HoustonPBS: Our Community Responds
On August 25, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Florida as a small Category 1 storm, and the staff at was busy planning for our September membership campaign. Four days later on August 29, Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast just east of New Orleans — the storm hit with Category 4 winds and the storm surge would eventually cause a breach in the levee system protecting New Orleans. In the days preceding and following the storm, tens of thousands of evacuees spread out over a dozen states with approximately 250,000 settling in the Houston area.
On Tuesday, August 30, displaced WYES General Manager Randy Feldman was in contact with HoustonPBS General Manager John Hesse. Randy had been in Austin during the days leading up to Katrina’s strike in New Orleans and now needed to contact and organize his staff, also part of the massive evacuation. HoustonPBS immediately provided Randy with office space, a phone and computer access — the reality of Katrina’s devastation was at our doorstep.
One of the first major decisions facing HoustonPBS was what to do about our September membership drive, which was scheduled to start in just over a week. It was a tough decision, but based on Houston’s eye-opening experience in 2000 with Tropical Storm Allison — which caused widespread flooding of our viewing area — the drive was cancelled. That decision being made, HoustonPBS shifted gears to focus all available resources to Katrina relief activities.
As reports continued to flow in the days following August 29, we received confirmation that this decision was the right one. Managerial meetings resolved to add an additional week to the December drive, starting the pledge drive on the Friday after Thanksgiving and continuing through the national drive dates, in an attempt to make up for the $381,000 shortfall created by canceling the September drive. On September 1, John Hesse convened a meeting of the station management team to discuss the change in plans. At that meeting, Hesse commissioned a special station-wide task force to develop the station’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the impact on the viewing area. He made it clear that the station’s priority was to address the community’s needs including those of our new neighbors from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. On Friday, September 2, the “Our Community Responds Task Force” initiated daily meetings to review current conditions, formulate station efforts to address the identified needs of the citizens, and plan effective communications to let viewers know about these services.
The task force was composed of representatives from every department of the station, ranging from the receptionist desk (our main phone number was receiving many calls asking for a wide-range of information and some evacuees came to the station) to programming, and from production to engineering. Membership Director Sarah White was assigned to chair the internal response task force.
During those early days of task force meetings, stories from the newspapers, television and radio newscasts were shared and discussed in detail. A typical meeting lasted two hours and was followed by a strategic planning meeting with a core group of staff members. Each story reviewed was full of information about the problems our community was facing and the dire need for resources. The stress on the infrastructure was growing. Most of the national media attention in Houston was focused on the Astrodome/Reliant Center, which became shelter for many. It was clear to all that the problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina and the many needs of our new neighbors would endure past the immediate crisis and last for many months if not years to come. It was evident that the commercial media was at the forefront of the activities, thus it was imperative for HoustonPBS to define our role in the process to ensure effectiveness of our efforts.
Task force discussions were distilled into seven overarching goals for the station’s efforts.
The goals of “Our Community Responds” were defined as follows:
1) To sustain the community’s awareness, interest and motivation to support relief efforts and volunteer, and keep that focus after commercial media has moved on to other news.
2) To build community and connections among individuals, groups, organizations and communities.
3) To provide context and perspective for our viewers.
4) To serve our whole 30-county viewing area.
5) To welcome and serve our new neighbors from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
6) To use public service media (television, web, outreach) to meet the current and emerging needs of our community in the crisis and beyond.
7) To facilitate discussion and formulation of a long-term solution and plan for our community.
Regional Programming
Our resourceful programming staff found a beautiful six-part series about Louisiana history that we put on air Saturday, September 4 with local wrap-arounds using local program host Ernie Manouse. The importance to our viewers was to reinforce the value and history of a devastated city and southern Louisiana. The program provided context and perspective given the recent disaster in this region, and the locally produced segments provided contact information for support organizations like FEMA, the Red Cross and shelters. The ratings for this “stunt” were above-average for the weekend afternoon day part. We also received positive calls from viewers, and many inquiries requesting a rebroadcast of the program. The programs and wrap-arounds were rebroadcast in response to those requests.
National Fundraisers
HoustonPBS broadcast the Shelter From The Storm telethon on Friday, September 9 as well as Higher Ground, the PBS national concern on Saturday, September 17. These national fundraisers were efforts to use the HoustonPBS broadcast signal to assist our new neighbors with much needed financial support and to afford our viewers an opportunity to help in an immediate and tangible way. Funding was the most critical and immediate issue at that time, and HoustonPBS took advantage of the FCC exemption to help raise funds for the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and other groups.
Outreach Efforts
HoustonPBS Education & Outreach staffer Karen Vine was our “embedded reporter” at “Dome City,” visiting the Astrodome and Reliant Center Park as a volunteer on a daily basis. Karen’s reports to the daily task force would help inform the efforts being planned. Her role with the Education & Outreach department also led to a “Mom’s Day Out” event to help parents caring for their children at the Astrodome who needed time away to complete paperwork and take a much needed break.
HoustonPBS also set up a collection point for clothing, food and other essential items in the Melcher Center lobby. These items were delivered to Impact Church of Christ, an inner city mission.
Additionally, HoustonPBS partnered with Houston Public Radio to run a web-based micro-campaign for portable radios to give to evacuees not given access to news broadcasts.
Another important need during the early days of the crisis was helping persons in shelters find missing loved ones who had been relocated to shelters in other parts of the state. HoustonPBS partnered with the University of Houston’s Center for Public Policy Polling Center on the third floor of the Melcher Center to quickly orchestrate a phone bank of volunteers providing services to callers who were looking for lost loved ones. The phone number was promoted in on-air spots on HoustonPBS and the number was also promoted on . Volunteers took calls and used the computers located in the Polling Center to search websites for missing family postings, providing internet access for some whose only possessions were transported in a trash bag. This service reunited a number of individuals with their families.
“For All Nations” (working title) outreach efforts represented our commitment to remember the special needs of some of our new neighbors, particularly those with possible language barriers, such as the large Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking populations just arriving in our community. HoustonPBS added links to our website to direct viewers to resources in their native languages.
As a result of the task force, HoustonPBS’ website immediately became a resource for hurricane relief information, and interstitial announcements were taped and broadcast referring the viewing audience to local resources.
Local Programming
The HoustonPBS production staff quickly got to work producing local programs to address identified needs. The issues of emotional loss and grief topped the list in terms of importance, followed by food, clothing, shelter and child care. HoustonPBS produced a half-hour special for the connection (the HoustonPBS public affairs program) on the topic of grief and loss. This program aired several times, starting on Friday, September 9. Additionally, the connection staff produced an hour-long special entitled The Long View which addressed the issues beyond the crisis as Houston looked to preparedness for future disasters. This program also aired on September 9 and was repeated in other day parts. HoustonPBS then developed a special hour-long, call-in program focusing on legal issues related to the hurricanes. The live Know Your Rights special generated many calls when it aired October 3. Live calls continued to come in the days following, with many requests for a rebroadcast.
The most challenging broadcast idea that emerged out of the daily task force meetings was the concept of an open-house style program — a virtual community bulletin board of information about how the community responded to the crisis and how the viewers can help. Over Labor Day weekend, shelters — including the Astrodome — were flooded with food and clothing, so much that it was asked that no more resources be brought to those locations at that time. Also over that long weekend, multitudes came out to offer volunteer help, and many were turned away because the organizers were not set up to handle all the help offered. Many felt this initial outpouring of concern was rebuffed or unnecessary, and yet the needs of the community continued. It became clear that as time passed, additional updated information would need to be shared with the HoustonPBS viewing area so people would be encouraged to continue to give of their time and money to help address the needs of the new neighbors and the communities trying to assist them. It was out of those needs that Our Community Responds, a 10-hour live broadcast was born.
While most commercial news organizations were concentrating their reports on the significant efforts in the Astrodome/Reliant Center areas, the task force recognized that our entire broadcast region was in need of a forum and information. A telethon-type broadcast was proposed, with a target airdate of September 10. It soon became apparent that organizations were too consumed with their relief efforts to even answer their phones much less participate in our broadcast, no matter what the potential benefit.
Volunteers and staff began to assemble lists of potential participants, and the task force continued to meet and evaluate the ability of these groups to join in our broadcast. Ultimately, Saturday, September 23 was designated as the airdate for what was then titled Katrina: Our Community Responds. As scheduling continued, a new storm, Hurricane Rita, drew dead aim on the Houston/Galveston area. In response, on Wednesday, September 21 — just two days before the Katrina: Our Community Responds broadcast — The University of Houston (the license holder for HoustonPBS and Houston Public Radio) closed to allow area evacuation to begin. The broadcast was cancelled and an emergency communications center was set up in the HoustonPBS facility. We spent the weekend monitoring the storm, which eventually made landfall about 60 miles east of our area. Prior to landfall, our area underwent the largest mass evacuation in U. S. history. While the Houston/Galveston area was spared a direct hit, viewers in east Texas were devastated.
When the staff returned to work on Wednesday, September 28, we put our offices back together, and in a little over 24 hours, our task force reinstituted meetings. Expanding to encompass the impact of both Katrina and Rita, we picked the date of Saturday, October 22 as the broadcast date for Our Community Responds. With a better understanding of the recovery activities, we allowed enough time for the eastern portion of our viewing area to recover and participate.
We expanded our original broadcast from eight to ten hours to guarantee inclusion of the Rita-damaged areas. Staff and volunteers spent days pouring over websites, news accounts and other sources identifying and documenting potential participants in the broadcast. A primary goal was to maximize the outreach effort to as much of our 30-county broadcast region as possible.
Our Community Responds aired from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, October 22, with 151 representatives from 77 community groups appearing. Groups in cable penetration areas drove hundreds of miles to participate and receive 10 minutes of airtime to tell their story to the community. Viewers were given information about what happened in the communities, what help is still needed, and how they can get involved in making a difference in their neighborhood. In addition to county and city groups, viewers heard from evacuees, FEMA representatives, the Houston Red Cross, meteorologists, commercial media representatives, employment groups, as well as, legal and food bank spokespersons. Representatives from the Houston Independent School District, Care for Elders, the S.P.C.A., United Way, church groups, LULAC, and the Council on Islamic Relations participated. Prior to the broadcast, some doubts persisted as to the value of 10 hours of content and to the format of the program. In execution, it met every expressed goal, including that of returning the “public” to public television in our area.
It should be noted that Our Community Responds was not an easy sell to our broadcast contingent. The length and style of the broadcast was challenged over and over again: Would anyone watch a 10-hour broadcast? Why not produce packages with b-roll? How do we produce a live program for 10-straight hours? Isn’t it just going to be the same thing over and over again? Why not provide some entertainment? In the end, everyone bought in and understood viewership was a bonus, not the most important goal for this broadcast. Providing a voice for as many community groups as possible was the priority. Internally, participation was so broad that when the program credits were being typed, the operator jokingly asked if it wouldn’t be easier to just type, “Please go to the HoustonPBS website for a list of employees.”
Future Efforts
HoustonPBS production is currently planning a special entitled How Safe Are We? A Community Discussion (w.t.). This Fred Friendly-style telecast will address issues of preparedness which were very much on the public’s mind during the evacuation of Houston for Hurricane Rita.
Other ideas for possible programs resulting from task force meetings include a documentary program entitled Houston Now: New Faces in Town (working title) about the dramatic demographic shifts caused by the relocation of 250,000 persons to Houston for the short-term and possibly longer term. Another concept is Writing Houston’s Lives (w.t.) — an oral history project, based on a similar one executed in Austin, which would document the stories of those living through these disasters in the Bayou City. And Re-Stranded Cajuns (w.t.) is a concept for a documentary that would tell the stories of those evacuees who came to Houston and other parts of our viewing area and their experiences during these challenging times. This could include the renegade bus drivers who refused to follow all the rules when breaking them meant helping others, transfer students going to college far away from their home campuses, special challenges for transgender evacuees in more conservative regions of our viewing area, and extraordinary efforts to set up a clinic in the Astrodome complex.
HoustonPBS rose to the challenge of addressing our viewing area’s needs at a time when the community needed that assistance the most. Finding the best way, the most needed way, the most appropriate way for public television and the web to be of service was a challenge the task force struggled with from day one. That challenge continues as does the ongoing need for immediate relief support for Rita survivors who are putting their lives back together in east Texas, as well as the Katrina evacuees who have left the shelters and have blended into the community at large. Some speculate the next big focus of attention will come when the FEMA vouchers run out in two or three months. Hopefully public television will not wait until the crisis hits to shed light on this problem and help initiate the necessary assistance from the community.
Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone, described America as a place where people don’t know their neighbors anymore and most are scared to try to meet them. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have begun to change all of that. Whether it was in volunteering side-by-side to feed thousands of new neighbors here from Katrina or meeting long-time neighbors for the first time as together they boarded up houses in preparation for Rita, Houston citizens are learning what community is all about, one neighborhood at a time. These are important lessons for us and for the nation as a whole, and lessons that public television is best equipped to tell, to amplify and help replicate. The October 22 broadcast of Our Community Responds was Putnam’s principle of “social capital” on parade. May HoustonPBS, and public television as an industry, stay tuned in to the community and what it needs. If we make it our priority to meet the needs of our community, we will indeed become indispensable. We must be listening intently and ready to take bold action to seize this unique moment in our history – the nation’s and our industry’s – building upon the past and at last putting the public back in public television for good.
