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| Robert Hagopian |
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| At work, KQED |
Bob Hagopian created many wonderful programs for KQED TV and KCTS TV. He started working for KQED about 1955, coming from KPIX TV. KQED was cutting edge at that time. Creating its own programs explicitly for the Bay Area. I was on several shows, The Math Club, The Laura Weber Show (a music show for children), and also an Art Program for children, which I can’t remember the name of. When we had rainy days in elementary school I would often find myself watching myself with the rest of my class as our teacher would tune into one of the instructional programs KQED offered.
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| That's me, middle right with bangs |
KQED was a very close-knit community.
The people who worked there were very
excited about the opportunity to create local relevant shows. In 1968, when the
San Francisco newspapers went on strike my father was one of the creators of
NewsRoom, an innovative approach to supplying news on the air. The upstairs of the old KQED building on 4th st and Bryant st. became the newsroom where
members of the new team lead by Mel Wax would read the news on the air from
other sources.
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My father also traveled to New York (I think) where he created a documentary on a famous Russian violinist of the 1960’s for which he won an award. (I wish I could remember the program and/or the violinist’s name). He was very pleased to make this documentary, I can remember, in the days before he left, his coming home and learning to read music so he could follow along with the music as they filmed the documentary.
The people who worked at KQED often had
parties on the weekends at their second homes (this the age of having a second
home as the norm for this crew of people) in Bolinas or Inverness and other places. We would drive from
Potereo Hill over HWY 1 in our big boat of a station wagon, me in the way back
with a paper bag for when I got car sick, and arrive for pot-luck meals, great
music, drink and ?? while we the kids, all ran around like crazy. I loved those times.
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| Bolinas party |
My father would often take me to work
with him at KQED. I would spend time with Betty, the woman who ran the phone switchboard,
(which now would be considered archaic, you would plug in and out of an upright
board to connect with the different parties) she would let me be in charge of
the switchboard – a job I loved!
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| Gini & Bob at a KQED auction |
My mother, Virginia (Irvin) Hagopian,
a wonderful graphic artist at the time, was also working in the art department
for KQED. Back then it truly was a
family affair.
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| This was taken on the day I graduated from Francisco Jr. High School just before my father moved to Seattle. |
My father moved to Seattle in 1973 where he became Executive Producer Director for KCTS. Among other things he created a series called “Images of Indians” with Phil Lucas which won the Special Achievement Award in Documentary Film, in 1980 from the American Indian Film Institute and the Prix Italia Award in 1981. He was very proud of this.
I appreciated his enthusiasms and accomplishments. His energies took us to Cyprus when he was asked by the Cypriot government to teach the Cypriots to run their own Television stations after the British pulled out in 1966/67. He was always interested in people and their plights, we went on many demonstrations, be they about the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, or Farm Worker's Rights. He worked with Maya Angelou, Cesar Chavez, The SF Mime Troupe and many other human rights people trying to make a difference. As a child I didn’t appreciate all the creative and energetic people he brought into our home. I do appreciate them now. He lived in Seattle until he died, July 21st, 1983, a week into being 60.
I appreciated his enthusiasms and accomplishments. His energies took us to Cyprus when he was asked by the Cypriot government to teach the Cypriots to run their own Television stations after the British pulled out in 1966/67. He was always interested in people and their plights, we went on many demonstrations, be they about the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, or Farm Worker's Rights. He worked with Maya Angelou, Cesar Chavez, The SF Mime Troupe and many other human rights people trying to make a difference. As a child I didn’t appreciate all the creative and energetic people he brought into our home. I do appreciate them now. He lived in Seattle until he died, July 21st, 1983, a week into being 60.
From the
Archive: Maya Angelou Hosts 1968 Series ‘Blacks, Blues, Black!’
FEB 13, 2015
In 1968, Maya Angelou wrote and produced a 10-part series for KQED
called “Blacks, Blues, Black!” The series explored the influence of
African-American culture on American society, and featured episodes on African
history, art, Africanisms and “violence in the black American world.”
After airing in the summer of 1968, “Blacks, Blues, Black!” was
lost and unavailable for decades. Angelou herself had reportedly been searching
for the series for years. Her representatives reached out to the Bay Area TV
archive as early as 2005 looking for it, but there was no trace of the series
there or in any other local archive, including KQED’s.
In 2009, San Francisco State film archivist Alex Cherian was
working on a project for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, sifting
through thousands of cans of film, when he came across one canister with a
single handwritten word scribbled on the outside: “Angelou.”
Intrigued, Cherian queued up the film to find the poet touring a
neighborhood in Watts, just a few years after the 1965 riots had ripped through
that community. In the segment, which Cherian would later learn was part of the
ninth episode, Angelou says the conflicts in Watts “represented a people, a
race fighting for survival.”
“The material was so compelling, I wanted to find the whole
series,” Cherian says. “I assumed it would be relatively simple. It was not.” He spent the next four years looking for any information about
the series but found virtually nothing. In early 2013, on a whim, he called the
Library of Congress and learned that they had the entire 10-hour series preserved
on two-inch videotape.
After determining that KQED was the copyright holder and
securing permission, the Library of Congress agreed to digitize the
series, at a cost of close to $5,000. Over the next year, the J. Paul Leonard
Library at San Francisco State, where the Bay Area TV Archive is housed,
was able to raise the necessary funds, mainly through commercial licensing for
Bay Area television stations.
At that point, confident that “Blacks, Blues, Black!” would
finally be made widely available again, Cherian reached out to Maya Angelou’s
representatives to share the good news. In an email dated May 14, 2014,
Angelou’s office manager relayed that the poet was “over the moon” that the
series had been found.
Finally, last month, Cherian received the full 10 hours of
uncompressed digital masters of “Blacks, Blues, Black!” All ten episodes are
now freely available online.
If you have any information regarding “Blacks, Blues,
Black!” contact Alex Cherian at acherian@sfsu.edu. All information will be
added to the series record within the Bay Area TV Archive.
To see Molly's Turn: Maya Angelou go to 2014, July posting.
