KLRU has long been known for shows such as “The Body Human” and “Masterpiece Theatre.” Until 1975, that is, when “Austin City Limits” began its first season.
“Austin City Limits” began as a pilot in 1974 with Willie Nelson as the guest singer. “Following that, PBS decided that looked like a pretty good idea, and they picked it up in 1975,” explained Susie Caldwell, assistant producer for the show.
Even though it is broadcast all over the nation now, according to Caldwell, “Originally Austin City Limits was more of a local type program. During that time in Austin, the progressive country movement was moving along pretty strong. Most of those who were associated with ‘redneck rock’ or the ‘cosmic cowboy’ image were in Austin. And the live music scene in Austin was really hot. So basically those first couple of years “Austin City Limits” was a format for what was going on musically in Texas.”
During this time, the show highlighted singers such as Jerry Jeff Walker, B.W. Stevenson, Michael Murphy and Austin groups such as Greasy Wheels or Asleep at the Wheel.
During that first year, KLRU attempted to get money for the program by finding underwriters and by selling a package deal of 14 shows. PBS accepted and now Austin City Limits is broadcast by 248 stations across the nation. It has a viewing audience of 8 to 10 million people.
“As soon as it started to be broadcast across the country, other people began picking up on it and music started to evolve,” Caldwell said. “Now progressive country is more the norm. I think it definitely had a significant effect, especially in Nashville.”
Aside from Austin performers, however, the show has presented such big name performers as Roy Clark, Tom T. Hall, Merle Haggard, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Hoyt Axton.
One might think that it would be difficult to get such performers to appear, but according to Caldwell, “Surprisingly, we don’t have any trouble. The reason it is surprising is that we pay them the American Federation of Musicians and PBS scale. Scale equals, for a leader of a band, approximately $400 and the band members get half of that. So obviously they’re not coming here for the money. They’re doing it because they like the quality of the program we present.”
The only way to see Austin City Limits now is to turn on the TV at 11 p.m. on Friday and 7 p.m. on Saturday. However, “For the last seven and a half years, we have had seating for 600 to 700 people. We distributed tickets to the public, and the studio would be packed with people having a great time. We’ve got a good fire escape policy, but the UT fire marshal decided that we don’t have enough fire exits to handle all of those people,” Caldwell continued. “So he decided that what was equitable in this eyes was to limit our seating capacity to 300, including the artist, guys in the band, our staff, our volunteers and it includes the entire sixth floor. So as a result, we had to re-design our audience stand, and we took out two sections.”
Because of this, tickets are not available to the general public. Instead staff members are given the tickets which were originally intended to be distributed to the general public.
The next step for Austin City Limits is a Willie Nelson special for Home Box Office and according to Caldwell, “It should be good.”
Published by the shield on Jan. 28, 1983.
