Dr. Peter Orlik officially retires Aug. 15, ending a 51-year career that included him founding Central Michigan University's School of Broadcast and Cinematic Arts.

Orlik came to CMU in 1969 after receiving his PhD at Wayne State University, where he taught for three years. Orlik was hired by Wilbur Moore (Moore Hall is named after him) to help develop a broadcast department within what was then the Department of Speech.

Graduates of the School of Broadcast and Cinematic Arts include the founder and CEO of CableReady, the senior director of NBC News and one of ESPN's first senior vice presidents.

Central Michigan Life sat down with Orlik to discuss his long career and what he thinks about the future of broadcasting.

CM LIFE: What originally inspired you to study broadcasting?

Orlik: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a professional clarinetist, but I figured out along the way that while I was OK, I was never going to really make it in that field. However, I was very involved in music and theatre. I started producing assemblies for our high school. That was kind of related to broadcasting and mass communication, so I started to think that this could be a field where I could combine all of my interests, like music, writing and things of that sort.

Right after high school I got a job as a typist at a one-person ad agency in Detroit. After about two weeks at that job I started to make little changes to the copy, and (my boss) could have fired me on the spot, but instead she gave me a promotion to copywriter, so instead of making $1 an hour, I was making $1.25 an hour.

I started writing copy there, and then that became the primary field that I was interested in subsequent to that.

Are today's broadcasting students different from students in the past?

I wouldn't say that they are. I think back to the first students I had at Wayne State, and the first students that I had here, one constant that you'll see among the good students is that they have a passion for the field. You have to have that, if not, we'll tell you to go find something else. Despite what some people think, the pay isn't the greatest in a lot of areas of our field, and the hours can be horrific. But if you have a passion for the field, that's going to be a big benefit for you, and that's been a constant.

This is a field where you have really good students, and really not so good students, and there's very little in the middle. Even when I started teaching that was the case. Either you're good at it, and you like it and you commit yourself to it, or you're none of those things.

Media consumption habits have changed a lot over the past few years, especially with the growth in popularity of apps and social media. Do you see that significantly changing the future of broadcasting?

Absolutely! It used to be the scheduler was king. We had the phrase "appointment television." Now it's the consumer who's making the appointments. The whole thing now revolves around time flexibility and use flexibility. You have to put out product in a way that's going to be digestible whenever the consumer wants it. We've gone from a linear to a very non-linear sort of consumption pattern, and you have to recognize that.

Having said that, one of the key reasons that sportscasters are so expensive, and continue to demand a lot of money, is that fact that once the game is over, there's not a lot of replay value. You don't rerun games, so it's a live event that has to be watched live and consumed live that advertisers find very appealing, because they know that people are going to be exposed to their ads at this particular time. That's important, and it's also important if you're a movie studio that has a movie coming out this weekend, or a big retailer that has an upcoming sale. Despite the fact that we're seeing more and more of the consumers making the appointments, sports programming, and some of these big-time reality shows, to a degree, are very much real-time events, and real-time events are very valuable.

Do see programming like six o'clock news and 11 o'clock news shows being affected by these changes?

I think that they're already changing to a degree. You finding more and more content packages that cover the first part of the news and then say "for more information, go to our website," or "go to our app." So you're finding fewer and shorter stories in a lot of instances - not that the content isn't there. We're moving towards other delivery systems for the greater volume of the news.

How are you going to spend your retirement?

I'm still going to be very active in our Broadcast Education Association - for 25 years I've run their scholarship competition. They've asked me to continue doing that, as well as continuing to do there salary survey.
I'll also be continuing to do some media consulting, catch up on some reading and seeing what else presents itself.