BusinessTN

When Ross Bagwell--the man known as the godfather of Knoxville's cable television production industry--suffered a heart attack in 1999, he and his loved ones reached a difficult conclusion.

"That's a wrap," they said, in so many words.

So, Bagwell relinquished the top spot at the family's second production company, Ross Television Productions, which he and his son, Ross Bagwell Jr., had launched five years earlier. Though the junior Bagwell decided to get out too, the family didn't have to look far for a suitable successor.

"I want it," said Dee Bagwell Haslam, Bagwell's youngest offspring and only daughter.

With those words, Haslam was stepping into a very big pair of shoes, and no one knew that better than she. Haslam had witnessed firsthand many of her father's accomplishments, first as his daughter and then as an employee who began working for her family's company in college. (She continued to do so part-time while raising three children with her husband of 31 years, Pilot Corp. CEO Jimmy Haslam.) She had heard, and even told, the story of her father's legacy countless times.

For Haslam, it was a familiar tale: Bagwell, who got his start as a page for NBC in New York in the 1950s, began producing commercials out of Knoxville in the 1970s and produced cable television's first sitcom, I-40 Paradise, for the Nashville Network in the early '80s. He went on to produce numerous other programs for cable networks like A&E, the History Channel and Nickelodeon. Ultimately, with his son by his side, he grew Cinetel Productions into one of the largest independent cable television production companies in the Southeast. In 1994, Scripps Howard purchased that company to headquarter and launch its newly formed cable network, HGTV. Today, many describe Knoxville as the fourth largest cable television production market in the United States after Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. (Some even rank it third.)

"Ross Bagwell is the taproot of this whole industry," says Stephen Land, who worked for Bagwell at Cinetel and stayed on at Scripps before leaving in 1996 to start Jupiter Entertainment, his own Knoxville production company. "A lot of people can say they started a business, but he is one of the few people who can say he started an industry."

For Haslam, though, it wasn't as much about filling her father's shoes as it was about carrying on what she herself had grown to love. After selling to Scripps, Bagwell started all over again, launching Ross Television Production because he loved the art of production. Similarly, Haslam returned to the company full time in the 1990s (after her children got older) because she loved to develop and create. Finally, she'd assumed the role of CEO and executive producer because the business is in her blood.

So, Haslam and her business partner, COO Rob Lundgren--who was initially recruited to Knoxville in the 1980s to join Whittle Communications long before its collapse in 1994--renamed Bagwell's company RIVR Media. Since then, they've made RIVR their own in more than just name. After all, it's no secret that the industry has changed drastically since Bagwell got in the game. Network consolidation and technology, that ever-present catalyst responsible for turning most industries on their heads, have yielded different challenges for Bagwell's younger counterparts. And just as Bagwell recognized a bright future in cable and shifted his production focus from commercials to cable television programs, Haslam and Lundgren also find themselves with the opportunity to explore a different path. For them, though, the buzzword isn't cable, it's broadband, and as they look to the future, their charge is to pursue strategies that will enable them to continue to be successful in a fully bloomed Digital Age.