The Temple Heirs highlighted the great efforts by local musicians to have fun while helping the community.

And WNIN took us on a trip down the river on the LST 325, and I served on the board for a number of years.

One of the more recent activities was the producing of a documentary, and I learned how difficult those things are, how much time it takes and money.

When I was involved in a documentary on the Temple airs, but there's so many other ones that WNIN on World War Two, on farms and on making beer, on music.

And those are only available because of WNIN and they're nice time capsules for our community.

I was fortunate to have been a part of the Homegrown Heritage.

We talked about it for a number of years, and without the public television, so much of our local history would would be gone forever.

The historical programing, the documentaries, the news, the wonderful programing from national programming, such as Masterpiece Theater to our locally produced programming, which is of high quality and teaches us so much.

A partnership with Old National Bank resulted in Senior Fraud: Financial Safety for Seniors and WNIN and the University of Evansville worked together to present the final judging for the Community Changemaker Challenge.

WNIN in partnered with WFIE to present live forums on both school safety and the coronavirus.

The coronavirus and stay at Home Order presented new challenges for our communities with no more in-school lessons.

WNIN In partnered with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, the Indiana Public Broadcasting Society and the Department of Education to air a combination of educational programming and local teacher lessons during the stay at home order.

WNIN TV is 50 years old and still serving the community as needs change from a time when only four TV channels were available to viewers to the present.

When viewers can watch WNIN content on any device anywhere, WNIN TV's mission to serve with content that educates, inspires and entertains is still ever present and very strong.

So as we celebrate 50 years at WNIN, we want to thank the community for their support, because ultimately we are the community's station and we really appreciate the support of the donors, The volunteers just people in general who have come out and done something for WNIN and helped us produce a program.

We say thank you and we hope we have another great 50 years.

It's been absolutely a delightful 50 years and I wish another 50 yearsto WNIN.

It's very important that this asset remain in the community and that we sustain it as best we can for the future and for the next generations.

We've been around for 50 years and we should be around for another 50 years.

I spent over 30 years with WNIN, and even though I may not have become a wealthy and famous man, I really enjoyed my time there and felt that I was able to contribute to my community.

But I also met my wife here and now, after all this time, we're still happily married.

So thank you WNIN.

I not only a firm listener and observer of the station's broadcast signals, but I'm also a very strict supporter of this station.

I'm on the Carpenter Society, which I would recommend to anyone to do that.

And then my corporation also supports WNIN in, and I would recommend that everyone should enjoy and do that and should support the station.

I hope that everyone will see the advantage of public media and give generously WNIN in as a tremendous asset in our community.

So if you are listening to this and you're not a member of WNIN you should be, the community cannot do without WNIN.

Production funding provided by the Charles and Jan Stenftenagel family.