Retro: Arizona, Saturday, January 25, 1958

[K.M. Richards]

Source: Arizona Republic

TV listings were in an unusual format, with two sections of just program names by time and channel, one section for the Phoenix stations and a separate section for the Tucson and Yuma stations. Channels 5, 10 and 12 ran ads adjacent to the listings with program details and the Republic also had a daily column ("TV Key") with selected details of the Phoenix stations, pretending that other parts of the state were non-existent even if programs were the same. I got complete program titles and details for the Phoenix listings from their ads (and details for Mike Wallace from the "TV Key"), but had to default to the main listing as printed otherwise.

There was obviously a lot of kinescope use, as can be seen from the varying times between the three cities' airing times. You may speculate as to whether the same episodes aired in all three or not.

(3) KTVK Phoenix ABC
(4) KVOA Tucson NBC
(5) KPHO Phoenix
(9) KGUN Tucson ABC
(10) KOOL Phoenix CBS
(11) KIVA Yuma ABC, NBC, CBS
(12) KVAR Phoenix NBC
(13) KOLD Tucson CBS


7:50am
(12) RFD TV

7:55
(12) Morning News

8:00
(12) Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob

8:30
(12) Ruff 'n Reddy
(13) Mighty Mouse

9:00
(10) Heckle and Jeckle
(12) Fury
(13) Susan's Story

9:30
(10) Saturday Playhouse: "On The Nose" - Neville Brand, Ben Cooper
(12) Andy's Gang
(13) Mohicans

10:00
(10) (13) Jimmy Dean Show
(11) Capt. Kangaroo
(12) True Story - Kathi Norris

10:30
(12) Detective's Diary - Donald Gray

11:00
(10) (11) Mighty Mouse Playhouse
(12) Cowboy Corral: "Son of the Plains"
(13) Dan Smoot

11:15
(4) NBA Basketball
(13) Film

11:30
(10) Captain Kangaroo
(11) Howdy Doody
(13) Big Picture

11:45
(10) Film (this was in the listing section but not in KOOL's ad)

Noon
(10) Ice Hockey: Detroit Redwings (sic) vs. Boston Bruins
(11) Basketball
(12) NBA Basketball: New York Knickerbockers vs. Minneapolis Lakers
(13) Hockey
(No way to tell if the same matches on both 10 & 13 or on 11 & 12)

1:30pm
(5) Industry on Parade (in KPHO's ad but not the listings)

1:45
(5) Afternoon Movietime: A respected doctor drinks a potion that creates a devilish half-monster in "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde". Spencer Tracy, Bergman, Lana Turner.

2:00
(3) Western Marshal
(9) Mexican Th.
(12) Our Gang Comedies

2:30
(3) ASC Education Course
(10) KOOL's Patio Party with your host Al McCoy
(11) (12) Racing From Hialeah
(13) Sports

2:45
(13) Teen Time

3:00
(3) Wrestling
(4) (11) Movie
(12) Cowboy Corral: "Target", Tim Holt

3:30
(5) The Big Picture (listed as airing at 2:30 in KPHO's ad, obviously a typo)
(10) Saturday Matinee: "Force Of Evil" - John Garfield, Thomas Gomez (KOOL's ad said Captain Kangaroo aired again at 3:30 and the movie was at 3:45)
(12) Porky Pig (this was in the listing section but not in KVAR's ad)

3:45
(13) Ariz. Patrol

4:00
(3) All-Star Golf
(4) Fury
(5) I Wonder Why
(9) All-Star Golf
(11) Lone Ranger
(12) Cowboy Corral Second Feature: "Storm Over Wyoming", Tim Holt
(13) Country Music

4:30
(4) Round-Up
(5) This Is the Life
(11) Movie
(13) TV News

4:45
(10) Dan Smoot Reports
(13) TV News (listed in both time slots)

5:00
(3) Ariz. Agriculture
(5) Top Plays '56
(9) Agriculture (same as 3?)
(10) Garden In the Sun
(12) Operation Tomorrow

5:30
(3) Dangerous Assignment
(5) Playmates: Betsy Hayes has more fun & fascinating projects for youngsters.
(9) Window To World
(10) Arizona News Roundup
(11) Santa Anita
(12) Federal Men
(13) Kenny Smith

6:00
(3) Hillbilly
(4) (12) Perry Como (color on 12) - Guests Peggy Lee, John Bubbles, Pat Boone (no way to know if same show on both channels)
(5) It's Wallace?
(9) Country Caravan
(10) The Star & the Story
(11) Bill Hickok
(13) Cisco Kid

6:30
(3) Whirlybirds
(9) Operation Tomorrow
(10) (13) Dick and the Duchess: Dick and Jane allow a lovable sheepdog to help them solve a mystery in "The Coin Collection". Stars are Patrick O'Neal and Hazel Court. (no way to know if same show on both channels)
(11) Agriculture

7:00
(3) (9) Lawrence Welk
(4) Grand Old Opry
(5) Premier Movie Parade #1: Three boys rob a deserted mansion to buy a tombstone for a dead father of one of the boys. A suspicious pawnbroker is the weak link in the series of events. "The Devil Is a Sissy", Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney.
(10) Range Rider (KOOL's ad said "The Millionaire"
(11) Reader's Digest
(12) Polly Bergen
(13) Gale Storm

7:30
(10) I Search For Adventure
(11) Dick and Duchess
(12) (13) Gisele MacKenzie - Guest Mark Stevens (no way to know if same show on both channels)

8:00
(3) (9) Mike Wallace Interviews: United Auto Workers chief Walter Reuther's on hand, and Mike wants to know how the union president equates his wage demands with President Eisenhower's request that unions go easy on big wage hikes. (no way to know if same show on both channels)
(4) Rainbow
(10) Gunsmoke (the Republic listed it as "Gun Smoke" ): A pair of conniving land-grabbers try to drive out a hard-working squatter by killing his livestock and destroying his camp. James Arness stars.
(11) Big Record
(12) End of the Rainbow - Art Baker
(13) Robin Hood

8:30
(3) (9) Keep In Family
(4) (12) Your Hit Parade (color on 12)
(10) Perry Mason: Perry (Raymond Burr), who is investigating a hit-and-run accident on behalf of a young client, finds himself with another client, this one charged with murder in "The Case of the Cautious Coquette".
(13) Beaver

8:45
(5) Tomorrow's Headlines: John Wood at the KPHO news desk with INS, UP reports. (in KPHO's ad but not the listings)

8:50
(5) Today's Weather: Stan Calhoun presents temps and forecasts for Sunday as well. (in KPHO's ad but not the listings)

9:00
(3) Music Jub.
(4) Whirlybirds
(5) Premier Movie #2: A song writing team's split is mended by a new song only to be shattered again. A torch-bearing crooner hovers about the situation providing the love triangle that is bent on one side. "Lady Be Good" - Eleanor Powell, Robert Young, Ann Sothern.
(9) Country Music
(11) Perry Como
(12) Famous Playhouse
(13) Burns & Allen

9:30
(3) Theater
(4) News, Movie
(10) Have Gun Will Travel: A young lady is seriously injured after a saddle bum causes a slow-witted giant to place a burr under the saddle of her horse. The blame falls on Paladin (Richard Boone) who had graciously helped her into the saddle.
(12) Academy Theater: "Roadblock", Charles McGraw, Joan Dixon
(13) Perry Mason

10:00
(5) Premier Movie #3: A wild, wacky haunt hunt with Olsen & Johnson on the loose in "Ghost Catchers". Locked in a sub-cellar by a bear, a talking horse & men dressed in dinner jackets led by a mummy Olsen & Johnson call upon the help of a friendly, fiendish ghost to get out.
(9) News, Movie
(10) Oh, Susanna: Gale Storm and Zasu (sic)Pitts agree to deliver a Chinese puzzle box in Hong Kong and become involved in a sinister plot.
(11) L. Welk

10:30
(10) Million Dollar Movie: "The Devil and Daniel Webster" - Walter Huston, Edward Arnold, James Craig.
(13) Bowling

11:00
(3) Inner Sanctum
(4) (5) (11) Movie
(12) Inspector Mark Saber

11:30
(13) Playhouse 90

 

[installLSC]

A couple of questions:
Phoenix had a really odd affiliate lineup, with ABC and an indy on the low band VHF (2-6) and NBC and CBS stuck on the high bands. How did this happen?
K.M., did you see any of the weekday lineups? We've had discussions on if and when "Today"/"Tonight"/evening news were broadcast out west in the 50s.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I'm sure KOOL-TV's affiliation with CBS was due to the radio station's affiliation with them. That was very common with co-owned radio/TV operations; the networks encouraged their radio affiliates to get into television and pretty much guaranteed the affiliation even before a construction permit was granted. No guess about the others.

There are very few issues of the Arizona Republic available for the late 1950s, but I did find Friday, April 10, 1959.

On that date, channels 4 and 12 both carried one hour of "Today", from 7:00 to 8:00am. No "Tonight". 11 in Yuma carried one hour of "Today" at 8:00.

Huntley-Brinkley was on both at 5:15pm. Douglas Edwards at the same time on 10 and 13. John Daly was delayed to 9:30pm on both channels 3 and 9. It doesn't look like 11 carried any of the network newscasts.

 

[installLSC]

On that date, channels 4 and 12 both carried one hour of "Today", from 7:00 to 8:00am. No "Tonight". 11 in Yuma carried one hour of "Today" at 8:00.

Huntley-Brinkley was on both at 5:15pm. Douglas Edwards at the same time on 10 and 13. John Daly was delayed to 9:30pm on both channels 3 and 9. It doesn't look like 11 carried any of the network newscasts.

Looks like Mountain Zone stations carried those shows live if they carried them at all. (Wasn't "Today" still doing three hours then, with the final hour not shown in the ETZ?) The big question is the delay for the ABC news. Did networks kinescope their evening news programs back then?

 

[landtuna]

Living in Tucson then with the following observations:

Saturday was mostly a "kid's TV" day. Westerns and cartoons ruled the roost.

I don't remember any hockey coverage in Tucson at all during this period.

Al McCoy ("the voice of the Phoenix Suns) has been around forever.

ZaSu was indeed Ms. Pitts first name. Derived from two favorite aunt's names.

Staying up to watch bowling used to be a big deal when spending the night at a friend's house. I do not recall just why.

When answering the station's phones the girl used to say "It's KOOL in Phoenix" and "It's KOLD in Tucson". AFAIK the calls were accidental even though they do refer to the weather in the two cities. KOOL was owned by the same company that owned KOOL-FM/AM and KOLD was owned by Gene Autry, the "OLD" being the first word of "Old Pueblo", Tucson's nickname.

 

[K.M. Richards]

In looking at that lone weekday set of listings I found it appears that Phoenix and Tucson carried their network programming in lock step, which leads me to think that perhaps the latter city's stations were "interconnected" by using off-air feeds. High gain directional receiving antennas at the Tucson transmitter sites could probably get a nice clear signal from the Phoenix stations across the many miles of undeveloped desert between them. (Yuma was off-pattern on everything, so they were probably on the bicycled kinnies circuit.)

Part of what makes me think this is that, looking at the schedule and comparing it to the Castleman/Podrazik book everyone was for the most part carrying programming live and in-pattern when adjusted for the time zones.

With that in mind, KOOL and KVAR probably hot-kinescoped the network news off the CBS and NBC feeds at 4:45pm MT to air a mere 15-minutes after they had completed with the Tucson stations forced by the interconnect to carry them at the same times. It turns out that I jumped to a conclusion about the ABC newscast. In reviewing the network schedule there was a nightly newscast at 10:30pm ET anchored by John Daly and it seems obvious this is what KTVK kinnied for airing one hour later (again, with Tucson simulcasting).

 

[K.M. Richards]

Okay, I'm going to have to rethink this again.

It occurs to me that Daylight Saving Time was in effect on April 10, 1959 ... but Arizona, then as now, did not honor DST. So that means on this date there was only a one hour difference between Central Time and Arizona.

With that in mind, here are the shows that cleared in-pattern on the Phoenix/Tucson stations based on Castleman/Podrazik, in Arizona time (underlined shows cleared in Phoenix only):

6:30am
NBC - Continental Classroom (this was probably a kinnie as the network feed was at 6:30am ET, which would have been 4:30am in AZ)

7:00
NBC - Today

8:00
CBS - Morning Playhouse
NBC - Dough Re Mi

8:30
CBS - Arthur Godfrey Time
NBC - Treasure Hunt

9:00
CBS - I Love Lucy
NBC - The Price Is Right

9:30
CBS - Top Dollar
NBC - Concentration

10:00
CBS - Love Of Life
NBC - Tic Tac Dough

10:30
ABC - Peter Lind Hayes
CBS - Search For Tomorrow (10:45 The Guiding Light)
NBC - It Could Be You

11:00
CBS - News (five minutes, Walter Cronkite)

11:30
ABC - Play Your Hunch
CBS - As The World Turns

Noon
ABC - Liberace Show
CBS - Jimmy Dean Show
NBC - Queen For A Day

12:30pm
CBS - Art Linkletter's House Party
NBC - Haggis Baggis

1:00
ABC - Day In Court
CBS - The Big Payoff
NBC - Young Dr. Malone

1:30
ABC - Music Bingo
CBS - The Verdict Is Yours
NBC - From These Roots

2:00
ABC - Beat The Clock
CBS - The Brighter Day (2:15 The Secret Storm)
NBC - Truth Or Consequences

2:30
ABC - Who Do You Trust
CBS - The Edge Of Night
NBC - County Fair

3:00
ABC - American Bandstand

5:15
CBS - Douglas Edwards News
NBC - Huntley-Brinkley Report
(both of these were live at 6:45pm ET/4:45pm AZ, had to be a "hot kinnie" as my previous post guesses)

5:30
ABC - Mickey Mouse Club (had to be on film as 5:30pm was the ET airtime)
NBC - Northwest Passage

6:00
CBS - Rawhide
NBC - Ellery Queen

6:30
ABC - Rin Tin Tin

7:00
ABC - Walt Disney Presents
NBC - M Squad

7:30
NBC - The Thin Man

8:00
ABC - Tombstone Territory
CBS - The Lineup
NBC - Gillette Cavalcade Of Sports

8:30
ABC - 77 Sunset Strip
CBS - Person To Person

8:45
NBC - Phillies Jackpot Bowling

9:30
ABC - John Daly & the News

Except in cases where the Tucson stations did not carry a specific network program at all, everything is "live" off the feed from New York (Eastern Time minus two hours/Central Time minus one hour), EXCEPT ...

... the ABC schedule is an hour ahead (Eastern minus one, same times as Central) and this is not likely an error on the newspaper's part as those times match the daily KTVK ad.

I don't know how to explain that. Perhaps Bob Patrick has some thoughts?

 

[K.M. Richards]

And one more piece of information ...

I searched for that date in newspapers throughout the Central Time Zone and every station I could find listings for was in-pattern with New York (one hour earlier).

When I searched in Mountain Time I was only able to find listings for one ABC station, KUTV in Salt Lake City and it was one hour earlier than Central, which makes sense because unlike Arizona, Utah was on Daylight Saving Time on that date.

And some more research indicates that CBS started airing a delayed feed of Douglas Edwards to the West Coast on videotape in October 1956, so it's probable they also had a replay 30-minutes after the live newscast by 1959, and NBC likely followed suit.

 

[Gregg.]

I looked at Wikipedia regarding the sign-on dates of the four Phoenix stations, getting an explanation for the NBC and CBS affiliations on stations higher on the VHF dial, when those networks, being the strongest, usually had the lower channels. The first TV station sign on in Arizona was KPHO-TV 5, in 1949. It was owned by 910 KPHO Radio. It carried programming from all four networks, CBS, NBC, ABC and Dumont.

Then as other TV stations signed on, they were able to draw a single network away from KPHO, promising to carry most or all of that network's shows, something KPHO couldn't or wouldn't do. In April 1953, 1490 KTYL signed on Channel 12 as a full time NBC affiliate, KTYL-TV. The station was bought by 620 KTAR in 1955, becoming first KVAR (as seen in these listings... I guess close to KTAR's call letters) and a few years later as KTAR-TV.

Next was an alliance between KOOL and KOY to put Channel 10 on the air in October 1953 as a CBS affiliate, a shared time arrangement as KOY-TV and KOOL-TV. (There are still a few shared time radio frequencies to this day, 1240 in Chicago and 89.1 shared by two universities in the NYC area, that I know of.) A few years later, paying KOY $200,000, KOOL was able to get the channel full time, which we see in these listings. Interestingly, the KOOL call letters are still associated with CBS, on a CBS-owned FM Classic Hits station in Phoenix.

Then in 1955, Ernest McFarland, first a U.S. Senator, then Governor, signed on KTVK. He chose those call letters because, as someone who didn't own any radio stations, he wanted "TV" to be in his station's call sign, the station's "middle name" as he put it. Wikipedia doesn't explain how McFarland got the ABC affiliation away from KPHO. By this point KPHO was still carrying ABC and Dumont shows, although I'm sure everyone knew Dumont was the weakest network. By the following year, the Dumont network shut down. Maybe ABC figured it would be smarter to affiliate with a company owned by an important politician?

So by the time these TV listings were current, KPHO had gone from four networks to three, two, one and then none. Without the support of a network, KPHO doesn't bother to sign on till 1:30pm, and with no ABC offerings in the morning or early afternoon, KTVK doesn't sign on till 2pm. Looking at TV listings before 1960, it was only ABC stations in the largest cities that would sign on in the morning, cobbling together an assortment of cartoons, movies, local kids shows, local cooking shows and local talk/variety shows until ABC network programming would begin by mid-afternoon. At least that's what WJZ-TV/WABC-TV did in its early days in NYC. Obviously in 1958, KTVK wasn't able to do all that local programming.

And to fill up its daytime schedule on this Saturday afternoon, KPHO runs three free-for-the-asking shows, "Big Picture," supplied by the U.S. Army, "This Is The Life," supplied by a church organization, and something they call "Industry on Parade" which was a catch-all name many early stations gave to free industrial films, such as the wonders of modern lighting, supplied by General Electric.

 

[onairb]

506sports.com(the sports TV forum) confirms that there was only one NBA game (on NBC) and NHL game (on CBS) that day. The hockey game had a start time of 2 ET, while 506 doesn't have a start time listed for basketball, but it looks like Tucson had the NBA game live.

 

[K.M. Richards]

506sports.com(the sports TV forum) confirms that there was only one NBA game (on NBC) and NHL game (on CBS) that day. The hockey game had a start time of 2 ET, while 506 doesn't have a start time listed for basketball, but it looks like Tucson had the NBA game live.

Which makes the 45-minute discrepancy in the listings more confusing, since we've pretty much established that Tucson was likely getting its network feeds via Phoenix and wouldn't be able to run any network programming on their own.

I'd also have to guess that KIVA/11 in Yuma was picking up the basketball game via Tucson. I wonder what the picture looked like after two off-the-air hops.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Source: Arizona Republic
(4) KVOA Tucson NBC
(10) KOOL Phoenix CBS
(12) KVAR Phoenix NBC
(13) KOLD Tucson CBS

6:00
(4) (12) Perry Como (color on 12) - Guests Peggy Lee, John Bubbles, Pat Boone (no way to know if same show on both channels)

8:00
(10) Gunsmoke (the Republic listed it as "Gun Smoke" ): A pair of conniving land-grabbers try to drive out a hard-working squatter by killing his livestock and destroying his camp. James Arness stars.
(13) Robin Hood

8:30
(4) (12) Your Hit Parade (color on 12)
(10) Perry Mason: Perry (Raymond Burr), who is investigating a hit-and-run accident on behalf of a young client, finds himself with another client, this one charged with murder in "The Case of the Cautious Coquette".

11:30
(13) Playhouse 90

For the two NBC prime shows listed as being in color on KVAR 12, did it indicate that KVOA 4 was running them in B&W?

I can't believe that KOLD 13 didn't air Gunsmoke (Sat 10:00 PM ET) off the net feed! Any idea when it aired?

The Perry Mason episode on KOOL 10 was a one-week delay--it aired on the network Jan 18 (7:30 PM ET). KOOL was probably sent a 16mm film print. I doubt it if any of the listed stations had VTRs by early in '58.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

KOOL was owned by the same company that owned KOOL-FM/AM and KOLD was owned by Gene Autry, the "OLD" being the first word of "Old Pueblo", Tucson's nickname.

KOOL was also owned by Gene Autry (and Tom Chauncey, among others).

 

[oldiesfan6479]

In looking at that lone weekday set of listings I found it appears that Phoenix and Tucson carried their network programming in lock step, which leads me to think that perhaps the latter city's stations were "interconnected" by using off-air feeds.

KOLD originally had its own CBS Telco line, up until sometime in 1959. They then hooked up with KOOL, via a private microwave link from Phoenix to Tucson (KOOL studio...S Mtn...Pinal Peak...Mt Bigelow...KOLD studio). That was in place 1959-1977, when KOLD "divorced" itself from KOOL and re-established its own Telco line from CBS.

With that in mind, KOOL and KVAR probably hot-kinescoped the network news off the CBS and NBC feeds at 4:45pm MT to air a mere 15-minutes after they had completed with the Tucson stations forced by the interconnect to carry them at the same times.

[(Yuma was off-pattern on everything, so they were probably on the bicycled kinnies circuit.)/QUOTE]

Back then, the (15 min) evening newses were on at 6:45 ET and repeated at 7:15 ET.

KIVA Yuma was even stranger than Tucson. Their network feeds were the off-air signals grabbed from the El Lay stations somewhere SE of L.A., then microwaved (multi-hop) to Yuma. Many programs (in winter) were "Pacific Time + one hour."

KGUN, in the 1960s, had a microwave link from KTVK--this may well have dated back into the '50s.

KVOA had its own Telco line, as KVAR did. KVOA did establish a microwave link with KTAR (ex-KVAR) in the early 1970s.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

It occurs to me that Daylight Saving Time was in effect on April 10, 1959 ... but Arizona, then as now, did not honor DST.

DST was NOT in effect on 04/10/59. It didn't begin until the last Sunday in April...and its end in the fall was a whole mismosh of different dates (the latest end date was the last Sunday in October).

AZ used DST only in 1967 (Apr 30-Oct 29).

 

[K.M. Richards]

DST was NOT in effect on 04/10/59. It didn't begin until the last Sunday in April...and its end in the fall was a whole mismosh of different dates (the latest end date was the last Sunday in October).

I misread my source on that. Thank you for the correction.

I'm sure as the discussion continues all the remaining anomalies will be settled, so I will sit back now and only jump in where there are questions about my source material.