Dave Williams and Beyond Our Control: the show the teenagers produced

WJA-TV, 1961 — Beyond Our Control, 1967–1986 · WNDU-TV

A producer born here, and a company of schoolchildren: The most unusual production credit in this city's record belongs to a South Bend native who never left. Dave Williams was born in South Bend in June 1940 and became WNDU-TV's promotions director. In 1960 the executive director of Junior Achievement of South Bend approached the station's general manager, William Thomas Hamilton, about sponsoring a Junior Achievement company — the economics-education program under which high-school students incorporate a real business, sell stock, and meet weekly to run it. Hamilton chartered the project, and in 1961 the first student company, WJA-TV, took to the air with a thirteen-week series of half-hour shows. Williams was its creator and guiding adviser. The early programs were talent, game, and quiz shows; in about 1966 Williams had the idea that the company could be something more, and in the 1967–68 season WJA-TV became Beyond Our Control — "a TV show about TV," a sketch-comedy parody of the medium itself, written, performed, filmed, and sold by the students.

The production facts are the point of the entry, and they are documented to an unusual depth for local television. Each year some thirty Michiana high-school students, aged fourteen to eighteen and chosen by audition from about 150 applicants across a sixty-mile radius, did nearly every job a commercial series requires — writing scripts, operating studio cameras and switchers, and selling the commercial time; the show was, in the alumni record's phrase, SRO for advertisers. On 20 February 1974 the National Association of Television Program Executives named it the nation's best locally produced variety show in its market class — against professionally produced competition. From the 1974–75 season the production was entirely youth-run. Williams died on 27 August 1977, a day after surgery to remove a brain tumor; Denny Laughlin, an adviser since 1973, became principal adviser and held the show to its end.

It ran nineteen seasons, into the spring of 1986. The counts stand in the record unreconciled and are printed so: the series' reference entry gives 247 episodes, thirteen a year; the University of Notre Dame Archives' collection guide gives 225 episodes and more than 300 students; the reference entry gives more than 350 teenagers over the run. The reference entry and the alumni association's history also date the sketch format's start to 1968; the narrative above follows the Tribune's contemporary account in placing the conversion in the 1967–68 season. Among the company members, in his Clay High School years, was Dean Norris — born in South Bend on 8 April 1963 — who carried the training to an acting career; his own producing record, tested for this chapter, is a single credit, executive producer of the short film Antidepressant (2015), and it is printed here at exactly that size rather than given an entry of its own. The BOC alumni association's claim that the show "incubated a number of today's film and television writers, directors, actors, producers" is printed as the association's claim; the documented core — a commercial network affiliate handing its air, for nineteen years, to a company of teenagers, and the industry honoring the result — needs no enlargement.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame Archives, Beyond Our Control Collection guide — created by Dave Williams in partnership with WJA-TV; aired by WNDU-TV 1967–1986; nineteen seasons, 225 episodes, over 300 high-school students; completely youth-run from the 1974–75 season.
2. Beyond Our Control: A Very Nice Research Project (Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame) — WNDU founded by Notre Dame in 1955; Hamilton's chartering of the JA company after the 1960 approach; program director Paul Walton's assignment of the time slot; Williams's 1971 Educational Television essay; the series at 247 half-hour episodes, thirteen weekends a year, 1968–1986.
3. BOC Alumni Association history — created by Dave Williams, initially directed by Mark Heller and Bill Siminski; advisers Joe Dundon, Denny Laughlin, John Weiler, Don Borchers; Hamilton's insistence the students learn the economics of broadcasting; SRO for commercial advertisers; 100% youth production from 1974 to the final episode in 1986.
4. South Bend Tribune, Michiana Magazine cover story, 25 August 1974 — NATPE named BOC the nation's best locally produced variety show in its market class on 20 February 1974, against professionally produced programs; the 1967–68 birth; Williams and Siminski as advisers.
5. Reference record of the series (encyclopedia entry) — created by Dave Williams, born June 1940 in South Bend; production company WJA-TV; 247 episodes; 350+ students; first student company on air in 1961.
6. Memorial Library catalog records of the Tribune file — Williams died 27 August 1977; Laughlin an adviser from 1973 and principal adviser after Williams's death, to the cancellation.
7. Biographical record of Dean Norris — South Bend birth (8 April 1963); a member in high school of the award-winning student-produced Beyond Our Control; credit record: executive producer, Antidepressant (short, 2015).