Retro: Birmingham, Monday 10/22/62

[rwells2265]

I vaguely remember certain events about 11/22/63...I was a few months short of turning four years old, but events such as these leave an indelible mark on your memory.

I asked my mom about the CBS/NBC situation that day. She said that as best as she could remember, Channel 13 switched from the coverage on CBS to NBC's about 20-30 minutes after CBS interrupted "As the World Turns".

Charles, I thank you! On 11/22/1963, my parents were freshly engaged to be married - both idealistic students at Birmingham Southern. My squeezing-out had yet to wreck their idyllic world. ;-)

What your Mom recollects is exactly as my gut would have guessed. 1:00 would have been a great time to flip. Check NBC in cue, they're also going to a station break, so let's get this done.

--Russell

 

[bpatrick]

Raleigh/Durham, which also had two commercial stations and one educational (as PBS stations were
called then), handled the aftermath of the JFK assassination a bit more orderly. ABC affiliate WRAL/5
stayed with that network; WTVD/11 (CBS/NBC) was a CBS primary, carried Walter Cronkite nightly, and
stayed with CBS the whole weekend (it was carrying "As The World Turns" when Cronkite interrupted with
the first bulletin that JFK had possibly been shot and wounded). WUNC/4, the noncommercial station, picked
up NBC's coverage; otherwise, viewers in the Triangle would have had to watch a snowy picture on WECT/6,
WITN/7, or WSJS (WXII)/12.

Although CBS cut off "ATWT" at the second commercial break, and the show's viewers didn't see the end of
that day's episode (in the Eastern, Central, and parts of the Mountain time zone at least--Pacific viewers didn't
see it at all that day), CBS (and logically I would assume ABC and NBC as well) went to 'round-the-clock coverage
following a station-ID break just before 2 PM (ET). As I think all students of that day know, Dan Rather had the first
announcement of JFK's death on CBS Radio, but Cronkite wouldn't report it until he had confirmation (2:38 ET), by which
time, not only the White House but ABC and NBC were reporting it.

Off-topic yet on: each network scored points, IMO, CBS with Cronkite's stamina in staying with the story (as well as
Rather's reports from Dallas, even if he believes he jumped the gun on the report that JFK had passed away); NBC with
the only live shots of Oswald's being gunned down; and ABC with Howard K. Smith's observation in the aftermath of Oswald's
death: "We'll never get to hear this man's story. There's something wrong in this country and we don't know what it is."
But the prize goes to the ABC affiliate practically on the scene (with its headquarters in Dealey Plaza), WFAA, which alternated
between ABC's coverage and local eyewitness accounts.

 

[Mike Stroud]

And I believe the Birmingham listing that was posted showed Ch. 13 carrying Huntley-
Brinkley at 5:45 and Cronkite at 6:15.

They did, and when both went to 30 minutes, 13 was forced to choose one (as one can reasonably conclude they didn't want a full hour of network news!). For reasons not difficult to understand, they went with NBC. If you crunch the numbers during the 1961-70 dual period, a favoring toward the Peacock can be detected.

Which raises a (somewhat) related curiosity: a year later, WAPI-TV still had As the World Turns (no big surprise), so on the day JFK was assassinated it can be safely assumed they rolled with the initial CBS News bulletins. A big question I'd love to have answered is whether 13 stayed with CBS, or - at some point (the 1:00 cutaway, maybe?) - swapped feeds to pick up NBC's coverage.

My reason for asking if Scott Pelley is number one in Birmingham is because of the
strong showing WIAT has been making in the last few years. When I lived in Birmingham
in the early '70s CBS was very weak, and it has come as a surprise to me to see CBS scoot
to the top there (but then again, there's a whole generation that doesn't remember Howard
K. Smith's "CBS Reports" broadcast on Birmingham that was a factor in 6 going from CBS to
ABC, something that was still in the not-too-distant past when I was there; also there are
people who grew up in the '60s and '70s who still have fond memories of Tommy Charles,
Sergeant Jack, and the wrestler Tojo Yamamoto--all of whom were on 42).

#1 --
My jaw is still slack over Channel 42's rise. Obviously a generational thing, because even today, despite WIAT's very good presentation and production values, the feeling of charity (or outright pity) I get whenever I hear the words "Channel 42" and "Birmingham" in the same sentence is so embedded in my DNA that I'm working overtime to shake it! ;D Seriously, 42 has shed that old skin, its news product is fully competitive with FOX 6 and ABC 33/40, and has achieved the unthinkable in my lifetime: epic embarrassment to Channel 13 (NBC), the state's first TV station. I am in sober amazement and admiration for Channel 42.

#2 --
The factor Howard K. Smith's Birmingham documentary had on Channel 6 flipping to ABC is complicated. It wasn't "How DARE they? Gladys, get me Leonard Goldenson on the phone!!!!" The fact is - and it's documented in Mr. Goldenson's 1991 bio - the switch to ABC was part of a realignment among Taft Broadcasting stations. There was a friendship involved here, and according to the book it was a gesture of support for struggling ABC, which at the time (1961) was racking up a few hit shows.

CBS was too much a lucrative money machine for the state's biggest signal, and as we all know the only "skin color" that ultimately counts is GREEN. STILL ... without any of us having been in WBRC's management suites in the aftermath of the CBS Reports doc, we can guess to a good degree of truth that a lot of fists were shaken at CBS. Which leads me to my own postulation on the matter: When Taft's edict came down that ABC was going to be their new network, I don't think there was a whole lot of objection by management. The reaction might well have been, "Phew! Now I won't get the nasty calls from Emil and Ethel out in Weogufka!!"

--Russell

Sorry about being so late on the draw here, but that's the way life is on my street these days. Indeed, Russell, WIAT's achievement as of late is astounding in the abstract. But I think the station has been helped by the plain fact that cable and DTV have leveled the playing field almost totally from the days of rabbit ears. UHF is not a handicap anymore, since many former Vs were assigned U frequencies in the digital allocation--WBRC got moved to 50, for example.

Finally, two goals have been satisfied: 1) the all-channel tuning act of (circa) 1962's aim of promoting UHF has been accomplished after a half-century, and 2) channel 42 has more or less completed its transition from the Park Broadcasting days (when that company mostly used the old WBMG as a farm system for its other stations and/or as a tax write-off) which began in earnest in 1997-98 when the station manager there re-built the news department and changed the call letters to give the station an aggressive image. A good slogan/branding for WIAT these days might be, "We're not your daddy's (or granddaddy's) 42 anymore."

 

[bpatrick]

I think we've beaten this "why did WBRC switch from CBS to ABC" thing to death,
even though I take my share of the blame. Leonard Goldenson, in his autobiography,
did acknowledge that Taft was shifting some of its stations from CBS to ABC (Cincinnati
and Lexington went around this time); Howard K. Smith, in his autobiography "Rumors Of
My Death," attributed the switch in Birmingham to his "CBS Reports" special. Possibly, as
Russell has pointed out before, the contracts between WBRC and ABC were already signed.
Also, I know that CBS was concerned about other affiliates in the South switching networks,
and I know that Smith's concluding quote from Edmund Burke to the effect that the way for
tyranny to triumph is for good men to do nothing rankled Bill Paley, who considered it editorializing
and who told Smith over lunch one day that he could take his commentaries elsewhere. Channel 6,
to my knowledge, did not carry Smith's primetime "News And Comment" program (but neither did my
ABC affiliate in Raleigh, WRAL, which even blacked out his and Harry Reasoner's commentaries in the
early '70s), but did carry "Issues And Answers" even before it picked up Smith and Reasoner. So let's
just give both Smith and Goldenson the benefit of the doubt and say their explanations for the switch
are equally valid.

More puzzling is WRAL's switch from NBC to ABC in 1962; I don't know if the Fletcher family and Jesse
Helms were unhappy with NBC's civil-rights coverage (at least they didn't go as far as WLBT and put
up "technical difficulties" every time a civil-rights story aired) or it was just a question of ABC's trying
to get into North Carolina (it had only one fulltime affiliate in the state at the time, Asheville's WLOS).
WRAL could be the only ABC affiliate in east-central North Carolina, while NBC would be available from
Wilmington, Washington (NC), and Winston-Salem. (And as I've pointed out before, ABC got four more
affiliates in the Tarheel State by the end of 1964: WNBE (WCTI) New Bern and WGHP High Point in '63;
WWAY Wilmington and WCCB Charlotte (which actually didn't become exclusively ABC until 1967) in
1964.) One factor we've mentioned before is that in '62 ABC was signing up new affiliates almost as
aggressively as it pursued CBS and NBC stations in the late '70s and early '80s; WRAL excepted, though,
most in '62 were the third station in their markets.