Channel 10 In-Studio Hostage Drama Now on YouTube

[TVWorldwide]

A video of the KOOL-TV hostage drama from 1982 is now available on YouTube -- the clip includes both the hostage situation itself and the subsequent coverage from KOOL News:

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

(Via TexasTVNews at tvnewstalk.net)

From People Magazine:

Keeping Calm in a Crisis at Kool-Tv, Anchorman Bill Close Persuades An Angry Gunman Not to Turn Killer

Television has been involved indirectly in countless hostage situations, and critics have often questioned its impact. Is TV capable of simply bearing witness to such life-and-death drama, or does it act as a catalyst for irrational violence? Should hostage-takers, under any circumstances, be allowed to issue their demands on the air? Recently officials at KOOL-TV in Phoenix found themselves answering these questions at the point of a gun. Afterward, with David Sheff of PEOPLE, they reconstructed an evening of terror.

At first anchorman Bill Close, 59, thought that it was some kind of joke, that the gun in Joe Gwin's hand was a toy. "I was ticked off because we were about to go on the air with the 5 o'clock news," he recalls. "I said something like, 'You knucklehead, what's going on here?' Then he fired a shot. I went to the phone and told somebody to call the cops."

Complete article: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20082529,00.html