A television camera at at a 1952 UT football game.

Though KTBC-TV Channel 7, the first television station in Austin, wouldn’t come on air until Thanksgiving of ’52, the committee members had seen what stations from as far away as San Antonio and Houston could do. They gushed with enthusiasm after watching televised events, such as the ’48 political conventions, Senate hearings on organized crime, and the San Francisco conference creating the United Nations.

“Those who sat ringside via TV … can speak with missionary zeal,” the TV for JB campaign brochure gushed.

Committee members envisioned that student journalists would use television to cover and report on events as if they were actually there. “For embryonic newspapermen, it will mean a new training dimension—applied, visual eye-witness reporting practice,” the brochure said. “[A] thrilling new era is within the foreseeable future.”

In its brochure, the TV for JB committee responded to questions about why, if it would be such a great learning tool, the University wouldn’t pay for the television. The committee responded that UT administrators were afraid if they bought a TV for one department, they’d be on the hook for a lot more. There were only three TVs on campus at the time, according to the committee brochure.

“It seems that if one university department gets a TV set, they all want it,” the brochure stated. “The expense involved would raise the collective eyebrows of the Texas Legislature.”

Integrating television into the Journalism Building wasn’t the campaign’s only mission. TV for JB aimed to create a “Living Memorial for Those Who Gave Their Lives” in World War II. At less than seven years in the past, the war was a recent and sometimes painful memory.

Twenty two of the 1,400 journalism alumni who served in the U.S. military had died. TV for JB planned to honor them by installing a plaque with each fallen soldier’s name on the new TV.

TV for JB chairman Ben Z. Kaplan, himself a veteran, wrote, “Ours…was the World War II generation, with its unfortunate disruptions. Most of us served; inevitably some were killed. I looked at that list [of the dead] recently. I’d known half of them.”

Kaplan’s roommate at UT had been Daily Texan editor Jack Howard. Howard, a Navy ensign, died after a Japanese torpedo sank the USS Strong as the ship supported Marine landings in New Georgia.

Kaplan sent several newsletters to committee members that summer of 1952, urging them to reach out to contact lists and ask for more money.

That’s when donations began to trickle in. Howard’s widow sent in a donation and wrote she hoped to bring her 9-year-old son, Jack Jr., to the ceremony so he could be “exposed” to journalism fever.

Kaplan reported that Liz and Les Carpenter contributed in memory of James Jack Scott Adkins, for whom their son was named. And Fort Worth Star-Telegram editor J.M. North Jr. sent a check for $25 in honor of Stanley Gunn, a staffer who was killed on Leyte.

When the three-month campaign ended, the committee had received 231 contributions totaling $1,304.30 (about $15,000 in 2023 buying power). Committee leadership voted to purchase a Zenith TV, which was marketed under the name “Canterbury.”

The Zenith cost $542.50 (around $6,000 today), leaving money for the plaque and antenna..

 Once the TV set was in place, the School of Journalism faculty knew it wasn’t a toy and developed policy guidelines. The task was given to associate professor Alan Scott, whose regulations allowed use of the TV for “important national, state and local programs” between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. After hours, students or faculty could watch entertainment shows, but only if there were no journalistically educational programs available. No matter when they watched, they had to “petition” Scott for access 24 hours before the telecast.           

The TV for JB committee members couldn’t have known what they were starting. In 1974, the School of Journalism, now part of the College of Communications, moved into the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center which covers an entire block circumvented by the Drag, Dean Keeton Boulevard, Whitis and 25th Street.  

It featured studios for KLRN-TV (later KLRU-TV), Austin’s PBS affiliate. Texas Student Publications (now Texas Student Media) would one day include Texas Student Television, the only student-run station with its own FCC broadcast television license. In 2012, the School of Journalism would find itself across the street at the Belo Center for New Media, where high-definition screens festoon the lobbies like tickertape at a V-J Day parade, confirming Ben Kaplan’s observation in the summer of ’52:

“For the past four days, I have watched, on and off, the GOP convention on TV. I wonder if it did not occur to you, as it did to me, that regardless of our political beliefs, this is TV at its journalistic best—this fascinating, challenging, ubiquitous medium that belongs in the JB lab just as surely as the typewriter, foolscap, and copy pencil.”

 Maybe even more, Ben, maybe even more