TPR Cinema Tuesdays

Texas Public Radio, the San Antonio public broadcaster behind KSTX and classical KPAC, has covered film mostly through Nathan Cone. Cone came to TPR in the mid-1990s after starting on Trinity University's KRTU, worked on-air shifts and production, and began creating programming around his interest in film.

The oldest of those projects is Cinema Tuesdays. Cone said that around 2000 and 2001 San Antonio had no Alamo Drafthouse and no regular place to see classic films on a big screen, so he and Jay Black, a part-time TPR staffer who had worked in movie theaters, started a summer film series for TPR listeners. It became a yearly event. TPR pairs screenings with recorded conversations: after the final 2022 program, a Buster Keaton double feature of Sherlock Jr. and Cops at the Santikos Palladium, Cone interviewed Slate film critic Dana Stevens, who grew up in San Antonio, about her Keaton book Camera Man, and TPR posted the audio and a transcript.

The series was still running in 2026 with local sponsors, and TPR added off-season events such as an interactive Vertigo screening at its downtown Malú and Carlos Alvarez Theater. Over three decades Cone has also interviewed film figures including Ken Burns, Lou Diamond Phillips, Cary Elwes and Mary Poppins songwriter Richard Sherman. In 2025 the Society of San Antonio Radio Broadcasters inducted him into its Hall of Fame.