Chapter Three 

Where’s My Hat?
Draft 4.7
April 22, 2026

 

We had Big Bird. They had a hunting season on big birds. Still, on paper it made a certain sense.

Few people know this now, but Outdoor Idaho began in 1983 as a co-production of the Idaho Fish & Game Department and Idaho Public Television.

Fish & Game had stories to tell. Good ones. They had a nation-wide reputation and were proud of their work. The wanted hunters and anglers to see where their license fees were going. Besides, they already had a glossy four-color magazine, so why not a television show?

Idaho Public Television, for its part, was a scrappy statewide PBS network. Shows like Nature and National Geographic performed well, so a program focused on Idaho’s outdoors had real potential. And the $25,000 from the Fish & Game Department didn’t hurt. It covered travel and some production costs. The station picked up the rest: staff, cameras, editing.

 

The format was straightforward: a monthly half-hour program built around “hook and bullet” stories: hunter orange, salmon counts over Lower Granite Dam, chukar survival rates, occasional interviews with the F&G director. Solid, useful, constituency-driven content.

It was a practical arrangement, if not a romantic one. And it worked, until it didn’t.

In those early years, the two people who made it work were Royce Williams, the writer from Fish & Game, and Peter Morrill from IdahoPTV, who seemed to do everything else. Royce could turn a phrase; Peter could make it sing on screen. A young Ric Ochoa and a younger Jeff Tuck, still in high school, increasingly handled the shooting and editing.

The host was Doug Copsey, one of the founders of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival: comfortable onstage, comfortable outdoors. In some ways it might have been called Indoor Idaho. Doug introduced segments from behind a desk in the station’s studio, linking together various unrelated field segments with studio interviews.

The first episode in 1983 covered kokanee salmon, a problem grizzly bear, elk habitat, antelope near Arco, and a studio conversation with world-renowned raptor expert Morley Nelson. It was a classic magazine format, with segments that didn’t necessarily relate to one another.

That would change in later years.

By the third season, Doug left his hosting role and moved on to other things. The show moved in a new direction. The desk disappeared. The studio vanished. If it was going to be called Outdoor Idaho, it needed earn its name.

What it needed next was a host. That turned out to be me.

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“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” Wise words from George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty Four. I often thought of that quote when I considered my luck. I hadn’t come to Idaho as a ready-made outdoorsman and storyteller. But over time and circumstance my image became connected with the state, such that I’ve often been asked if I’m a native Idahoan.

But why me? Not because I was the most qualified outdoorsman in Idaho. Sure, I loved to fish and usually had elk or venison in the freezer. I had also built a log cabin outside Idaho City in the 1970s, salvaging ponderosa and lodgepole pine from a blowdown near Graham and Trinity Mountain with a borrowed two-ton truck with failing brakes and an even more unreliable McCulloch chainsaw.

But that wasn’t it.

I got the job because the price was right. I was already on staff, working for the daily public affairs show Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television. That meant management didn’t have to write another check. To them, I was “free.” It’s amazing what doors open when you’re free.

Besides, I thought I made a pretty convincing argument to those who questioned my qualifications. I had learned a lot about structure and deadlines in high school, and I knew how to handle myself when things got rowdy in a bar. It also helped that I didn’t require much makeup back then and had a halfway pleasant voice, or so I was told. But let’s face it, by then everyone knew my main selling point was that I came cheap. 

And I wore a hat. Granted, at first it was a black Greek fisherman’s cap that I’d picked up while drifting around Europe one winter in the 1970s and later in Mexico and South America. I had convinced myself that real outdoorsmen wore hats on television. So for my first appearances, I wore it proudly.

Looking back, that was a rookie mistake. So were the cowboy boots as I tried to climb up Bruneau Dunes.

After an episode or two, Royce and Peter staged a quiet intervention. The cap had to go. The boots would be situational. An appropriate wardrobe department was never discussed. This was public television. Viewers expected us to look a little… different.

With the new host came a new approach. We left the studio behind and went looking for the heart of Idaho. We figured we’d find it in places like Priest Lake, Henry’s Fork, Silver City, the St. Joe River, the White Clouds.

But the budget sometimes got in the way. This was shoestring TV. We’d drive in the morning, shoot all day, and head toward home that night. It saved money, but it meant we often missed the golden hours of light—those soft edges at dawn and dusk that could make everything look better than it was.

To give the show that “outdoor” feel, I would walk and talk to the camera along the banks of the Salmon River or in front of an impressive mountain or lake. In the early days, the words came from Royce. We called them “stand-ups.” A typical show had four or five on-camera stand-ups, each about 30 seconds in length and sometimes re-written minutes before delivery, based on where we ended up that day.

The stand-ups were the bridges between the various segments. Sometimes the topics had little relationship to each other, like backyard bird-feeding followed by fly tying. But there was enough connection for a dexterous writer like Royce to exploit and keep the show flowing. I was always impressed and occasionally amused.

But even when the stand-ups were a stretch, we figured it was no different from what host Marlin Perkins was probably doing for Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” the leader in national outdoor shows at the time. “While Jim attempts to attach the tracking device to the enraged lion, I’m safe in the chopper. You, too, can be safe with Mutual of Omaha Insurance.”                    

Since the standup was that part of the show where I was on-air, I took those moments seriously. Sometimes it was the 6^th or 7th “take” before my walking and talking measured up to everyone’s expectations. We then looked to the cameraman to see if he was happy with his zooms and pans. Sometimes a 30-second stand-up could take half an hour before everyone was satisfied. And God help us if we were working with animals like horses or mules!

I was beginning to see there was nothing easy about going outside to produce an outdoor show, especially with old equipment that waited until you were 100 miles from the station and on top of a mountain to break down. Our equipment just wasn’t built for what we were attempting to do.

And then there were the self-inflicted problems, and they came quickly. I had recently purchased contact lenses and was still getting used to them. As we hiked to Jump Creek Falls in the Owyhee foothills for my very first stand-up, I was lost in thought, trying to memorize my lines, and didn't realize I had been rubbing my eyes while brushing against foliage along the trail. The next morning, my face had swollen so badly one eye wouldn’t open. A friend saw me and asked if I was Bruce’s brother. The perils of poison ivy.

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After a few seasons, the partnership with Fish and Game began to fray, especially as Royce and Peter moved on to other things. F&G writer/producer Sue Nass and I had begun producing the program. The department wanted more hunting and fishing stories. That’s what their constituents expected, and Sue delivered that.

But part of the show was heading elsewhere, and I was to blame. We were now doing stories on rock climbing at City of Rocks, trips with llamas into the backcountry, morel hunting in the spring after a wildfire, hang gliding and kayaking the Bruneau River with the first descenders.

Those were the stories I believed PBS viewers wanted, and the audience seemed to be growing. Ironically, that was part of the problem. It wasn’t just hunters and anglers who were now watching.

The good news was that the show was expanding its viewership. The bad news was that, soon after, Outdoor Idaho was no longer a co-production. That led immediately to the $25,000 question. Would Idaho Public Television carry the show on its own? Or would it go the way of many other local PBS shows around the country when money got tight, then whack the program?

I remember a brief conversation I had with station manager Jerry Garber. He asked me point-blank, “Can we really pull this off by ourselves?” I blurted out “Hell yes we can, and you won’t regret it!” It was a brave answer. Later I came close to eating those words.

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It’s true, my meandering path into television was not a typical one, yet at the time it all made sense to me, sitting in my unfinished log cabin with plastic sheeting for windows, on that frigid February evening back in 1981.

Idaho Reports was a daily program that covered the antics of the Idaho Legislature, and I had just watched it glitch off the air.  One of the reporters, Jean McNeil, was talking about some legislative issue, and suddenly she just disappeared. "Automation" had apparently kicked in.

Whatever the reason for the blank screen, it was 7 pm on a cold, dark winter evening, alone in my log cabin outside Idaho City, when I decided I could handle the job. 

So I started writing letters.

Now, I was brash enough to think I could do almost anything I set my mind to.  After all, I was teaching 8^th grade in Idaho City; writing and editing The Idaho World, the state’s oldest, continuously operating newspaper; keeping the Boise Basin public library operating; and tending bar at O’Leary’s Saloon in Idaho City. All the while, I was building my log cabin. Doing all this still kept me below the poverty line, so I was pretty sure I could survive at a public TV station.

I wrote several letters to the Idaho Public Television administration, with nary a response, not even a note asking for a donation. I realized this was not going to be easy.

After a sufficient amount of time had passed and no reply letter appeared, I drove my truck down from Idaho City to pester the PBS staff in person. But I never got past the receptionist, a diminutive woman with a no-nonsense attitude.

I realized what I must do. I needed to volunteer for three months during the summer break from teaching 8^th-grade students in Idaho City. That decision seemed to free the ice jam, and the receptionist finally walked me down a long hall to a little room on the Boise State University campus, where the Idaho Reports staff was working.

I finally got to meet Marc Johnson, Gary Richardson, Ric Ochoa, and Jean McNeil, the woman who had mysteriously disappeared from the TV screen that cold winter evening.

They welcomed me as one welcomes someone you’re convinced doesn’t belong there. However, they were cordial and even allowed me to sit at a desk that had been vacated two weeks earlier by a reporter who had left for San Francisco. Talk about serendipity. But I knew I had three months to make myself indispensable. Even I realized volunteering could only get me so far.

 

My task was to learn the TV lingo and to come up with story ideas for the daily half-hour “Idaho Reports” show, hosted by Marc. I still remember the pride I felt seeing my name in the credits for the first time, under “Production Assistance.” I’m sure I was the only one who noticed, but that was all right.

The staff no doubt questioned my first stories: on the fledgling southwest Idaho wineries, Idaho gambling, drunk driving on Highway 21, horseracing at Les Bois Park near Boise. But with each half-hour show under my belt, I was learning what worked and what didn’t work in the world of public television.

I was feeling better about my lifestyle choices, and I knew my grade-school students in Idaho City were wrong to laugh when I told them I was going into television and would not be coming back the following year.

 

When the time came three months later to depart my volunteer tenure, I said my goodbyes to everyone and began heading out the door, heart in hand. I was literally walking down the sidewalk when Operations Director Bob Pyle called me back. They had found some extra money and thought they could pay me for the next month or two. I was delighted they were willing to take a chance on me. By then everyone knew I was a sincere, cheap employee.

 But before I was an official employee, I had to fill out the forms and pass a test. I remember lots of generic state employment paperwork. One form asked: “Where do you get your ideas?” It was an innocuous question when I look back on it, but I had reached my limit with forms.  Why couldn’t it just be a handshake, like it was in Idaho City? Convinced that no one would even read my answers, I decided to test my theory.

“I get my ideas from Voices. I hear Voices.” And sure enough, no one said a word about my silly answer. No one had even read it. I suppose the only thing more distressing is that they had read it and figured it made perfect sense. But by then, I had my foot in the door.

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A hat is never just a hat. It says something about you. Maybe it says you haven’t come to terms with losing your hair. Maybe it’s an adult security blanket. Those who wear hats don’t really need a reason. But here’s one for you.  

One of the “duties as assigned” at IdahoPTV was to travel around the state with our development team, the ones who raise money for the station. We would speak to large groups of supporters who were hoping to be entertained with video clips of upcoming shows and a few tall tales from the Outdoor Idaho staff. They wanted to know that we were putting their $10 donation to good use.

I'm not sure how serious he was, but one day Governor Phil Batt saw me in the State Capitol, came up to me and said, "Reichert, you got the best damn job in the State." I thanked him. I already knew I was lucky. I guess the least I could do was to follow our development team across the state to rub shoulders with people I didn’t know, if that helped keep the job funded. I beat back my innate shyness and made myself available.  

We were in Lewiston one evening, and when it was my turn to speak, I decided not to wear my hat on stage.   As I was describing our latest Outdoor Idaho show, on the River of No Return, someone in the back of the auditorium yelled out, “Where's your hat? Put your hat back on!” The audience applauded. As I later told my colleagues, they only have to tell me once. Apparently, my Outdoor Idaho baseball cap had become a thing.

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It can be scary, but it happens a lot, to a lot of people. You begin waiting tables. Then one day you manage the others who are waiting tables. Your tasks grow larger, and as you learn the ropes, people come to rely on you with more responsibilities.

One day there comes a chance to run the operation. And you ask yourself, is this something I really want to do? You're pretty sure it will consume your life. Chances are, it will also come to define you.

It’s one thing, as host, to memorize someone else’s words. But now you will be the one to write those words. Now your task is to create, with colleagues, the entire program, to find the experts, to conduct the interviews and to work everything into a coherent script that people want to watch. Luckily, your colleagues know a lot about television, but there are still questions to be asked.

Will there be three segments or five, or maybe one long segment? Will each segment follow Freytag’s Pyramid, a dramatic structure that storytellers have used for centuries: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution?

Do you use your narrative voice to weave things together or just let the interviews tell the story? Do you start strong or save your best stuff for last?  

Preferably, each show needs to be up to date, as well as “evergreen.” In other words, write it so that it not only applies to today, but so it can also air a year down the road. It’s not always easy, but no TV producer wants a program that can only air once. Of course, who would have guessed that some Outdoor Idaho shows would still be airing 30 years later?  So learn to be careful what you write.

An Outdoor Idaho show takes its lead from the folks we interview. That’s why it’s critical to interview people with differing points of view. Our 2021 “Salmon Reckoning” program is a perfect example of conflicting opinions. Not only was our objective to educate viewers about salmon. It was also to show why salmon recovery is widely regarded as the most complex, intractable problem facing the Pacific Northwest.

Now, I’ve been accused of favoring older people to interview. Some of my friends have even suggested I must have “daddy” issues. Of course, I deny it. I tell them I simply go where the wisdom is.

Oh, and each program must end precisely at 26:46, so that those who are building the promotional material in the next room know exactly how long they have. No one wants seven or eight seconds of dead air space between shows.

 

Most of all, learn to respect the marriage of images and words. There’s a balance, and that’s where the real magic lies. If the words overpower the visuals, you’ve lost. Or if your sentence didn’t exactly match up with the image the editor planned to use, prepare to change the wording.  

I learned to lean on the people around me—talented videographers and editors who quietly saved the show more than once. Sauni Symonds, Pat      Metzler, Jay Krajic, John Crancer, Jeff Tucker, Alberto Moreno—these are some of the names that come immediately to mind.

I also received a piece of advice in those early years from Peter Morrill, who had worked his way up from videographer to producer to general manager.  When it’s all becoming overwhelming, he told me, break things down into small pieces. That way the tasks won’t seem so overwhelming.

And something I discovered: learn how to relax. Once you finish a program—sometimes only hours before air-time—it’s time to take a break. Maybe grab a beer or treat yourself to a nice meal or climb a mountain. Because the next show already has an air-date, and it's sneaking up on you. Plan to tackle that one on Monday.

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After the amicable divorce with Fish & Game, Outdoor Idaho immediately ended the magazine-style approach. Instead of multiple segments, Outdoor Idaho decided to go big. The first three programs without F&G—"Pend Oreille Country,” “The High Desert,” “The Henry’s Fork”—cemented a documentary-style approach that has lasted to the present day. It played to our PBS strengths, and I believe it gave the series a broader sweep that most viewers seem to appreciate.

That first production on our own—“Pend Oreille Country,”—focused entirely on life around Idaho’s largest, deepest lake. To prove there was no bitterness after our split with Fish & Game—and to make sure we could still rely upon them to find the wildlife—we interviewed F&G Commissioner Dick Hanson. He was a local who lived along the lake and truly understood the region's complex sporting culture. To save money, the Hansons let us stay at their home while we worked on the program.

Being the sole producer also had one more advantage: it allowed us to experiment. Seeking a touch of cinematic grandeur, I hauled my Coronado 15 sailboat from Idaho City to the lake for the "stand-up" segments.

I envisioned how it would play out: me at the helm, smiling confidently as the hull sliced through the whitecaps. I would turn to the camera, delivering my lines with effortless authority before gazing into the horizon.

I still think it could have worked, except for one of the sudden squalls that Idaho’s largest lake is famous for. The wind slammed into us, pounding the boat sideways. The jib snapped across like a hammer. I nearly went overboard.

Apparently, we’d stayed out longer than we should have while I memorized my lines and captained the boat. I was guilty, but I still think the idea had merit. The effort wasn’t all in vain, however. We got some decent material for the Christmas party. And, for the record, I didn’t lose my hat.

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An astute observer might notice that Outdoor Idaho had begun what some viewed as a perilous slide into dangerous territory. “Stay in your own lane,” said a friend who worried the show was getting too political, with stories on timber and grazing and mining and pollution. “Birds, bass fishing, and beautiful places is where Outdoor Idaho needs to camp out,” he told me.

He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t entirely right, either. Idaho isn’t simple. Its landscapes aren’t. Its issues certainly aren’t. I believed there was a way to tell those deeper stories—about land, water, policy, and people—without losing the audience.

And I was determined to find it, because by then the show had become, at least for me, a way of explaining Idaho to itself.

And, who knows, maybe Outdoor Idaho could even play a role in connecting a state confounded by its tortuous geology and great distances.

                                                                  -30-