WILL Press Room
WILL-TV Documentaries Win Emmy Nominations
Monday, August 24, 2009
The WILL-TV documentaries Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency and Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit have been nominated for four Mid-America Emmy Awards.
The Lincoln program, which focused on Abraham Lincoln’s experiences as a lawyer on the circuit in central Illinois, was nominated for best historical documentary. Alison Davis Wood produced the program, and Tim Hartin and Colin Hartin were co-producers.
Wood was also nominated in the program writing category, and Tim Hartin and Colin Hartin were nominated along with Julius Bolton for program photography, all for the Lincoln documentary.
Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit, produced by Denise La Grassa and John Paul, was also nominated as best historical documentary. It told the surprising history of the University of Illinois football stadium, from the Galloping Ghost who emerged on dedication day, to crucial wins and losses, to the feats of players with names like Butkus, Grabowski, and Halas.
“We’re thrilled and honored that the Mid-American Emmy Awards recognized these two programs with nominations,” said Illinois Public Media general manager Mark Leonard. “Both were well-received by our viewers, and viewers at other public broadcasting stations. We’re glad the Emmy judges recognized their excellence as well.”
The Memorial Stadium program aired on WILL-TV and other Illinois PBS stations in September 2008, and the Lincoln documentary aired last February on PBS stations across the country during Lincoln’s Bicentennial.
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Red Grange Remembers
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Highlights and Reflections of Football’s First Superstar
Featuring never-before-broadcast portions of Grange’s last significant interview interspersed with photos and film of his career.
When Harold “Red” Grange went out for football at the University of Illinois, he found himself on the field with 90-100 other freshmen. At only 160 pounds, he was smaller than most of them and he’d read about many of them in the Chicago newspapers. “I thought, ‘What chance do I have against these guys?’ I didn’t even ask for a suit. I turned around and went back to the fraternity house.”
After his friends convinced him to return, coaches lined up all the players and told them to run 50 yards. Grange outran them all. From then on, he had everyone’s attention.
He became a national sensation the day in 1924 that he ran for four touchdowns in the first 12 minutes of a game against arch-rival Michigan. Nicknamed the Galloping Ghost, Grange was a three-time All-American at Illinois and went on to help launch professional football as a player for the Chicago Bears. ESPN named him the greatest college football player of all time.
Red Grange Remembers, a new WILL-TV production airing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8, features never-before-broadcast portions of Grange’s last significant video interview, interspersed with photos and film of his career. Included is new footage of Kemper Peacock, the man who interviewed Grange in 1982, describing their interaction and how Grange was such a powerful presence that he seemed to climb “through the camera.”
Before Grange came along, professional football was essentially a club sport, Peacock said. Grange helped draw the crowds to turn it into a spectator sport. “I realized this was an individual who, perhaps more than any other, had an enormous influence on college football and professional football, and led a historic life,” said Peacock, a sports producer who interviewed Grange for two hours for a 90-second CBS Sports halftime segment.
In the program produced by Denise La Grassa, Grange talks about how he handled his lifelong status as a sports hero; his relationships with Ty Cobb, Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth and other sports figures; why he was superstitious about the number 77; how he would loaf in practice but get fired up for games; why baseball is his true sports passion; why he wasn’t a good coach; and how professional football evolved.
La Grassa discovered the existence of the interview tapes when working on the WILL-TV documentary, Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit, about the history of the football stadium at the University of Illinois. “Red Grange is an American icon,” La Grassa said, “so finding out about the existence of these tapes was exciting. Now everyone will get to hear him tell his stories.”
The program is being distributed to PBS stations around the country by NETA, the National Educational Telecommunications Association.
Red Grange Remembers is made possible by a grant from the Mid-Central Illinois Regional Council of Carpenters. Additional funding was provided by Ronald Filler, Charles Finn and Robert O. Endres.
Photo: Culver Pictures.
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Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency
Monday, December 01, 2008
A documentary produced by WILL-TV
Abraham Lincoln’s experiences on muddy roads, in homes of friends and in courtrooms on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit shaped the views and honed the skills that guided him when he became president.
Editors: Download print-quality photos Riding through prairie grass on trails just barely wide enough for his horse, Abraham Lincoln traveled more than 500 miles each spring and fall as a lawyer on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit, then the fastest growing area of the country.
His experiences from 1837 to 1860 on muddy roads, in homes of friends and in courtrooms on the circuit in central Illinois shaped the views and honed the skills that guided him when he became president. WILL-TV’s Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency tells the story of the cases he tried and people he met during this critical period of his life. “That’s where he really got a sense of the various kinds of problems people faced,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the experts featured in the documentary. “He got a sense of the exuberance of their dreams and their hopes. In a certain sense, I think it was the root of his political education.”
Reenactments of Lincoln on horseback on the dusty circuit, telling stories with friends and trying cases in court help viewers envision his formative experiences on the circuit. Viewers see Lincoln as they’ve never seen him before: defending a slave holder trying to reclaim a slave named Jane Bryant and her children; brandishing a sword on the banks of the Mississippi River at dawn before being talked out of fighting a duel; and crossing the prairie reading a book atop his horse, Old Tom, on the way to his next stop on the circuit.
The one-hour documentary shows how Lincoln’s work on the circuit meshed neatly with his political career. In the evenings after finishing his legal work, he would gather a crowd for a speech, enabling him to advance careers in both politics and law during his travels. As he made friends and visited in people’s homes, he was building the political base that supported him in the years ahead, experts say.
The gangly, disheveled Lincoln made an impression when he came into town. “People noticed him. Here on the frontier, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he hardly ever used foul language. There was some special quality about him that people did notice,” said historian Orville Vernon Burton.
He mesmerized audiences in the courtroom with his storytelling and speaking skills. “He had a tremendous sense of the music of language and of the rhythm of language and this was completely self-taught,” said James Cornelius, a historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Lincoln also had a remarkable ability to think through both sides of a case, startling his opponents in court by making all the arguments on the other side of the case, and then picking them apart sentence by sentence. He developed skills as a negotiator as he encouraged clients to settle out of court. By the mid 1850s, Lincoln was the leading attorney in the state of Illinois, trying more than 300 cases heard by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Of the 5,000 cases Lincoln handled during his legal career, the documentary features his representation of slaveholder Robert Matson; his defense of Melissa Goings, who was accused of murdering her abusive husband; his successful defense of murder suspect Duff Armstrong by using the moon tables in the Farmer’s Almanac; and his representation of Rebecca Thomas, a Revolutionary War soldier’s widow whose pension was threatened by a pension agent.
The documentary examines Lincoln’s attitudes toward race and slavery, which developed in discussions with people on the circuit. His anti-slavery speeches emphasize over and over again the inherent unfairness of slavery, said historian Michael Burlingame. Lincoln said that making someone work all day while the profits went to someone else was “organized, systematized robbery,” said Burlingame.
The WILL-TV documentary was produced and written by Alison Davis Wood, co-produced and directed by Tim Hartin, and edited by Colin Hartin. Wood was the producer of Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of Remembrance, Walter Burley Griffin: In His Own Right, and other documentaries. Hartin was the producer of Ten Sisters: A True Story, The Song and the Slogan, and other documentaries.
Wood said that she at first envisioned the documentary as a kind of road movie, looking at Lincoln with his buddies, traveling around having a good time. “That’s certainly part of it,” she said. “But we realized that Lincoln was making several simultaneous journeys during this time. He was becoming a well-liked and well-respected attorney, but he was also becoming a national political figure while shaping and refining his views on the important issues he would face in the White House.”
Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency was made possible by contributions from the Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; Country Financial; the University of Illinois College of Law; the Monticello Chamber of Commerce; the Office of the Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Illinois State Bar Association and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum.
WILL is the not-for-profit public media service of the College of Media at the University of Illinois. WILL’s programming and community engagement projects stimulate minds and inspire lifelong learning; provide a public forum for the diversity of voices and opinions essential to a healthy democracy; provide quality content, respecting the intelligence of our audience; explore issues of importance to the communities we serve; come from a trusted media organization, accountable and responsive to people we serve; and present a continuous stage for performing arts programs, assuring the arts a place in our daily lives.
Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency is distributed to public television stations by American Public Television. With more than 10,000 hours of programming in its library, American Public Television (APT) has been a prime source of programming for the nation’s public television stations for 47 years, distributing more than 300 new program titles per year. In 2006, APT launched Create – the TV channel featuring the best of public television’s lifestyle programming. Known for its leadership in identifying innovative, worthwhile and viewer-friendly programming, APT has established a tradition of providing public television stations with program choices that strengthen and customize their schedules, such as Rick Steves’ Europe, Worldfocus, Globe Trekker, Simply Ming, Sara’s Weeknight Meals, America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Doc Martin, Broadway: The Golden Age, Lidia’s Family Table, Rosemary and Thyme, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, The Big Comfy Couch, Celine Dion: A New Day, Queen Rock Montreal, Monarchy With David Starkey, Spain…on the road Again, and other prominent documentaries, dramatic series, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies. For more information about APT’s programs and services, visit APTonline.org.
Contact:
Mary Barrineau
WILL-TV
217-244-5080
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Hoopeston Youth Project Wins National Award
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Prairie Center Health Systems Inc. and WILL AM-FM-TV have been awarded the Exceptional Rural Program Award by the National Rural Alcohol & Drug Abuse Network Inc. for a project that helped develop an action plan to address the needs of teenagers in Hoopeston.
Prairie Center Health Systems Inc. and WILL AM-FM-TV have been awarded the Exceptional Rural Program Award by the National Rural Alcohol & Drug Abuse Network Inc. for a project that helped develop an action plan to address the needs of teenagers in Hoopeston.
The award, part of the Harold E. Hughes Awards of Excellence competition, is given annually to a rural program that exemplifies outstanding contribution to the rural alcohol and drug abuse field.
As a result of the two-year project in Hoopeston, an in-school Big Brothers-Big Sisters mentoring program was established and is ongoing, matching teens with elementary students in need; a Mayor’s Youth Council, meeting weekly, has been formed by the mayor, giving the youth a direct voice in their community; and a new teen center opened to provide an alcohol-free place for older teens to come to listen to music and dance on a Friday or Saturday night.
WILL and Prairie Center began discussions with both young people and community leaders in Hoopeston, in conjunction with WILL-TV’s airing of the PBS documentary series Country Boys about two teenage boys trying to overcome the poverty and family dysfunction of their childhood in rural America.
In Hoopeston, both teens and adults raised the issue of substance abuse as a particular concern. WILL-AM 580 News examined the challenges faced by teens in Hoopeston with a series of reports by news director Tom Rogers.
The spring 2006 work of Prairie Center and WILL was the springboard for the energized students and adults to come together in the fall of 2006 for a teen-led community-wide town hall meeting organized by the teens and attended by more than 65 community residents. The students challenged the adult audience to help them find more local recreational outlets, more part-time employment, more mentoring and additional outlets for youth to have a say in their community.
Betty Seidel, Prairie Center director of development, said the project was focused on hope. “I think we helped the young people and the community leaders realize that there was hope that they could create more positive opportunities for their youth, for their future leaders,” Seidel said.
“For the People” Looks at Election Issues
Monday, September 22, 2008
Thursday nights in October on WILL-TV
WILL-TV and experts from the U of I Institute of Government and Public Affairs (IGPA) will examine how the positions of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain on energy and the economy would affect people in Illinois.
The series, For the People: Election 2008, will also look at the ballot question on whether Illinois needs a Constitutional Convention, and end with an hour-long roundtable discussion on the presidential campaign with a panel scheduled to include former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar.
WILL’s John Paul will moderate the discussions.
Programs and scheduled panelists are:
Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.: Energy: Don Fullerton and Andrew P. Morriss, both of IGPA;
Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m.: Economy: Elizabeth Powers and Daniel P. McMillen, both of IGPA;
Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m.: Constitutional Convention, Brian Gaines and Richard J. Winkel, both of IGPA;
Oct. 30, 8 p.m.: Pre-Election Roundtable: Former Gov. Jim Edgar, Kent Redfield and Bob Rich, all of IGPA, and state Sen. Mike Frerichs.
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WILL WWII Project Wins Emmy Nominations
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Two WILL-TV programs, both part of the station’s Central Illinois World War II Stories project, have been nominated for regional 2008 Emmy Awards by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Mid-America Chapter.
An hour-long special, which aired as part of the 2008 season of WILL-TV’s Prairie Fire, was nominated in the arts/entertainment program-special category. It included stories about USS Indianapolis survivors, the life of a Japanese-American in an internment camp, and the survivor of a kamikaze attack on the USS Missouri. Other stories featured the experiences of a remarkable woman who served on the front lines in Europe for the American Red Cross, a man who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and one of the first female navigation instructors.
The other nomination, in the historical/cultural-program story/feature category, was for a Prairie Fire story about Tuskegee Airman Col. Elmer Jones, one of six original aviation cadets for the Tuskegee Airmen trained at Chanute Field in Rantoul. Jones, who became ground crew commander, served his country in aircraft engineering in an all-black unit during World War II. He maintains that being in a segregated unit provided an unexpected opportunity for the Tuskegee Airmen. They were able to prove their abilities at a time when people questioned whether African Americans should be allowed to fly and maintain planes.
The hour-long documentary and the video story were produced by WILL-TV’s Denise La Grassa, edited by Eleanore Stasheff and researched by David Noreen. Henry Szujewski was executive producer.
Both the World War II special and the Elmer Jones story can be viewed at http://www.will.illinois.edu/prairiefire.
The Mid-America Emmy Awards will be presented Saturday, Oct. 4, at the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis.
Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit
Thursday, September 04, 2008
“Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit”
A new WILL-TV documentary premiering at 7 pm Tuesday, Sept. 9
Repeated at 7:30 pm Sept. 11, 4:30 pm Sept. 13 and 5:30 pm Sept. 14.
Editors: Click here to download high-resolution photos. Please include the photo credit if you use any of these photos.
Watch a preview, see bonus footage, read producer notes and bios
Steam engines, horses and painstaking labor erected Memorial Stadium. So did the spirited fundraising of Illini students, alumni and other fans who contributed $2 million for construction, and of community members who wanted to honor soldiers who died in World War I. The memories built in the 85 years since the stadium opened — from the Galloping Ghost who emerged on dedication day, to crucial wins and losses, to the feats of players with names like Butkus, Grabowski, and Halas — have made it a place of legend.
Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit, a new WILL-TV local documentary premiering at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9, tells the surprising history of the stadium, one of the first of the new magnificent sporting venues built on university campuses in the early 1920s.
Premiering to coincide with the Sept. 6 rededication of the renovated stadium, the documentary looks at how students raised funds to replace the old wooden bleachers at Illinois Field with a stadium both functional and classically grand that would also be a memorial to the war dead. Designed by the same architects who planned Soldier Field, the structure on a swampy southwest campus site was a great human and engineering achievement.
The Illini spirit that helped build the stadium is still present today, said Marching Illini director Peter Griffin. “When we talk about tradition, it’s not always about remembering the past; we re-create it every Saturday afternoon and part of the re-creation is the stadium itself.” It’s more than a building, he said. “It’s something that lives and breathes every time there’s an event in there, and people who attend bring it back to life.”
The documentary, produced by WILL-TV’s John Paul and Denise La Grassa, includes never-before-seen footage from an interview with Harold “Red” Grange produced by Kemper Peacock Productions for the CBS Sports series “In Their Own Words.”
Grange, named the greatest college football player of all time by ESPN earlier this year, describes in the 1982 interview how his fraternity brothers made him play football as well as track and baseball, and how he achieved the dedication day performance in which he ran the opening kickoff back for a 95-yard touchdown, and scored five more touchdowns as Illinois routed Michigan 39-14.
In another interview done for the documentary, ex-Illini J.C. Caroline describes how he has always felt the stadium was part of him, not just because he played football for the Illini, but because he worked as the stadium’s night watchman while in school. Viewers learn:
• The story of the boy who was born and lived at the stadium, riding his bike up and down the ramps and earning a few extra bucks carrying reporters’ typewriters up the stairs to the press box.
• The tragic story of a 30-year-old Urbana husband and father in whose memory one of the stadium’s massive columns was built.
• New insights into Red Grange’s dedication game performance.
• What the stadium means to former players Dick Butkus and Jim Grabowski, along with athletic director Ron Guenther, sports reporter Loren Tate and others.
The documentary also looks at how George Huff and Robert Zuppke built the Illinois football program with innovative ideas, the big game that produced such a huge crowd that fans clamored for a new stadium, and the architecture that made a steel and concrete athletic facility also appropriate as a monument for fallen soldiers. Historic photos and old film footage are interwoven with interviews to tell the stadium’s story.
To share your stadium memories and explore more surprising stories about Memorial Stadium, visit http://www.will.illinois.edu/stadium.
Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit is made possible by a grant from the Mid-Central Illinois Regional Council of Carpenters. Additional funding was provided by the King Family in memory of Fred L. King.
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Picnics, Potlucks and Tailgates
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
7 pm Monday, Sept. 8, on WILL-TV
Fall in the air calls for food on the go!
When fall approaches, Denise and Mike Blakeman of Blue Mound start their tailgate preparations. They gather the lawn chairs, and someone in their group stocks up on orange and blue plates, cups and napkins. As each Illini football game approaches, the group confers on who’ll bring the meat, the side dishes, the snacks and the desserts.
Sitting in lawn chairs in the Loyalty Section parking west of Memorial Stadium, they relish watching the people, having University of Illinois students drop by, and sharing their favorite tailgate foods.
For side dishes to accompany their grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, they rely largely on “grab and go” foods to feed the 20-25 people who stop in, says Sally Brown, one of the cooks of the group. “I try to think of things people don’t usually get or have at home,” she said.
Brown provided several recipes for a cookbook published in conjunction with WILL-TV’s all-new, local cooking special, Picnics, Potlucks and Tailgates, airing at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8. WILL-AM host David Inge and WILL chef-in-residence Doyle Moore host the live special, which focuses on food on the go, for outdoor feasting and for shared meals away from home. Moore will prepare meat and egg pie, and he and Inge will help guest cooks demonstrate how to prepare food for picnics, potlucks and tailgates.
“We asked seasoned tailgaters and picnickers to share some of their secrets and recipes, and they didn’t disappoint us,” said Heather Miller, who is heading up the project for WILL-TV. “We have traditional favorites as well as new and unusual ideas for outdoor and potluck fare.”
Cooks featured on the program and the dishes they’ll be preparing will be U of I volleyball coach Don Hardin, Champaign, corn salad; Larry Eastep, Springfield, quick fix tailgate chili; Steve Trame, Champaign, Trame’s tailgate chili; Jerry Gaston, Springfield, chicken and wild rice soup; Anne Farrell, Champaign, the best brownies; Melissa and Grant Siegmund, St. Joseph, corn spoon bread; Cammy Seguin, Tuscola, picnic casserole; Doug Rokke, Rantoul, Swiss steak; Dorothy Williams, Urbana, Joe’s baked beans; and Dianna Oliveira, Champaign, apple pie cake.
The program is scheduled to coincide with the dedication of the newly renovated Memorial Stadium as well as WILL-TV’s new local documentary, Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit, about history of the stadium, which airs at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9.
Honoring Central Illinois Teachers
Monday, June 09, 2008
WILL-TV airs video profiles of 10 outstanding central Illinois teachers.
9 pm Thursday,
June 26
The broadcast of the Golden Apple Awards 2008 ceremony and teacher profiles is an extension of WILL’s efforts to develop the intellectual, emotional and social potential of children. “Our broadcast is designed to capture the special qualities of these skilled and dedicated teachers, reward their achievements, and inspire all those who work to nurture and educate children in central Illinois,” said Mark Leonard, WILL’s general manager.
Central Illinois winners are: Don Jolly, 6th grade, Our Saviour School, Jacksonville; Shameem Rakha, 6th-8th grade reading, Franklin Middle School, Champaign; Hillary Sawyer, 5th grade, Booker T. Washington, Champaign; Elaine Harmon, kindergarten, Thomas Paine Elementary, Urbana; Sheila Stephens, high school science, Illinois School for the Deaf, Jacksonville; Suzanne McDowell, high school cooperative education, Bloomington Area Vocational Center; Nancy Powell, high school math, Bloomington High School; David Hirst, high school Spanish, Normal West High School; Roberta Maubach, 3rd grade, Thomas Metcalf Lab School, Normal; and Tim McCollum, 8th grade, Charleston Middle School.
Golden Apple Central Illinois (GACI) is a new program of the Golden Apple Foundation, an organization that has been celebrating and teaching educators in the Chicago area since 1985. Golden Apple’s principle focus is that all children deserve excellent teachers.
Golden Apple Central Illinois Award-winning teachers receive a paid semester sabbatical at the University of Illinois, a laptop computer, a cash award of $3,000, and the opportunity through the GACI Academy of Educators to create educational programs that have a positive impact on students.
Vote for Your Favorite Britcom!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
It’s an election year for British comedies on WILL-TV, the ninth year in a row viewers have the opportunity to vote for their favorite among five British comedies the station is considering airing. During the Great Britcom Vote at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 1, viewers can sample five British comedies and then call in a vote for one of them. WILL-TV program director David Thiel plans to purchase the winning program to air during the next fiscal year.
Some old favorites return this year, along with several new-to-WILL-TV entries.
First up is Mulberry, last year’s runner-up in the Great Britcom Vote. Geraldine McEwan stars as the formidable Miss Farnaby, who is searching for someone to assist with general domestic tasks. Out of the blue, Mulberry appears without any qualifications, except the ability to sweet-talk his way into the job. The old house is not dull any more, and Miss Farnaby’s life will never be the same again.
My Hero, at 7:40 p.m., stars Ardal O’Hanlon as the naïve health-food shop-owner George Sunday, alias the world’s most famous superhero, Thermoman. Thermoman falls in love with nurse Janet Dawkins. The couple has to overcome the conflicts that arise from Thermoman’s double life.
In Open All Hours, at 8:20 p.m., Arkwright’s Emporium is a truly unique shopping experience in the age of the supermarket. Arkwright, the brown-coated, stuttering, Northern shop-keeper is forced to open his corner-shop for as long as the law will permit. But, he still finds time for his passions — parting unsuspecting customers from their hard earned cash, keeping his daydreaming nephew Granville in line, and his tireless pursuit of nurse Gladys Emmanuel.
Are You Being Served, at 9 p.m., returns as a choice this year. Camp Mr. Humphries, Mrs. Slocombe’s pussy and the ridiculous goings-on at Grace Bros. have kept audiences laughing since 1973. A large, old-fashioned department store in London, Grace Bros. is still run on strictly hierarchical lines. Each member of staff knows his or her place — in theory. In practice, they are all engaged in their own private wars with management and with each other. John Inman plays Mr. Humphries, the unforgettable salesperson in Gentleman’s Ready to Wear.
In To the Manor Born, at 9:40 p.m., Penelope Keith is the snobbish Lady fforbes-Hamilton. In the face of her late husband’s creditors, bank, and the government, she has to auction off her estate. A millionaire bachelor of Czechoslovakian extraction who runs a multinational grocery business moves in. Peter Bowles plays Richard DeVere, who represents everything Lady fforbes-Hamilton regards as bad taste.
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Contact:
Mary Barrineau
WILL AM-FM-TV
(217) 333-1070