American Bandstand, WFIL-TV and ABC (1957)

[pqgeorge]

Saw this video (below) on YouTube this week, recorded on 12/18/1957. At first it looked like it was received at WFIL-TV (Channel 6 in Philadelphia). But I noticed it looked like the Postal Service PSA was already in progress by the time the switch was made to WFIL-TV after the ABC promo and Network ID had finished. I also noticed a quick frame or two of an American Bandstand slate before the switch to WFIL-TV was made. I also noticed the audio from WFIL had that "network sound" like it used to be prior to January of 1978 when full-quality (15 kHz) lines were introduced. Could have this been recorded either at ABC New York or some ABC affiliate "down-the-line"? Was ABC using the WFIL-TV legal ID as a kind of "cue" for the affiliates to use before they were to return to the network after the local break or was WFIL-TV recording this, post-network feed? It's a very interesting look on how American Bandstand was sent to the ABC network in those early days of TV. Any thoughts??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OuadOnFHSs&feature=recentlik

 

[Ultimajock]

Was ABC using the WFIL-TV legal ID as a kind of "cue" for the affiliates to use before they were to return to the network after the local break or was WFIL-TV recording this, post-network feed?

...I think that use of a key station's ID was SOP as a cue for affiliates down the line to join the network in the '40s and '50s. I have digital files of a couple of kinescopes of such programs -- the first Don McNeil's Breakfast Club to be simulcast, over ABC Radio and DuMont TV, and an NBC Kovacs on the Corner, coincidentially both produced live in Philadelphia -- and on both a local station's legal ID appears -- WABD/5 New York for McNeil, WPTZ/3 Philadelphia for Kovacs -- as a cue to come out of the local station ID or commercial to join or rejoin the program. There were a couple of times as late as '72 that I noticed WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay switching to CBS for a show and seeing what was clearly a local promo slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York half a second before the CBS "bong" at the top of the hour, so I suspect it may have been common policy that far down the line chronologically...

 

[Bob E. Nelson]

There were a couple of times as late as '72 that I noticed WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay switching to CBS for a show and seeing what was clearly a local promo slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York half a second before the CBS "bong" at the top of the hour...

...which now leads to the question: when did the CBS bong vanish from the TV side? I remember it well since it was much more distinctive than the typical TOH quick tone burst (much like WGN's distinctive, memorable TOH signal).

 

[oldiesfan6479]

There were a couple of times as late as '72 that I noticed WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay switching to CBS for a show and seeing what was
clearly a local promo slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York half a second before the CBS "bong" at the top of the hour, so I suspect it may
have been common policy that far down the line chronologically...

That was a glitch in the CBS switching system at the dairy barn which occurred on occasion
during the 1970s--seeing a few frames of the WCBS-TV ID just before the start of a program.

If things were working correctly, the network was in black during local station breaks (other
than for closed-circuit announcements to affiliates).

 

[bpatrick]

WTVT/13 Tampa used to identify itself immediately after
a program, then after the last commercial of the break you'd hear
the CBS "bong" and, often, see about a half-second of WCBS's ID slide.
I don't know when CBS stopped using the "bong" (actually, I thought it
sounded more like a piano key being tapped) on television, but I liked it
better than the "beep" tone on NBC.

The weirdest experience I've ever had with station IDs came one night
in Birmingham in the early '70s. At the time WBRC was Birmingham's ABC
affiliate; WQXI (now WXIA), Atlanta's. Both stations were about to run
the ABC Sunday Night Movie, and at 8 PM (CT), or seconds before, WBRC's
announcer had ID'd the station, then we heard a voice say "Channel 11 Atlanta."
How that got into the line from Atlanta to Birmingham (assuming that was the
feed pattern) I'll never know, unless the engineer at WBRC pressed the network
feed button a couple of seconds too soon.

 

[wbhist]

There were a couple of times as late as '72 that I noticed WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay switching to CBS for a show and seeing what was clearly a local promo slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York half a second before the CBS "bong" at the top of the hour, so I suspect it may have been common policy that far down the line chronologically...

That was a glitch in the CBS switching system at the dairy barn which occurred on occasion during the 1970s--seeing a few frames of the WCBS-TV ID just before the start of a program.

If things were working correctly, the network was in black during local station breaks (other than for closed-circuit announcements to affiliates).

WBAY wasn't the only such one; during the Reagan shooting in 1981, as KNXT (now KCBS-TV) in Los Angeles was running CBS News coverage, they too showed a WCBS ID slide for a few frames at one point. (One person who put the coverage up on YouTube twice under two different screen names, had both accounts suspended subsequently.)

Incidentally, the 5 kHz "telco" audio heard prior to the start of February 1978 on all network feeds (including PBS), was discovered to have a "low end" of 100 Hz. A guide to different audio frequency responses for TV and radio transmission can be seen on this page.

And as for NBC's "beep" tone - sounded by the 1960's and '70's like it was in the neighborhood of 750 Hz. A few insist that it was 700 Hz - and may've been, in the mid-to-late 1950's.

 

[newsmark]

er had with station IDs came one night
in Birmingham in the early '70s. At the time WBRC was Birmingham's ABC
affiliate; WQXI (now WXIA), Atlanta's. Both stations were about to run
the ABC Sunday Night Movie, and at 8 PM (CT), or seconds before, WBRC's
announcer had ID'd the station, then we heard a voice say "Channel 11 Atlanta."

I wonder if WBRC had an off-air pickup of WQXI as a "backup" for its regular network line. When I worked in master control
at KLTV in Tyler, Texas, in the 80s, my "backup" for ABC was an off-air pickup of KTRE in Lufkin, picking up KTRK in Houston via a microwave that was shared with the cable company. More than once, we saw or heard all 3 station IDs supered in rapid succession. Don't think we ever got them full screen... it just happened when KTRK happened to do it as a lower-third over programming. I vividly remember it happening once during Monday Night football.

KTRE got their network feed from us, so if we lost our normal microwave (later satellite) feed, they lost theirs, too.

Fortunately, we didn't have to use that backup very often. It was not a pretty picture. Literally.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

...which now leads to the question: when did the CBS bong vanish from the TV side?

Some info on the chirp, the bong, and other things (not by the Cowsills, of course )
on the cnyradio.com site:

http://www.cnyradio.com/2009/07/13/cbs-news-radio-goes-chirpless/

Special attention to comment #3 re the bong (CBS, not Chuck Buick ;D).

 

[Ultimajock]

When I worked in master control at KLTV in Tyler, Texas, in the 80s, my "backup" for ABC was an off-air pickup of KTRE in Lufkin, picking up KTRK in Houston via a microwave that was shared with the cable company. More than once, we saw or heard all 3 station IDs supered in rapid succession. Don't think we ever got them full screen... it just happened when KTRK happened to do it as a lower-third over programming. I vividly remember it happening once during Monday Night football.

KTRE got their network feed from us, so if we lost our normal microwave (later satellite) feed, they lost theirs, too.

...there was a similar situation with KFIZ-TV/34 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, during their brief life (1968-1972). KFIZ was and independent and, ostensibly, a secondary affiliate of CBS, picking up whatever material WBAY passed on, mainly The Merv Griffin Show but also including the odd sporting event. The sports they picked up from either WISC-TV/3 Madison or WISN-TV/12 Milwaukee OTA, but Merv was OTA from WVTV/18 Milwaukee, as WISN and (IIRC) WISC both passed on it (ironically, WISC later picked up Merv's Metromedia show). To further complicate matters, WVTV started their showing of Merv at 10:15 rather than 10:30, on a one-day delay. WVTV would also super their ID across the lower third of the screen, and invariably KFIZ would pass at least the first second of it through to their air before the engineer in Fondy put the KFIZ ID slide up, sometimes forgetting to pass the audio through at the same time. KFIZ also aired some PBS material, mainly Sesame Street and The Electric Company, picking it up OTA from WMVS/10 Milwaukee or WHA-TV/21 Madison, but I don't recall 10 or 21 supering their IDs over the screen...

 

[Tim L]

Some notes about the clip in question:

I originally pulled the clip from a complete American Bandstand Show (12-18-1957) at the online archive from the Museum of Broadcast Communications Website..It was an hour (presumably 4-5 PM) partly sponsored by 7UP..Later in the hour all the commercials are ABC promos including this "Seasons Greetings" spot by John Charles Daly.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vERZkOJr4g0

 

[bpatrick]

I suspect ABC was doing a lot of promos in 1957-58;
I've seen an episode of "Who Do You Trust?" from '58
(the one where Johnny Carson does a live Jello commercial
and calls a cup a "crup") and there are maybe a couple of
others--I think there's a Gerber baby food commercial in
there--but there are also a number of promos: John Daly
for ABC's newscast, John Cameron Swayze for his "Dating
Game"/"Love Connection"-type show, "Chance For Romance,"
and George Fenneman for his primetime game show, "Anybody
Can Play." From what I've read, "Bandstand" and "Trust" were
about 50% sold out in 1958.

 

[pqgeorge]

Some notes about the clip in question:

I originally pulled the clip from a complete American Bandstand Show (12-18-1957) at the online archive from the Museum of Broadcast Communications Website..It was an hour (presumably 4-5 PM) partly sponsored by 7UP..Later in the hour all the commercials are ABC promos including this "Seasons Greetings" spot by John Charles Daly.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vERZkOJr4g0

It's funny that at that time, John Charles Daly while doing news for ABC Radio and TV was also doing the emcee duties on "What's My Line?" as well AND "on another network" (on CBS).

I don't know if that would fly today!! But nonetheless, Mr. Daly was truly a man of class and distinction. He brought a lot of class to "What's My Line?" and also brought ABC some much needed recognition at a time when they really needed it. At the time, ABC was a distant third even after DuMont ceased operations in 1956.

"American Bandstand" brought a lot of new and young viewers to the ABC fold. It also put Dick Clark as a household name. God love him.

 

[bpatrick]

It is ironic: Daly had stronger journalistic credentials
than either Douglas Edwards or John Cameron Swayze
(he had had two particularly historic moments on radio:
the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941
and of FDR's death in 1945). However, he became better
known as the moderator of "What's My Line?", which is
due largely to the technical limitations (i.e., lack of affiliates)
of ABC in the '50s. I find it interesting that in my backyard
(figuratively speaking) WTVD Raleigh/Durham, which was NBC
primary, ABC secondary from 1954-56, chose Daly over Swayze
in the early evening.

 

[Hal Erickson]

I think that use of a key station's ID was SOP as a cue for affiliates down the line to join the network in the '40s and '50s. I have digital files of a couple of kinescopes of such programs -- the first Don McNeil's Breakfast Club to be simulcast, over ABC Radio and DuMont TV, and an NBC Kovacs on the Corner, coincidentially both produced live in Philadelphia -- and on both a local station's legal ID appears -- WABD/5 New York for McNeil, WPTZ/3 Philadelphia for Kovacs -- as a cue to come out of the local station ID or commercial to join or rejoin the program. There were a couple of times as late as '72 that I noticed WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay switching to CBS for a show and seeing what was clearly a local promo slide for WCBS-TV/2 New York half a second before the CBS "bong" at the top of the hour, so I suspect it may have been common policy that far down the line chronologically...

When LUNCH WITH SOUPY SALES joined ABC's Saturday-morning lineup in 1959, the entire network was fed the ID for WXYZ Detroit. I believe ABC also retained WCPO-Cincinnati's ID when it ran UNCLE AL in the same timeslot the previous year.

 

[Ultimajock]

It is ironic: Daly had stronger journalistic credentials
than either Douglas Edwards or John Cameron Swayze
(he had had two particularly historic moments on radio:
the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941
and of FDR's death in 1945).

...although no actual recording of the Pearl Harbor bulletin exists; the ones floating around the Internet were actually pieced together from the FDR death bulletin, which was airchecked, and a recreation Edward R. Murrow had Daly perform for Murrow's I Can Hear It Now record albums for Columbia Masterworks. Daly's actual Pearl Harbor bulletin interrupted a dramatic program, Spirit of '41, that Daly was the narrator for (of which no aircheck is known to exist). That would have been about 2:25 Eastern Time. However, on the World Today newscast that started at 2:30, the majority of which is known to exist as an aircheck, Bob Trout clearly reports from London that the British capital heard its first news of the attack on Pearl Harbor from Daly...

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

I believe the bulletin given by Daily on FDR's death on April 12, 1945 interupted a CBS Network show called "Wilderness Road".

 

[Ultimajock]

I believe the bulletin given by Daily on FDR's death on April 12, 1945 interupted a CBS Network show called "Wilderness Road".

...indeed it did, and as I recall, NBC, Mutual and ABC were running kiddie fare at that time, too. The first Americans to learn FDR had died were mostly children and eavesdropping parents...

 

[bpatrick]

Jim Bishop, in his book "When FDR Died," quoted Daly's
entire bulletin that interrupted "Wilderness Road". He
said that a press association (International News Service,
later merged with United Press) had just announced that
FDR was dead. All they had was that bare announcement,
but CBS would return with more information as it became
available. Not unlike Walter Cronkite's announcement that
shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade eighteen years later.