FEATURE
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some that were really good at their jobs. It worked out well for me
because I had more manpower, and it worked out well for Ralph as
it was great to have a program for the department.”
The Louisville Health shoots took place on Friday evenings, one
show per week. But as the crew got comfortable, they got more
daring. A few years in, the show began filming special episodes
on-location.
Health found its feet on public access television, Dr. Tuckson started
planning ways to reach a broader audience. He tried setting up the
show with a commercial Louisville broadcast station, but found it
unsatisfying. “I had to pay for air time and they didn’t help with
getting advertisers for us.”
The difficulties in making a consistently high quality product
led to a collaboration with the University of Louisville Informa-
tion Technologies Department which lasted from 2000 to 2015.
The studio at U of L was in the basement of the Communications
building, Strickler Hall. That production area (and classroom)
contained three cameras and an array of better equipment from
which the show could build.
Professor Ralph Merkel served as a producer of the show for
several years upon its arrival to the university and then as Executive
Producer from 2007 to 2015. “Ralph has a background in broadcast
journalism, and he brought a certain level of sophistication and
ideas on how to approach things which I found very helpful,” Dr.
Tuckson said.
“When Dr. Tuckson came to U of L, I think he wanted to up
his game and make it more highly produced,” Merkel said. “In the
late 1990s, he struck a deal with the University to produce it with
funding from The African American Health Initiative. I think he’s
sort of been on a mission to educate average folks about health
problems and solutions.”
For years, Louisville Health flourished at U of L. To reach a larg-
er audience than PBS Channel 15 would allow, Dr. Tuckson and
Professor Merkel contacted KET in the hopes that they would be
interested in airing the show. They were, and a partnership soon
formed where Louisville Health was shown on KET-2.
One of the benefits of working on U of L’s campus was a constant
influx of young people interested in the program who were students
in Merkel’s classroom. Any given year of the programs’ time at U of
L found five or six students on staff, working both in front of and
behind the camera.
“I’m glad we had the students in there to help,” Dr. Tuckson said.
“Most were very committed to learning a task and doing it well. Some
others were very nonchalant and took it for granted, but there were
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
“We went to Pikeville and did two shows there,” Merkel said. “We
visited a farm and did a whole show about eating locally grown
food. We shot one show in front of a live audience in the Conference
Center of the Rudd Heart & Lung Center at Jewish Hospital. That
one was fun to do, and challenging. We had to lug everything there
and edit it afterwards. But doing a show remotely is more visually
interesting than people sitting at a set.”
Around 2008, KET approached Dr. Tuckson about taking the
program statewide (KET-2 is only available in half of Kentucky).
However, that required a name change: What better way to evolve
the show geographically than to rebrand Louisville Health into
Kentucky Health?
While on an unrelated trip to Pikeville, Dr. Tuckson happened
to be sitting next to a member of the all-female bluegrass group,
Coaltown Dixie. Just by striking up a conversation, he found the
perfect music for his show. “She told me she was in the band, and I
asked if I could use some of their music for the show. It was a perfect
mesh,” Dr. Tuckson recalled. “When we came back to Pikeville for
filming, we taped them as well and ended up using two different
songs, one for opening the show and another for closing. I thought
it was important for a show called Kentucky Health to feature music
from the region.”
For 15 years, Kentucky Health called the basement of Strickler
Hall home until KET approached and offered to produce and tape
the show at their Louisville studio. Now, instead of simply sending
the final product to the station, all recording and editing could be
done in-house. The first season under KET production was in 2015.
KET Health Producer and Outreach Coordinator Laura Krueger
had been a liaison with Kentucky Health for several years before the
show’s migration. Now she serves as line producer, making sure the
show is polished and punctual. “On another show, my job would
be to come up with guests, shape the content and write questions
but, with Kentucky Health, Dr. Tuckson does that,” Krueger said.
“Kentucky Health is his show and his vision, and that’s the way it
should be.”
Today, shows are planned months in advance and then shot two
or three weeks before the air date. The topics vary widely. In the last
few months of 2016 alone, Kentucky Health covered topics such as
radiation therapy, pancreatitis, choosing a health care provider and
addiction prevention.
“This is the thing that’s amazing about Kentucky Health,” Krueger
said. “Dr. Tuckson and the guests have the ability to get so specific.