The Founding of ACL

By Talor Schaddelee

If you were to say that Austin City Limits is the longest-running live music series in television history, you would be mistaken. ACL's original Executive Producer, and one of the men credited with its creation, Bill Arhos would modestly point out that it is in fact the second longest-running live music show following the Boston Pops.

Still, one cannot help but marvel at ACL's impressive 33-year-old history and even Arhos would admit, "That's an extremely old age for a television series."

It is an old TV series, which could never have been created had it not been for the budding "progressive country" or "red neck rock" music of 1970's Austin combined with the creative minds of Bruce Scafe, Paul Bosner and Bill Arhos.

Arhos began as an intern at the Austin PBS affiliate, KLRN-TV (now KLRU) in 1962. He worked his way up. In the early 1970's, Arhos, now program manager, was casting about for a new show that could originate in Austin. The station had just built Studio 6A in UT's Communications Building A, and Arhos says they needed to "activate the facility." The new facility came just as PBS started an initiative that allowed smaller local affiliates to compete with their programming, if they got enough stations around the country to agree to air those shows, says Arhos.

"We missed the first market in 1974. In 74' we were talking about what to do for 75'. [Paul] Bosner was commuting to Dallas so at night he'd go –he was pretty esoteric –he'd go to movies at the Dobie Mall and he started going to Armadillo World Headquarters to listen to music," says Arhos.

KLRN Producer Paul Bosner was a lot more conversant about the local music scene than Arhos was. Bosner had read Jan Reid's 1974 book, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, which detailed Austin's new country/rock music sound.

"He [Bosner] and Bruce [Scafe] came in one day and said, 'Why don't we do a music series?' And he described what was going on and he gave me that book," says Arhos who, after reading the book, decided to write a proposal for the series.

KLRN Director Bruce Scafe, an avid jazz musician then and now, says that he was only a little familiar with the Austin music scene. Nevertheless, he was excited about the idea of doing a live music program and says the he knew Studio 6A would be great for music production.

Before coming to KLRN in 1974, Scafe had directed and produced live programs. One of those was a TV show called The Session, a weekly half-hour music program that featured bands such as REO Speedwagon and Billy Joel. Bosner also had experience working with live programs as a cameraman for CBS, says Arhos.

Arhos says he managed to get $13,000 in pilot money from PBS. Ultimately, he "messed up" on writing the proposal, so they took away $6,000.

"So we did the Willie Nelson pilot for $7,000…pretty amazing," says Arhos.

The original plan was to have the pilot with B.W. Stevenson and Willie Nelson, says Scafe. However, due to technical glitches and sparse attendance for the B.W. Stevenson concert they decided to use Willie's performance for the pilot episode.

Scafe says looking back at his original idea of a small audience and an intimate space for the setting was probably wrong, evidenced by the Willie Nelson pilot.

To date the Willie Nelson pilot is Arhos' favorite show, he says. Arhos described Willie's pilot performance as "seamless" and says that there were only two or three edits for the whole show.

"The easiest part was making the pilot and getting the money for it," Arhos said. "The problem was selling the series."

Before they could sell the show to PBS, Arhos needed a name. During a meeting in D.C. Arhos ran across a movie marquee featuring Macon County Line. "I thought, boy that's got a good ring to it, how about 'Travis County Line'? But I told Bosner, 'We can't call it that because they'll know we stole it,'" says Arhos with a chuckle.

A few other names were suggested, but in the end, it was Bosner, after encountering the "Austin City Limits" sign on every trip he made from Dallas to Austin, who suggested to Arhos and Scafe that they call the show Austin City Limits, says Arhos.

Scafe says one of the hardest obstacles was convincing station executives that the program was not too far outside the mainstream.

But that was not their only problem: the show needed exposure. To do this, Arhos had to convince Greg Harney, program acquisition head for the PBS annual membership drive, to show the pilot at the Station Independence Project meeting, a forum for planning the following year's national pledge drive. Harney agreed to use it, and other stations aired the pilot show with promising results, but ultimately the ACL proposal fell noticeably short of enough votes to get it purchased, says Arhos.

Arhos had almost given up when PBS told him that if five other stations would support the show, it could remain in the market for at least a year. In a last-minute dash before the deadline, Arhos got the needed five stations to sign on.

"Everything -- I don't care what anybody says-- is luck and timing," says Arhos. Arhos noted that others say that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

"Well a little bit," he says with a laugh. "But I say luck is when you put three silver dollars in a slot machine and two-thousand of them fall out."

Now, 33 years later, it seems that Arhos, Scafe and Bosner put their coins in the right machine.