"AUSTIN CITY LIMITS." "Austin City Limits," a television program of concert performances featuring uniquely American styles of music was founded in 1974 by PBS affiliate KLRN-TV (later KLRU-TV) in Austin and was carried by hundreds of stations nationwide. The program has showcased performers such as Jimmy Buffett, Rosanne Cash, Ray Charles, Leonard Cohen, B. B. King, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, George Strait, and Tanya Tucker. The show's success was credited with contributing to the rise of several major country performers and coincided with the growing popularity of country music.
The program, known particularly for its "redneck rock" or "progressive country" music, resulted in the mid-1970s from the desire of Bill Arhos, then program director at KLRN, to develop locally produced programming that could attract national attention. With producer Paul Bosner and director Bruce Scafe, Arhos approached PBS's Station Program Cooperative (a program fostered by the network to help individual system stations produce national programming) for funding for a pilot program. Despite resistance from KLRN upper management, the SPC granted support in 1974. The initial show starred Willie Nelson and was an immediate success. Arhos and Bosner sold the show to PBS by convincing station executives, accustomed to shows like "Masterpiece Theater" and "Sesame Street," that "Austin City Limits" was not too far outside the mainstream.
In 1975 Arhos persuaded Greg Harney, program acquisition head for the PBS's annual national membership drive, to show the pilot at the Station Independence Project meeting, a forum for planning the next year's national pledge drive. Thirty-four stations aired the show; subsequently, PBS and Arhos agreed that if five stations would support it, the program could remain in the market for at least a year. With the help of KQED-TV in San Francisco, Arhos got the five stations only minutes before the network deadline. Videotaping began in September 1975 with a reunion of Bob Wills's Original Texas Playboys. Despite technical glitches and limited audiences, the 1976 season defined the show's unique "progressive country" style, a combination of traditional country music with folk and rockqqv influences that flourished in Austin at that time. The show drew on this growing Austin music scene, challenged the dominance of Nashville, and later competed with MTV, The Nashville Network, and Country Music Television. Although "progressive country" and mainstream country have been staples of the program, it has also featured an eclectic mix of American music: jazz, blues,qqv and folk.
Program highlights have included the premiere of the "Austin City Limits" theme song (Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues") and the return of Willie Nelson's album Red-Headed Stranger to the Billboard charts for forty-eight weeks after his performance on the show (both in 1977); appearances by Ray Charles and Chet Atkins (1979); the adoption of the Austin-skyline backdrop (1981); and the three-hour special "Down Home Country Music," which won Best Network Music Program in the New York International Film and Television Festival (1982). Other high points have been the tenth-anniversary show taping, featuring the Texas Playboys, before an open-air crowd of more than 5,000 in Austin (1984); the first all-female "Songwriters Special" (with Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and others) and the first show appearance by Fats Domino (both in 1986); appearances by Johnny Cash and by Reba McEntire (both in 1987); Garth Brooks's first appearance on the show (1990); the featuring of Nanci Griffith, the Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Julie Gold in another "Songwriters Special" (1992); and appearances by humorist Garrison Keillor and the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (1993).
After losing Budweiser as an underwriter in 1990, "Austin City Limits" faced a declining PBS budget and network demands that the series raise more than a quarter of its own funding. Performers on the show have always been paid on a union scale. In 2003 advertising its content as "live music, pure and simple," the show was sponsored by such companies as Chevrolet and Michelob. By the 2006–07 season, sponsors included AT&T and the Austin Convention Center.
By its nineteenth network season (1993), "Austin City Limits" was focusing less on mainstream country music and more on songwriters and the "new folk movement," and had introduced a variety of new formats to supplement its traditional stage-show settings. "Austin City Limits" produced an enormously successful "Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan" in 1995, which featured B. B. King, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, and others. The show also filmed a memorable tribute to Townes Van Zandt in late 1997 that included Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, and Nanci Griffith. In 2000, after facing competition from other music programming on public television such as New York City's "Sessions at West 54th," producers made the decision to offer "Austin City Limits" to PBS affiliates free of charge. The series was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2003.
The first Austin City Limits Music Festival took place in Austin's Zilker Park in 2002. The event, inspired by the television series, featured an array of regional, national, and international acts from different musical genres. The annual three-day festival, held each September, continued to draw large audiences in 2008.
In 2008 "Austin City Limits" had completed thirty-two seasons and was American television's longest-running concert music program. The show had featured hundreds of artists performing in such genres as zydeco and Tejano, in addition to its foundation of folk–rock–country–bluegrass. Longtime producer and program director Terry Lickona had been with the show since the mid-1970s. Many of the programs were available for sale on DVD. Plans for a new studio complex to film the program were underway with projected completion in 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, January 14, 1993. Austin City Limits (http://www.pbs.org/klru/austin/), accessed January 16, 2008. John T. Davis, Austin City Limits: 25 Years of American Music (New York: Billboard, 2000). Clifford Endres, Austin City Limits (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). Houston Chronicle, January 14, 1990.
