SONGS, service — and — storytelling

BARBARA GRAVEL’S career in public television comes full circle

Any experience

YOU CAN GET HELPS. It all builds toward your overall knowledge and expertise and experience. Working with people, you learn something different from everyone...

THEN YOU BUILD YOUR OWN PERSONALITY AND YOUR OWN STYLE,

roducer, director and production manager

Barbara Gravel has worked in television her entire career. She’s watched the medium evolve over three decades and adjusted her role in the business as her life changed, moving from visual storytelling to teaching and back again. Her work behind the camera for Prairie Public Broadcasting has taken her around the world, from Argentina, Hawaii and Scotland to the UK and India, as part of a team creating original documentaries. But the stories and projects that are closest to her heart have taken root on the prairies of North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, cultivated by Gravel herself in Prairie Public’s downtown Fargo studios.

Gravel is most often recognized as the host of, “Prairie Mosaic,” which airs on Monday nights on Prairie Public. “It features the people, the culture and the history of our region and it’s basically a compilation of stories that we gather and harvest from North Dakota and Minnesota,” explains Gravel. “The word ‘prairie’ as a theme comes up in our productions a lot, because that’s the people that we hope to serve with our stories. We like to tell the story of the people of the prairie to the people of the prairie.”

The station that carries these prairie stories serves both North Dakota and parts of northwestern Minnesota, from Fergus Falls to Thief River Falls. This region is fertile ground for storytellers like Gravel and her colleagues, both because of its complex past and its dynamic present. “This is just a mecca for people, be it new Americans or people moving in because of the industries,” says Gravel. “They may not know a lot about the landscape or the history or the homesteading aspect of the region, so a lot of our documentaries focus on that.”

The hosting gig might put her in the public eye, but Gravel’s fingerprints are visible all over Prairie Public programming. Her production manager title and the intimate, collaborative spirit at Prairie Public mean that Gravel juggles multiple tasks, which she ticks off in her efficient style. “I have produced shows, I have directed many of the live shows, I have been a videographer on many of the documentaries,” she says. “I do a bit of editing, but not as much as I’d like to, because the production manager desk job gets in the way. We all share a lot of responsibility.”

She also works on the pledge drives that, along with grants and public funding, support Prairie Public’s work. You can even hear her on Prairie Public Radio’s station voiceovers. Gravel’s consummate multitasking — and her love for public broadcasting

— started with her very first job in television as an undergraduate at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Gravel worked at the college television station during her four years on campus, directing basketball games, musical performances and other live events, work that she says gave her the kind of intense, practical, hands-on experience that prepared her for her current position at Prairie Public. “I was very attuned to that kind of fly-by the seat of your pants directing — multi-camera shoots, making quick decisions, working with a team, delegating jobs and responsibilities,” she says. “That was always my training and my strength. So that certainly prepared me to do something like this.” tarting a family took Gravel’s career in a new direction. She stepped away from telling stories at Prairie Public and starting telling bedtime stories as a stay-at-home mom in 1998. “We just decided with two young kids two years apart that it would be advantageous to be able to spend time with them at home in a nurturing environment,” she says.

That station was a college-licensed Public Broadcasting Station, which gave her four years of experience working within a system — and a storytelling philosophy — she would grow to love. When she graduated in 1990, she was hungry for more experience and applied for jobs in television all over the United States — “from Louisiana to New York City to Fargo,” she says with a laugh.

One of those jobs was with Prairie Public Broadcasting in Fargo. Gravel flew out to interview over Father’s Day weekend, just a few weeks after graduation. She liked the station’s philosophy and felt welcome immediately. So when the job offer came, Gravel was confident — even though it meant a leap into the unknown, both professionally and personally.

“I have to say that when I packed up my Camaro in 1990 to drive from Bowling Green, Ohio to Fargo, I had never been west of Toldeo, Ohio,” she says. Born the first of six kids in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and raised there and in the small town of Poland, a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, Gravel had traveled with her family. But those family trips took them east and south — never west.

But Gravel didn’t let that slow her down. She had barely unpacked before leaping into action. Her first big assignment was directing an agriculture program that coordinated town hall meetings, a studio audience and satellite trucks at three North Dakota locations. She quickly took on more responsibilities. “I started out directing at the satellite locations from a remote truck and by the end of the series I was directing here in the main site in Fargo, so that was an amazing opportunity,” she says.

She met and married her husband, Fargo native Dr. Tom Gravel, then a teacher and football coach in Wahpeton, now principal of West Fargo Community High School and West Fargo’s Welcome Center for English Language Learners, as well as the director for adult education for West Fargo Public Schools. The couple welcomed their first child, Olivia, in 1997 and a son, Jackson, in 1999.

“And I’m so glad I did. My daughter is 20 and she still remembers how every Wednesday we went to story time at Barnes and Noble or how we went to more swim lessons at Concordia and the Y than you could shake a stick at. It was a really, really special time.” nd that research is extensive. She pours over the artists’ CDs, lyrics and the wave files they send, sees them live whenever possible, watches video footage when she can’t, and discusses their styles, influences and what they’ll add to the “Prairie Musicians” line-up with the precision and passion of a music critic.

The kids kept Gravel busy during the day, but she still found time to take classes at North Dakota State University at night. It took seven years of hard work to complete the coursework she’d started while still at Prairie Public, but Gravel obtained her masters degree in public relations.

Gravel was still committed to the ideals of public television. In fact, this Pittsburgh native’s thesis was titled “Gender Roles and Relationships in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe” and detailed the roles of women on a famous public television show filmed in Pittsburgh — “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And it turned out that public television wasn’t done with her yet, either.

When NDSU needed an instructor to teach TV production and broadcast writing, Gravel stepped in. She taught one or two classes a semester until the university decided to repurpose Ceres Hall, the home of the mass communication department’s aging television studio. The TV production students needed a studio and Gravel immediately thought of her previous employer. She connected her current employer with her previous employer and soon NDSU students were learning in Prairie Public’s downtown Fargo studio. Gravel was teaching the next generation of broadcast journalists in a busy public television station, just as she herself had been taught.

In 2006, Gravel’s career would come full circle when Prairie Public asked her to come back as a full-time production manager. She and her husband had welcomed their third child, Caroline, in 2004. With her family settled, Gravel was ready for a new challenge. This new position and her accumulated experience gave her the ability to create unique, locally produced shows to complement the station’s national programming.

One of Gravel’s favorite shows to grow out of this period of creation is “Prairie Musicians” which launched its ninth season this July, thanks to funding from the North Dakota Council on the Arts and the Minnesota Legacy Grant. She directs and produces the program, which airs on Friday nights. It’s a deeply personal project that layers Gravel’s love of storytelling, public television and creative collaboration with another consistent source of inspiration — music.

“It has been the most rewarding project I have worked on,” she says, as she explains the importance of “Prairie Musicians” in her personal and professional life. “We are able to represent the talent, the diversity of the music of this prairie region. We have featured musicians from gypsy jazz to polka to country of course, to hip-hop to reggae.” The show showcases coffee shop and bar crowd favorites to performers less accessible to audiences outside of college towns and major population centers, such as symphonic string quartets and brass quintets. The 2017 season even featured the Concordia College Marimba Choir, which filled the entire building with its sonorous sounds and packed the studio with instruments so large, it took two musicians to play each of them.

Filming that episode brought lots of surprises and last minute adjustments. But that’s nothing new for a woman that got her start filming live events and adjusting on the fly. Gravel runs a tight ship and a professional crew, but working with musicians requires flexibility. “I’m never really sure of the playlist,” she says. “I really don’t hear the music … before we record it,” she says with a grin. Instead, she trusts her instincts and her research.

“I’ve always loved music,” says Gravel. “I come from a musical family. I have a bit of a musical background, being a percussionist in high school, which I think really helps me direct the show. One reason I went into television out of high school and wanted to pursue a mass communications degree is because I was a child of the 80s and grew up with MTV and I watched MTV and said, ‘I want to do that!’ ‘How do I do that?’”

She grew up seeing the artists and bands she saw on MTV — Pat Benatar, U2, Hall & Oates, INXS, The Police and Def Leppard stand out in her memory — live on stage in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Columbus. She still sees lots of live music, both in traditional performance venues and in the studio, when she and her crew get their own private concerts as they film North Dakota and Minnesota musicians for thirty minute “Prairie Musicians” episodes over the course of about a month. The episodes don’t air live, but combine the energy of a live performance with Gravel’s expert directorial eye.

The bands arrive for a four to five hour recording session with Gravel’s crew of five camera operators and two audio technicians. Some bands nail it on the first take and others experiment before they settle on the result they want. Coordinating five cameras is a lot of work, but the results give Gravel lots of options. The end result is that each episode captures the unique personalities of the performers, giving each season a unique vibe.

Gravel raves about this show and her work at Prairie Public in general. “We do a lot of amazing projects and it’s just different every day and it’s fun and it’s a challenge,” she says. She knows she is exactly where she’s meant to be, creating and working in an environment that’s perfectly suited to her interests and talents. “For me, it was just so easy. Ever since high school I was just so enamored and in love with creating TV shows. This is my little 2017 version of MTV. The good MTV!” she adds with a laugh and a broad grin.

It’s been a wild ride since that first trip west in her Camaro. But Gravel likes the final destination. And she has some simple advice for those who want to blaze their own trail in television and develop their voice in other storytelling forms as well. “Any experience you can get helps,” she says. “It all builds toward your overall knowledge and expertise and experience. Working with people, you learn something different from everyone. And then you build your own personality and your own style, which is really important.”

This combination of self-awareness, willingness to collaborate and learn, and to jump in with both feet and see what happens have made Gravel who she is and taken her career to the next level. But she says honoring her passions and incorporating them into her work is what has made her career in public broadcasting — and her life — truly rewarding.

“I think things work out when you’re really true to yourself and you’re doing things that you like and you’re proud of,” she says. “That’s what I try to teach my kids; you’ve got to be happy in what you’re doing. Just enjoy it. Life is too short. I think it really does all work out in the end. It did for me, that’s for sure.” [ aw ]

Kelly Minter

Friday, October 6 7:00 — 9:00pm

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