Retro: Boston - Friday, November 22, 1963

[Ccook55]

Not sure what NBC was doing before they started covering the shooting though

Local in the east, Missing Links in the west.

How is it that in the Dallas listings for 11/22/63 (posted elsewhere) that Route 66's episode was "A Cage In Search Of A Bird" and everywhere else it was "Kiss The Monster, Make Him Sleep"?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Not true. ABC was too (The had Father Knows Best on the national feed (If you watch the ABC coverage on David Von Pein's YT channel you'll see this...

Also not true.

The ABC "live feed" of FKB was 12:30-1:00 PM ET.

What is on the YouTube video was recorded from a downline affiliate which delayed FKB a hour into the half-hour local hole for ABC daytime at 1:30-2:00 PM ET. I have yet to figure out which station it was. Notice on the playback whenever said station cuts from their video tape to ABC live (for a news bulletin), or back to the video tape, the video rolls all over the place, as this was years before frame synchronizers were even thought of for local stations.

 

[Ultimajock]

4 – WBZ Boston (NBC)
11:15p Steve Allen – guests: Cliff “Charlie Weaver” Arquette; Don Sherman, comedian; Jennie Smith, in songs; Barbara (Miss Banana) Perkins; Gil Lamb, contortionist

...showbiz historian Kliph Nesteroff, on http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2014/08/television-comedy-in-the-early-1960s-by-kliph-nesteroff.html, quotes Pete Barbutti claiming Steve Allen's affair with Jennie Smith -- and its messy end -- brought about the cancellation of Allen's Westinghouse show the following year. Allen took the emcee's gig on I've Got a Secret after Garry Moore quit that show around the same time, and Westinghouse gave its nighttime syndicated chat show to Regis Philbin for a few weeks, and then Merv Griffin after that...

 

[newsmark]

Not true. ABC was too (The had Father Knows Best on the national feed (If you watch the ABC coverage on David Von Pein's YT channel you'll see this. It's also on the WFAA coverage as well (Though they of course were the first TV news operation - Local OR National - To break the news of the shooting & dropped the network in favor of it but later rejoined ABC once the two were able to establish a then-unique way of covering news)

Not sure what NBC was doing before they started covering the shooting though

Cheers & 73

Actually, WFAA was in local programming. It was The Julie Benell Show. I don't know whether the show was live or on tape.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

...WFAA was in local programming. It was The Julie Benell Show. I don't know whether the show was live or on tape.

At first, I would have voted for on tape, since the tape on YouTube breaks up all over the place when WFAA-TV switches from the talk show to Jay Watson live in studio with the station's first JFK bulletin. But wait...it shouldn't have broken up (as it would have on a switch from local to network) since WFAA's tape machines and studio cameras should have been on the same (local) synch.

And then there's the background noise in the seconds before the switch--probably setting up Watson to do his thing in another part of the studio. That would indicate to me that the talk show was live. So I can't explain the synch break up at the switch. Any long-time WFAAers still around to shed some more light?

 

[K.M. Richards]

how did Mike Douglas handle the situation? did he stop the show?

Read the #3 post in the thread. The program was on tape in Boston.

 

[JeeperOne]

At first, I would have voted for on tape, since the tape on YouTube breaks up all over the place when WFAA-TV switches from the talk show to Jay Watson live in studio with the station's first JFK bulletin. But wait...it shouldn't have broken up (as it would have on a switch from local to network) since WFAA's tape machines and studio cameras should have been on the same (local) synch.

And then there's the background noise in the seconds before the switch--probably setting up Watson to do his thing in another part of the studio. That would indicate to me that the talk show was live. So I can't explain the synch break up at the switch. Any long-time WFAAers still around to shed some more light?

And David Von Pein's YouTube channel has both WFAA local & ABC national coverage (Two different videos but the coverage eventually becomes one once ABC & WFAA hook up for then-unprecedented coverage even though DVP has both ABC national & WFAA local coverage on his channel)

The coverage from WFAA & ABC on TV could only be rivaled by WFAA & NBC on radio (But of course in the early hours of coverage, people in Dallas could only hear NBC Radio via WBAP even though WFAA Radio was the NBC Radio affiliate

Cheers & 73

 

[Ultimajock]

The coverage from WFAA & ABC on TV could only be rivaled by WFAA & NBC on radio (But of course in the early hours of coverage, people in Dallas could only hear NBC Radio via WBAP even though WFAA Radio was the NBC Radio affiliate

...both WFAA and WBAP were affiliated with the ABC and NBC radio networks. WBAP and WFAA were still sharing two frequencies, 570 kHz (5,000 watts) and 820 kHz (50,000 watts), in an arrangement that had its roots in the 1920s, trading freqs every six hours at 3:00 and 9:00 AM and 3:00 and 9:00 PM. ABC affiliation stayed with the 570 frequency, whereas NBC was always heard on 820; at the time of the assassination, WFAA was on 570 and WBAP on 820. Both ABC and NBC relied more heavily on WFAA for reportage, as they were owned by the Dallas Morning News and their studios were a couple of blocks away from Dealey Plaza, while WBAP was owned by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and its studios were 30 miles to the west...

 

[K.M. Richards]

...both WFAA and WBAP were affiliated with the ABC and NBC radio networks. WBAP and WFAA were still sharing two frequencies, 570 kHz (5,000 watts) and 820 kHz (50,000 watts), in an arrangement that had its roots in the 1920s, trading freqs every six hours at 3:00 and 9:00 AM and 3:00 and 9:00 PM.

Actually, it was a little more complicated than that, King. There were multiple flips during the day and prime-time hours were allocated by day of the week.

This article includes a reprint of a 1931 schedule for (then) 800kc -- this link is the full article from which that reprint was taken -- and this page has a scan of an actual 3:00pm-to-midnight seven-day grid for WFAA from the 1960s.

The arrangement lasted until May 1, 1970. On that date, WBAP's purchase of the portion of 820kHz they did not already own was consummated and they went full-time on that frequency. That deal included WFAA receiving ownership of the portion of 570kHz they didn't already have.

 

[Ultimajock]

...many thanks for the correction, KMR. And I notice on those pages that both station had FM sisters -- Classical WBAP-FM on 96.3 and Easy Listening WFAA-FM at 97.9. I still wonder exactly what the FMs did that afternoon, as simply simulcasting the AMs would wind up interrupting reports from each network at trade-off time. It would probably have made more sense to have the FMs match up with the affiliations of the TV stations, with WBAP-FM going with NBC and WFAA-FM running ABC. But I've never found out what happened on that end of things...

 

[K.M. Richards]

I still wonder exactly what the FMs did that afternoon, as simply simulcasting the AMs would wind up interrupting reports from each network at trade-off time. It would probably have made more sense to have the FMs match up with the affiliations of the TV stations, with WBAP-FM going with NBC and WFAA-FM running ABC. But I've never found out what happened on that end of things...

I suspect that answer is lost to history, King. FM was still relatively new, most of its audience was audiophiles at that point, and no one would have bothered to note what happened. Unless we can find former staffers of those stations -- and even if they were still fairly young (in their 20s) when Kennedy was assassinated, they'd be in their early 70s in the best case scenario. It's more likely that those who know have carried that knowledge to their graves already. Unfortunate, because it is an interesting unanswered question.

 

[davalvideo]

If the suggestion was that Batchelor Father was on the entire ABC network at the time of the first network bulletin, that claim is false. Only a selected few stations, such as WABC-TV in New York and a few other Owned and operated stations carried Batchelor Father and some of them carried it on a delayed basis. The other affiliates carried either syndicated or local programming. WFAA-TV in Dallas was not carrying Batchelor Father but was instead airing a live, locally produced program called The Julie Benell Show. The program was interrupted when Program Jay Watson came on to announce the shooting in Deally Plaza.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

If the suggestion was that Batchelor Father was on the entire ABC network at the time of the first network bulletin, that claim is false. Only a selected few stations, such as WABC-TV in New York and a few other Owned and operated stations carried Batchelor Father and some of them carried it on a delayed basis. The other affiliates carried either syndicated or local programming...

I made a similar comment earlier in this thread--that the live feed for Bachelor Father on ABC was 12:30-1:00 PM ET.

For example: KTVK Phoenix and KGUN-TV Tucson both aired the show "live" from 10:30-11:00 AM MT. BTW, neither was an O&O.

Any later airing (such as 1:30-2:00 PM ET) was via tape delay at an individual station.

 

[newsmark]

I made a similar comment earlier in this thread--that the live feed for Bachelor Father on ABC was 12:30-1:00 PM ET.

For example: KTVK Phoenix and KGUN-TV Tucson both aired the show "live" from 10:30-11:00 AM MT. BTW, neither was an O&O.

Any later airing (such as 1:30-2:00 PM ET) was via tape delay at an individual station.

I'm thinking the show we're talking about is Father Knows Best on ABC, not Bachelor Father on NBC.

The recording of Father Knows Best does sort of look like it's a recording of the network feed and not of the station's output. (And why WOULD they record their output?) For instance, at the end of the show after the network promo/ID, they don't cut to a local break or even a station ID. If one station had been feeding the show to another, you wouldn't have seen the network cut-ins.

Didn't ABC operate on Clock Time in the early 60s? If that's the case, it could have been recorded at any station in the Central time zone.

 

[davalvideo]

The Julie Bennell Show was live and was interrupted by Program Director Jay Watson from the news set at 12:45pm local time.

 

[BD Sullivan]

i heard a interview with Mike Douglas and he said that John Dancy came into the studio to announce the shooting Mike said he tried to go to another segment he gave up switching to Frank McGee he said they had to tape 22 minutes that day

Correct. Douglas was interviewing a government official (and later first HUD secretary), Robert Weaver, at the time. While talking to him, he could see Dancy (then known as "Bud") walking down through the studio bleachers, out of the corner of his eye. Obviously a little flustered from the oddity of Dancy doing that, he asked what was going on...