INVESTMENT: Opportunity Knocks

As an apostle of U.S. private enterprise, Kansas Oilman Bill Graham has ranged far afield with cash and encouragement for budding businessmen (TIME, Dec. 23). He has backed furniture makers in Greece, cement contractors in Lebanon, nylon manufacturers in India. This week Bill Graham was looking right in his own backyard for business ideas to encourage. Onto a statewide TV hookup from Wichita’s KAKE-TV went the first of twelve TV programs called Opportunity Knocks that will award up to $75,000 in financial backing to the best home-grown ideas for small business.

Produced by Graham’s Private Enterprise, Inc. and sponsored by Ford Motor Co., the show will hear from three contestants a week for three weeks, pick three of them for a fourth program where the winner will get backing up to $25,000. As with small businessmen it has backed abroad, Graham’s P.E.I, will split profits fifty-fifty with the winners until they are ready to buy out its share. Graham has already received nearly 300 applications touting everything from a futuristic garage to a fancy vanity tray, is having applicants screened by Wichita’s Fourth National Bank and judged by a panel of three prominent Kansas businessmen.

Graham’s first three contestants this week were Cleo V. Dome, a Bucklin, Kans. football coach who wants $15,000 to start a wholesale and retail seed-cleaning business; Del and Betty Robinson, who need $10,000 to start a shop specializing in party planning and decorating; and Tony Oropesa, a restaurant operator who wants $15,000 to start a seafood restaurant in Wichita. Private Enterprise has $314,000 available for loans, may make Opportunity Knocks a national program if it is a success in Kansas. Graham hopes to see a program with no losers. Says he: “Somewhere in the TV audience there’s going to be someone with capital even for the ideas that we aren’t able to use.”