Milton Shapp

Robert and Jeanne Burull: Oral and Video Collection Interview

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• published: 06 Nov 2012
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KELLER: This is the oral history of Drs. J. Robert and Jeanne Rowley Burull who were early cable operators in the state of Wisconsin and very early pioneer programmers of advertising supported programming in Wisconsin, former educators and all around entrepreneurs. Bob has extensive experience in both cable television and from the telephone company and telephony in the early days, as well as the teaching of communications in a number of universities. This oral history has been funded by The Gustave Hauser Foundation and is part of The Oral History Program of The National Cable Television Center and Museum. Bob and Jeanne, would you please tell us a little bit about your background prior to the time you got into the cable business? R. BURULL: Well, should I start off Jeanne? I think I would preface this by saying that the two of us met each other way back in grade school and of course we had no idea that we would eventually get into such an exciting industry and project as cable television. I went to The University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin and took a bachelor's degree. I flew in the service for almost four years, came back out, Jeanne and I were married during that interim and then I studied for and received a master's and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. Jeanne worked in the political science department at that time, keeping us both in food and in clothes. From there I went to Kansas State University as the farm radio director for a five state network, Colorado being one of those five states -- there I enjoyed an excellent experience both in production and on-air work in film, tape and broadcast networks and so forth. From there, in 1966, we went to Bradley University, a private university in Peoria, Illinois, where I obtained tenure as an associate professor. By this time we had two children and during my time there, I worked off-campus with outside radio stations and met a manager, engineer of an FM, 100,000 watt station who introduced me to cable television. I in turn talked about it with Jeanne and one thing led to another and then about a year after that, in 1968, we had franchised Stoughton cable television, a subsidiary of Viking Media Corporation, which we started. We left Bradley University, resigned from that position there, and started our cable television adventures. KELLER: What year was that, Bob? R. BURULL: We started Stoughton Cable Television in the fall of 1969, and the start of it was, like many small cable television starts in those days, mostly on leverage and on an incredible sense of faith and optimism. and maybe you have something to add to that Jeanne? KELLER: As we were talking earlier, Jeanne was saying that she was a jack of all trades in the early system. She did the billing, she answered the phone, she worked in the studio - and I want to get more into that studio operation at that time - and did virtually everything as well as take care of the family and take care of Bob. In the early days, you said that you were financed, as many of the systems were at that time, by the Jerrold Corporation. R. BURULL: That's exactly right. The Jerrold Corporation, as most people know, was a manufacturer of electronics and Milton Shapp, the president and owner, had a wonderful vision for cable and he also knew that probably for this kind of a new upstart industry, getting financing would be nigh unto impossible. So he had this wonderful deal where he would, in many cases, finance 90% of the cost of the investment for the entire cable television system. I learned about Jerrold Corporation from one of their sales reps, Rob Santora, an engineer sales rep, and through him and another area salesman, Charles Moody, we eventually were able to start a cable system through the 90% financing of Jerrold Corporation. We also had to go find our other 10%, which was more difficult to do in those days, since the banks were almost hostile to the idea of this new, very risky kind of situation - even though you could put in front of them beautiful looking proformas and projections, being wise old bankers they wanted to see it before they would believe it. KELLER: As you developed, how many miles of system did you build? http://cablecenter.org/barco-library-hauser-oral-history/item/burull-robert-and-jeanne.html