WNIT: public television's producers

Michiana Public Broadcasting Corporation, 1968 — on air 31 January 1974

The city's own documentaries: The producing that South Bend watches about itself is public television's. The Michiana Public Broadcasting Corporation was formed by nineteen people of South Bend, Elkhart, and Mishawaka — its articles filed in 1968, seven months after the Public Broadcasting Act — and, South Bend being then the largest television market in the country without a public station, it won the channel 34 permit on 26 April 1972. Tom Brubaker was the station's general manager in its founding season. WNIT began broadcasting on 31 January 1974 (some yearbooks give February dates; the station's own anniversary observance uses 31 January), from studios at the Elkhart Area Career Center — Elkhart ground, printed as such — and stayed there until 2010, when it moved into the Center for Public Media in downtown South Bend, the former WSBT-TV studio building donated by Schurz Communications.

Its local production is a documentary bench with named producers. The standing series is Legends of Michiana, hour-long portraits of the region's builders — among its subjects a governor, Joe Kernan; the Veldman family; the Hamel brothers — produced at the station for more than a decade. On the Legends installment for the broadcaster Pat Moody (2019), the credits name the unit plainly: executive producer Paul Wasowski, videographer Gary Banks, writer and narrator Mike Kraft. The weekly Experience Michiana has run fifteen years under producer Kelsy Zumbrun, who marks twenty-eight years at the station in 2026. The station's president and general manager in the current record is Greg Giczi. Where the commercial stations' documentary output is episodic, WNIT's is a standing production slate — six regular weekly shows and a run of special documentaries in the station's own 2019 accounting — and it is the closest thing this city has to a documentary studio.

Sources:

1. WNIT station history (PBS Michiana – WNIT) — the Michiana Public Broadcasting Corporation formed by nineteen people; articles of incorporation filed seven months after the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; FCC permit 26 April 1972; the move in April 2010 to the Center for Public Media, the former WSBT-TV building acquired with an in-kind donation by Schurz Communications.
2. WNIT 50th-anniversary coverage (2024) — first broadcast 31 January 1974; President Greg Giczi: the region's first public television station; the South Bend market then the largest in the country without one; five program streams, twenty-two counties served.
3. Nappanee Advance-News, 8 November 1973 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — Tom Brubaker named as the station's general manager in the founding season; the MPBC ownership and Elkhart Area Career Center studio partnership.
4. Moody on the Market, September 2019 — Legends of Michiana: Pat Moody: "Executive Producer Paul Wasowski and his Videographer Gary Banks"; narrator and writer Mike Kraft.
5. WNIT Planner (viewer guide), November–December 2019 and January 2026 — the station's local-production accounting (six regular weekly shows; Legends of Michiana: Joe Kernan and Studebaker Fountain among the year's documentaries); Experience Michiana "under the direction of veteran producer Kelsy Zumbrun," her twenty-eight years at WNIT marked January 2026; the owner of record, Michiana Public Broadcasting Corporation, 300 West Jefferson Boulevard, South Bend.