Director’s Message

FROM THE DIRECTOR…

Sitting in my office is a 1950-model Philco television set, with its mahogany cabinet and legs supporting a 14-inch black-and-white picture tube and about sixty pounds of tubes, wires, brackets and magnets. It’s a fine conversation piece, but that’s not why I keep it.

The old TV has great sentimental value for me, since it was the first television my parents owned, and the one they used when I was born. (Hey…they bought it used. Sure, I’m getting older, but I’m not quite a 1950-model myself!) The TV sat in a corn crib for about forty years, because 1) My dad never threw anything away, and 2) as my older brother told me, it was still working when it was moved out of the house in favor of a newer (but still black-and-white) Westinghouse set.

My dad told me years ago that since I chose a career in media, he wanted me to have that old TV if I wanted it. So one day I loaded it up and drove it from the hills of Virginia here to South Florida.

There’s also a practical reason I keep the old Philco in view. It’s a great reminder of how dramatically media can change in the span of a single lifetime. I’ve witnessed the change from black-and-white, to color, to projection, to plasma, to LCD, to LED—and that’s just the television sets. We went from picking up three channels (if we were willing to climb up to the roof and adjust the antenna) to clicking through hundreds; and from having no way to record, to Betamax, to VHS, to DVD-R, to DVR, to cloud-based on-demand.

I chose media as a career because I was inspired by its power to bring a meaningful message to many people at once. That’s what I wanted to do, and I’ve been fortunate to have that opportunity many times over the years. But if I had stayed focused on that old Philco, I would have missed all those opportunities. The key to success in media is to use what you have at hand, while keeping an eye open to what’s coming next.

Here at BECON, we embrace that challenge daily. We are leveraging the reach of radio and television, while developing content for new digital Web-based and cloud-based platforms. Every organization with a message to share faces the challenge of reaching its target audience as efficiently and effectively as possible. We welcome the opportunity to work with local partners who believe in public education and have a message that we can help you bring to our South Florida community.

Stay tuned…

–Rick Reynolds

Director/General Manager

A future television general manager with three older siblings and the faithful Philco-TV in the background