I’ve started writing the chapter about the early years of Beyond Our Control, and it includes a profile of WNDU GM William Thomas Hamilton, which I’ve excerpted below. I’m grateful to his daughter MaryLee Spencer for sharing insights about her father with me, as well as to Hamilton himself for undertaking a series of lengthy interviews before he died in 1983, the recordings of which are in the Notre Dame library archive. In the end, I was most struck by the consistency of Hamilton’s character and personal philosophies both at work and at home. He appeared to practice what he preached as a pious man, and he channeled his religious faith into a sense of duty toward others, especially future generations, rather than just serving himself (imagine that). While he may not have directly influenced a single Saturday shoot, the spiritual calling that led him to WNDU was a blessing for every kid who came through BOC. (And if you’re wondering what the tsunami reference is at the end of this passage, the next section in this chapter is about Dave Williams.)
William Thomas Hamilton’s Ripple Effects
In the mid-1950s, Tom Hamilton could have maintained a comfortable career as a broadcasting executive within New York City’s sea of media professionals. Instead, his Catholic faith led him to take a chance on South Bend, where he would soon become both WNDU general manager and a staunch proponent of youth education as Beyond Our Control’s “guardian angel,” in Joe Dundon’s words. Accepting a WNDU job offer from Father Theodore Hesburgh meant leaving the epicenter of national broadcasting for one-third less in salary, but Hamilton’s faith drove him toward it, seeing it as a spiritual calling to work for a broadcaster connected to the nation’s preeminent Catholic university. “I wanted to make some sort of a sacrifice, because I felt that my career was now going to be identified with the Lord and Our Lady,” he said.
Upon becoming GM in 1960, Hamilton wielded considerable autonomous power. There was no board of directors to answer to, and he claimed that he never had to take orders from Notre Dame because the administration trusted him to run the station in accordance with university and Church principles. Therefore, under his leadership, WNDU became a reflection of Hamilton’s personal broadcasting philosophy, which echoed Fr. Hesburgh and Fr. Joyce’s values in envisioning commercial broadcasting’s moral responsibility to the community. Though a conservative Republican who valued economic success, Hamilton also believed in television’s potential as a force for positive social change. Accordingly, he saw running the station as more than just a business. Sean Walton (1981-82), whose father Paul worked for decades at WNDU, recalled how Hamilton created a family atmosphere at the station, hosting summer company picnics and an annual Christmas party where Santa who gave out gifts to all employee kids. Hamilton’s leadership style was deeply personal. He began every meeting with a prayer and gave supportive feedback to employees and friends via a memo pad that featured a cross and a JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph) marker at the top. Tim Daugherty (1978-81) received one of those notes containing a list of thirteen principles, adapted from entrepreneur Marshall Fields’ list of Twelve Things to Remember; Hamilton added one of his own at the top.
Hamilton’s faith manifested strongly in his dedication to youth development. His mission was to help young people carry Christian morals into society, and this began at home. He launched each family dinner with a Bible verse, asking his three children to discuss how these teachings applied to their everyday lives, but according to his daughter MaryLee, he wasn’t dogmatic, perhaps a consequence of his journey from Presbyterian upbringing to adult Catholic convert. “We were allowed to have questions because he had questions about faith,” she recalled. Hamilton also insisted that all of his children would attend college, including his two daughters, albeit at Catholic women’s schools. He assured his girls that an education would help them be self-sufficient rather than reliant on marriage to support them, a remarkable belief for a religious conservative in the 1960s.
The goal to nurture young people’s potential extended well beyond a family commitment. Junior Achievement Executive Director Robert Riedel approached Hamilton about forming a student group at WNDU in 1960, and while other local stations received the same pitch and were apparently wary about trusting a large group of teenagers around the same equipment they used to produce their news broadcasts, Hamilton once again took the less traveled path. Already involved with the local JA chapter, he saw how empowering young people with economic responsibilities could improve their lives. Given the added bonus of teaching teenagers — ideally even Catholic youth — about the television business, Hamilton eagerly agreed to sponsor a JA business at WNDU, with the group launching in 1961 under the name WJA-TV.
Hamilton never visited during production Saturdays, but he usually made at least one appearance a season at a JA meeting to convey the station’s support. Dave Williams reminded BOCers to be on their best behavior during these visits; after all, Hamilton was the man who made their program possible. But it wasn’t a difficult challenge for the kids, because they were always impressed with the dignified GM. With his impeccable dress of heavily tailored vests and waistcoats and distinguished white hair, he cut a figure reminiscent of a Wall Street patriarch. However, his message was never about making money. Elizabeth Loring (1978-79) remembered:
He came to speak to us at the JA Center once and was absolutely lovely. He spoke about
the importance of getting a well-rounded liberal arts education when we went to college,
and not just studying television production, saying we needed to be educated people with
something to communicate. I have thought about that often all through the years.
Chris Webb (1976-78) added:
What I got out of Hamilton’s talk was that the broadcast airwaves belong to the public, not the broadcasters. And it was important that the programming try to reflect the concerns of various segments of the society. He brought up the idea of television being in the “public interest.” It made me feel good, since I thought BOC was satire, and satire can entertain, but also open people’s eyes. He was smart to come in and convey that the show could be part of a higher calling.
A few students got more extensive interactions with the GM, including Tim Daugherty, whose attendance at a week-long broadcasting workshop at Indiana State University Hamilton sponsored:
William Thomas Hamilton was venerable, though he certainly never demanded veneration. Becoming oriented to WNDU, I learned that he was the boss – powerful, respected, good. I never once heard a negative story about him or observed someone’s tone shift upon his mention. And I vaguely remember a sort of fear of William Thomas Hamilton – but a good fear, more like respect, and a fear of disappointing him.
Daugherty also recalled how Hamilton personally made phone calls to a Notre Dame alumni group to help correct an administrative error that would have prevented him from receiving a scholarship, an intervention that would make college more financially feasible for him. Daugherty recognized a wider influence from this: “it’s fair to wonder about the long term impact of encouragement from powerful persons. To this day, for example, I have a sort of fearlessness in taking on institutions in advocacy fights.”
While Hamilton successfully built WNDU into a leading local station, his true legacy was more personal: uniting faith, public service, and youth development through WJA-TV and, later, Beyond Our Control. No one got the sense that he regularly watched BOC or necessarily appreciated its irreverent humor. But his goal was empowering young people to learn and to create, not in dictating the results. Tim Daughtery captured this ideal precisely: “From my adolescent vantage point, he was the perfect patron: powerful, ethical, ready to help at the program and individual level, and respectful of space and others’ gifts.” MaryLee explained that her father had a deeply held philosophy that every action creates moral ripples affecting others for good or ill, and she said he genuinely worried that his positive influence wasn’t sufficient to please God. He may have never realized just how far the WJA-TV ripples truly reached.
The first wave emerged in the 1961-62 season with Club 6 Teen, where twenty-one teenaged JA company members created their own take on the variety show format. Airing in half-hour episodes on Saturday afternoons on WNDU from January through April, Club 6 Teen featured guest interviews, panel discussions, and performances by local musical talent. MaryLee Hamilton was part of that pioneering group, and she believed the show’s formal structure felt stiff – perhaps too adult – for its young creators. When Junior Achievement’s annual company renewal process forced a fresh start in fall 1962, the kids got a chance to break free from the usual conventions. Mike Hannigan, Jr., who would enter as the new company’s president, relished the creative freedom they were granted. He recalled how the three WNDU staffers put in charge of advising the group – Bill King (production), Ann James (accounting), and John McCullough (ad sales) – “would just look at you and say, what are you gonna do? What do you want to do? The training for advisors was very much let the Achievers solve their own problems and learn how to run a business.” The teenagers’ answer for the 1962-63 season emerged as If I Could Trade Places, a What’s My Line? takeoff where four WJA-TV panelists fired questions at a local guest, usually an area high school student, to guess who they said they most wanted to be. The company members handled almost every part of the process including set design and construction, guest auditions, publicity campaigns, and ad sales, even producing local commercials, but WNDU professionals commanded all technical aspects of directing and camera operations in the studio.
This formula carried forth for the next five seasons, with each new class of WJA-TV members inventing a variation on the panel format, all for a local audience likely numbering around 20,000 viewers. The 1963-64 season introduced Can You Name It?, which asked panelists to identify common objects based on extreme close-up photos. In 1964-65, they launched Puzzle Bowl, a version of Concentration where the teens had to guess a well-known saying, title, or phrase based on visual symbols. And 1965-66 brought Easier Said Than Done, a take on charades that invited studio audience participation. Perhaps sensing format stagnation, Hamilton asked WNDU’s promotions director to take on an advising role with the new company ahead of the 1966-67 season. The WJA-TV ripple effect was about to become a tsunami.
