Elizabeth Murphy Burns Speaks About Building A Business By Connecting With Communities

Some years ago, our vice president and general manager David Sanks was addressing a company meeting after months of work on the station's mission and vision statements. At the end of his presentation, Sanks summed up the most important goal, indeed the only goal that really mattered: "Keep Liz happy!"

Sounds like something you'd say about a tyrant, but no. Elizabeth Murphy Burns -- Liz, to all -- is simply one of the most respected executives in broadcasting and one of the best-liked employers in any industry.

"She's the perfect television station owner, in my opinion," says a national industry observer. "She's got her eye on the bottom line and her mind engaged on the whole panoply of business, and she lets her managers do their jobs."

We couldn't agree more. Widely credited with an entrepreneurial spirit that stays true to her core values of family and community, Liz has earned deep respect and intense loyalty from her employees. She's also won baskets of awards for her management success and has chaired almost all the important national television and advertising groups. Not surprisingly, she was recently inducted into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame, joining her father, Morgan Murphy, in the distinction and creating the first father-daughter duo so honored.

On the day of that company meeting, not one person in the room failed to embrace Sanks' message; he was, after all, preaching to the choir. So it's a pleasure for us to present Liz in her own words, talking about where she comes from and how she views her place at the helm of one of the state's flagship television stations.

WISC: Was there a sense of glamour for you growing up, being connected to the industry?

Liz: Well, I was going to be Barbra Streisand, but she just got there ahead of me. I was a drama major at the Arizona State University. I realized quite early on that I don't take rejection well. But I was just fascinated by the whole business end of it. And that's when I started thinking it'd be sort of cool to do something like that. And a rule that my dad had, that I've imposed upon my kids, my stepchildren, is that you had to work for somebody else before you worked for me. So I went to the local ABC affiliate in Tucson and got a job as secretary to the program director and there you go. That was 1967.

WISC: So you're in Arizona and your interest in business is growing. Did you know then you'd likely take over your father's business someday?

Liz: Oh, no. I was going to make it on my own. I wasn't going to take anything from anybody. I went from Tucson to San Diego and worked at the CBS affiliate in San Diego. It was my former husband who decided he wanted to work for the company. So we bought a radio station in Pomona, California, a 750-watt day-timer. We borrowed the money from my parents, and by God they made me pay back every dime! This is 1971. We ended up selling the station so we could eat, but eventually we moved to Madison. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. So I called my mother and said, "So, what do you think about me coming in to work at the company?" and she said, "It's about time." And that was it. So that's how that happened.

WISC: So you took over in 1977?

Liz: Yes and hired Steve Herling as general manager, and there was sort of a learning curve for all of us. There were a lot of times when neither of us quite knew what we were doing. But we did it with authority and I can remember the first, maybe the second Christmas when everybody got together and bought me a paperback book, If I'm in Charge Here Why's Everybody Laughing? A self-help book. But it was interesting. We went through the license challenge and that was rough, although I personally think it was the best thing that ever happened to this station and this market. We certainly cleaned up all our acts and I think really became good corporate citizens.

WISC: Talk about that corporate citizenship.

Liz: It's just smart if you're going to be in a community and an integral part of it as far as bringing people information about their children and their loved ones and their city and state officials, it just makes sense to have them be in a relationship with you that's comfortable. And if they're able to talk to you, they'll come to you and watch you if something important is going on. I think it's a very good thing to do, and I think stations that don't do it are silly. This is such a wonderful community to be involved in, so diverse and interesting. It's really an extraordinary community, it really is, which is part of my passion for Madison.

WISC: Community involvement on the part of your employees seems expected and encouraged.

Liz: That's fair. It's part of your job. It's part of George [Nelson]'s job, for example. Look at the good he has done in this community. It reflects on me and it reflects on the company. I still expect my managers to make money. But I just don't choose to have it be the most important thing that everybody does.

WISC: How does the future look to you?

Liz: We have a fourth generation now, so we'll remain a family-owned company and we'll continue to live by those values and that way of doing business. We'll always treat people the way we want to be treated. At WISC, I think we're going to try everything that we can to be relevant. We're going to continue to do what we do, which is to be the best local outlet for news and entertainment and education that we can be. It's always going to be video. It's always going to be audio. And we may just have whole different ways of delivering what you want. It might be your cell phone, might be your iPod, or it might be who-knows-what. But we'll also be there when you come home and you take your shoes off and sit down and have a drink and want to watch the news.

Star Techs

Anybody asks what's new, our engineers say television is. Newer, even, than flat screens and high-definition programming. Because those improvements are just the beginning. Behind the scenes, the technology with which we deliver the news you need and the programs you love changes, it seems, hourly.

"You've got to be on your toes," says news photographer Don Cady. "New types of camera technology, cell phones, the Internet - all that has really changed what I do on a daily basis."

Usually, it's our job to make sure you never notice. But, in honor of our 50th anniversary, we'd like to give you a few random examples of how the world of broadcast technology has gone beyond our wildest dreams.

Take television cameras, for example. In the 1960s, cameras were big and bulky. And they had to be plugged in for a couple of hours before they were juiced enough to work. And what they recorded was on 16 mm film that needed hours of developing and editing before you ever saw it. We actually had to cut and glue the film by hand just to format it to our newscasts. Now our news teams use camcorders which record a digital signal on an optical disk. With no tape or film to rewind, editing is a snap.

Fiber optics have replaced hard wire cables. Truck-mounted transmitters let reporters go on the air directly from the field. Ever wonder why, in the olden days when stations signed off at night, there were color bars on your screen when the channel came back on in the morning? Those were for our engineers, who used them to adjust circuits for another day of broadcasting. In fact, we had a full-time operator who did nothing in those days but make sure our old vacuum-tube color modulator ran without a hitch. How very '60s! We've been digital for years now. Digital and computerized. Welcome to our world. Just watch what we do with it next.

WISC's Top Exec George Nelson, David Sanks And Tom Bier Discuss Station

You've watched our anchors for so long that they're like members of the family. But our studio cameras rarely show the folks behind the scenes, which means you've probably never met the hardworking visionaries responsible for much of Channel 3's current success: George Nelson, executive vice president for the Evening Telegram Company, the company that owns WISC-TV; David Sanks, executive vice president of WISC-TV's licensee, Television Wisconsin, Inc.; and Tom Bier, vice president and station manager for WISC-TV.

All three are local boys -- George and David are from Madison, Tom is from Janesville -- and all are UW-Madison grads with long histories at the station. George actually helped build our first studio - he was seventeen and had a summer job working as a laborer for his dad, Russ, a well-known building contractor and one of WISC's first part-owners. Tom started as a news reporter and came up through the ranks of the Channel 3 newsroom. And David first hired on with WISC while he was still a UW-Madison graduate student and researching public service for his master's thesis.

Recently, we focused the WISC camera on these three men for a revealing snapshot of how they got here, what it is they do, and what they want to do next.

WISC: How did you all get started in this business?

TOM: I grew up in a family where the whole idea of talking about what was going on in the news was important. It just sort of grabbed me, to the point where, when I was a kid, I couldn't wait for the newspaper to be delivered. I rode my bike to the paper boy's house while he was still folding them. But even back then I wanted to go into broadcasting because I knew that the newspaper was already old, it was history. I liked the immediacy of radio and television. So I majored in Mass Communications at UW-Madison; after college came the Army. I joined Channel 3 as a weekend television news reporter in 1974. I became news director in 1977, and station manager in 1998.

GEORGE: After John Murphy and Liz Murphy Burns took over the company, they needed somebody with a business background while they did hands-on broadcasting. I had that, as a banker and as a management and corporate finance consultant. I joined the Evening Telegram Company in 1982 in my present position.

DAVID: I came to the station, initially, because I needed to interview some television station executives as part of the information-gathering I was doing for my thesis. I was newly married and interested in working in the administrative side of broadcasting so I could make decisions. Liz and Steve Herling hired me part-time to help with the paperwork in the station's public service file, and then they asked me to work in film services. I asked them if I could wear a shirt and tie to work because I wanted it to be more of a professional position. So I was probably the only film services director in the country who wore a tie to work. Then came public service, promotion manager, production manager, operations manager, station manager. I've been general manager since 1990.

WISC: What do you know about us that the public doesn't?

TOM: It's funny -- as far as the public is concerned, our on-air people work thirty minutes a day, because that's when they're visible. But anchors and reporters work all day putting together the product people see. And they work the opposite of the way most of us do -- they have to be the best they're going to be all day during that last half hour of the day.

WISC: It's been fifty years. How has Channel 3 changed?

GEORGE: The industry has changed. It's more sophisticated equipment-wise and people-wise. News gathering is much more coordinated. And it's more competitive; cable was just a delivery system when I came here.

DAVID: And that's the part of our jobs that I think is most invigorating -- the new business challenges we take on, whether we develop them on our own or are responding to changes in the industry. For instance, this whole change to digital and what it's allowing companies everywhere to do: How do you adapt this technology into your business and use it to help further your cause? Technology itself, alone, isn't going to make a company.

WISC: Where do you turn for help meeting these challenges?

DAVID: The strength of our company comes from the people who are working here and what the community thinks about what we do, and that goes hand in hand with changing technology. You can't sit back and not adapt or evolve. But you can't evolve without the people who can make the most of it, or without the support of your community.

GEORGE: Our success is because of our people. There's been continuity and great consistency. That's what a family company does, and it's why they're able to stay in the battle.

TOM: Many television stations have such high turnover that the staff doesn't get to know the community, the issues, and the people. Not here. In fact, not only do we have people who have been here a long time, but many grew up here as well. Our news staff makes regular public appearances because we feel it's important for them to meet our viewers face-to-face. Many of our staff, managers especially, are involved with community nonprofit organizations.

GEORGE: And that's important to Liz, that they do that and we do that. She's always given us the time and flexibility to achieve a great level of civic involvement. So I had the privilege of serving as chair of the Monona Terrace Commission, for example, and serving on the Overture Board. The civic involvement is as important in this job as the day-to-day. It's just a reflection of a family commitment to community, and of how Liz absolutely values and cherishes this station's license and believes that with it comes responsibility.

WISC: What will the next fifty years bring to WISC?

TOM: While we're driven by technology, it's local news and information that's our bread and butter. We'll expand from being a television station. It started in 1998 with our channel3000.com website. Today we're delivering news over a second television station, UPN14, delivering content to iPods, cell phones and devices. But, fifty years from now, can we even guess? I'd like to find someone who knows. I'd love to hear what they have to say.