KCPT has been celebrating its 50th birthday and a brand new book charts the audacious rise of channel 19. It’s written by Kansas City attorney, civic leader and the station’s first president Ed Matheny, Jr. who had a front row seat for the station’s start.
You can have your own copy of The Audacious Rise of KCPT by liking The Local Show Facebook page. We have two books to give away.
You can purchase a copy of the book from The Kansas City Store.
Kansas City based comic David Naster is still performing stand up in comedy clubs coast to coast and on some of the world’s finest cruise ships. But increasingly, he is in hot demand as a healthcare speaker. David Naster is considered an authority on the healing power of humor. He’s written several books on the subject, including You Just Have To Laugh. Now he has produced a new documentary that is currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit.
Last year the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce released with great fanfare their 5 big ideas for moving the metro forward. They didn’t want to just talk about 5 ideas. They wanted to make 5 things happen that would make a difference in the metro.
After months of task forces and meetings and shrinking down its list from close to 200 big ideas, they decided to roll up their sleeves and propose relocating the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance to Downtown, develop a strategic plan to improve urban neighborhoods, make Kansas City a nationally recognized center for medical research, hold a world symposium on animal health, and transform Kansas City into “America’s Most Entrepreneurial City.”
Lots of groups come up with bold plans and ideas to improve the city, but do those noble visions just end up gathering dust on a shelf? On KCPT, we’re going to to track the Big 5 to see how these ideas progress.
In one area, momentum is already building. Over the holiday, UMKC was announcing plans to expand its concept of a new downtown arts campus. While initial reports were that UMKC was considering moving just its Conservatory of Music and Dance to a new site, possibly to the now vacant Lyric Theater, the university is now hiring firms to conduct a feasibility study into moving other arts programs such as the Kansas City Repertory Theater, KCUR Radio and the UMKC Theater program. This could potentially bring as many as a thousand students and faculty to a new arts campus downtown.
Nick Haines welcomes Leo Morton, the Champion for the arts campus initiative, to The Local Show to discuss the progress on this big idea.
After months of task forces and meetings and shrinking down its list from close to 200 big ideas, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce introduced its Big 5 Ideas. They decided to roll up their sleeves and proposed moving UMKC’s world class arts programs to a new downtown location, revitalize our urban neighborhoods through the urban Neighborhood Initiative, host a global symposium on innovation in animal health, and transform Kansas City into “America’s Most Entrepreneurial City.”
Their fifth idea was to grow Kansas City’s medical research from discovery to cure.
Just recently, they got a whole lot closer to achieving that goal as the University of Kansas Medical Center was awarded National Cancer Institute designation.
Nick Haines gets an update from the man leading the intitiative, Dr. Patrick James.
It doesn’t get the same attention as Kansas City’s quest to become a mecca for the life sciences or our push to be America’s most entrepreneriurial city, but Kansas City’s zeal to be the global center for animal health research is far further along than any of those efforts.
Many people don’t realize that our region already is home to four of the top 10 largest animal health companies in the world.
Championing an effort by the Chamber of Commerce to now bring a world symposium on animal health to Kansas City is a well known name to Kansas Citians…Gary Forsee.
What began in the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Board room in July 2011 with 100 business, civic and elected leaders and 182 ideas for creating a greater Kansas City has become five initiatives which seek to to bring better health, improved education, more jobs, increased investment and a better quality of life to everyone in the region. The Local Show gathered key decision makers from each of the Big 5 initiatives to find out how much progress has been made.
Our Think Tank of Experts:
Jim Heeter, President & Chief Executive Officer, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce
Russ Welsh, Current KC Chamber Chair; Chairman & CEO, Polsinelli Shughart
Greg Graves, Past (2011) KC Chamber Chair; Chairman of the Board & CEO, Burns & McDonnell
Big 5 Representatives:
Moving UMKC’s World-Class Arts Programs to a New Downtown Location
Leo Morton: Champion; Chancellor, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Revitalizing Our Urban Neighborhoods Through the Urban Neighborhood Initiative
(Champions Brent Stewart and Terry Dunn were unavailable.)
Mark Jorgenson: Chairman, Urban Neighborhood Initiative Board; President & CEO, US Bank, Kansas City Market
Dianne Cleaver: Executive Director, Urban Neighborhood Initiative
Making Kansas City America’s Most Entrepreneurial City
Peter deSilva: Champion; Chairman & CEO, UMB Bank
Cliff Illig: Entrepreneurship Steering Committee; Co-founder, Cerner Corp.
Hosting the Global Symposium on Innovation in Animal Health
(Champion Gary Forsee was unavailable.)
Robert Marcusse: President & CEO, Kansas City Area Development Council
Growing Kansas City’s Medical Research, From Discovery to Cure
Dr. Patrick James: Champion; Senior Managing Director, Quest Diagnostics- Kansas Business Unit.
Keep the conversation going:
Follow us on Twitter: @TheLocalShowKC
#Big5KC
#KCPT
Like us on Facebook: KCPT’S The Local Show
Last fall when the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce unveiled their five big ideas for moving the metro forward, they named life sciences as one of them. More specifically the initiative is branded as “Growing Kansas City’s Medical Research, From Discovery to Cure.” The overarching goal of this big idea is to make KC a nationally-recognized center for translational research.
Translational research is the hot new area in the life sciences. It means moving discoveries from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside.
Patrick James, managing director of Quest Diagnostics, is leading the Chamber’s Big 5 life sciences effort. He was the emcee at a major gala dinner last week to celebrate the work of the Kansas City Life Sciences Insitute. Over 600 guests gathered to hear from area scientists.
Sometimes though it takes an outsider to put your accomplishments into perspective. The gala’s keynote speaker was the deputy director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center in Boston, Dr. David Livingston. Nick Haines sat down with Dr. Livingston to untangle the complicated subject of translational research.
For a long time in this city, people have lamented why so little progress, so little improvement and economic development has happened east of Troost Avenue–the symbolic, geographic and racial divide in this city.
Now, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce has agreed to throw its entire weight and influence towards making big changes. As part of what it calls its Big 5 intitiative, the Chamber has picked the Troost corridor for unprecedented focus and civic attention.
The Urban Neighborhood Initiative is one of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s “Big 5” ideas announced in September 2011, aimed at creating economic opportunity and establishing a more vibrant Kansas City region.
The Urban Neighborhood Initiative seeks to collaborate with an interested East Side low-income neighborhood or area to identify and begin to address issues to improve the opportunities of its residents.
This initial effort will involve two phases of work – planning and implementation. Each phase will engage community-wide stakeholders and residents in a process to collaboratively identify issues and resources that can effect change.
Nick Haines sits down with Dianne Cleaver and Jim Heeter to discuss their plan of attack for the Troost corridor revitalization initiative.
Here’s a look at the focus area for the Urban Neighborhood Initiative:
The name Ken Burns has become synonymous with some of public television’s biggest blockbuster documentaries.
The Civil War. Baseball. Jazz. The National Parks. This Sunday night on KCPT and PBS stations around the country, watch Ken Burn’s latest documentary epic, The Dust Bowl, a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us–a lesson we ignore at our peril.
You can watch the first installment of Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl this Sunday night at 7 p.m. here on KCPT. One of our metro’s most knowledgeable experts on that slice of our nation’s history, Professor Jay Antle, who is executive director of the sustainability center at Johnson County Community College, sat down with Randy Mason to give a local perspective on The Dust Bowl and to talk about what it means for us today.
A new film that documents the relationship between President Harry Truman and Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast opens this weekend at the Glenwood Theater in Overland Park, Screenland-Crown Center, Screenland-Armour and the Pharaoh Theatre in Independence.
Tom and Harry: The Boss and the President is the third Kansas City centered documentary for attorney and filmmaker Terence O’Malley. He also directed Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time and Black Hand Strawman: The History of Organized Crime in Kansas City.
