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Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

M

mleach

Charleston-Huntington, West Virginia PM TV Listings
The Charleston Gazette
Saturday, November 14, 1970

***This was the day when Southern Airlines Flight 932 carrying the Marshall Thundering Herd Football team crashed at
Tri-State Airport in Huntington killing everyone on board. The plane crash was the basis of the 2006 Matthew McConaughey movie "We Are Marshall".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758794/


WSAZ channel 3 ( NBC )....
Noon Hot Dog
1:00 Live Fast & Die Young....Redheads From Seattle
3:30 Perry Mason
4:30 Roller Derby
5:30 Bill Anderson
6:00 News
7:00 Nashville Sound
7:30 Andy Williams
( Programming suspended due to the plane crash )

what would had aired...
8:30 Movie ( "Torn Curtain )
11:00 News
11:30 Late Movie ( "Outsider" )




WCHS channel 8 ( CBS )....
Noon Scooby Doo
1:00 Dastardly & Mutley
1:30 Jetsons
2:00 Bishop Sheen
2:30 Golden Years
3:00 West Virginia Garden Club
3:30 Living Mana
4:00 To Be Announced
4:30 Wrestling
5:30 Governor & J.J.
6:00 News
6:30 CBS News
7:00 Hugh X. Lewis
7:30 Mission Impossible
( Programing suspended due to the plane crash )

what would had aired...
8:30 My Three Sons
9:00 Arnie
9:30 Mary Tyler Moore
10:00 Mannix
11:00 News
11:30 Movie ( "On The Waterfront" )




WHTN channel 13 ( ABC )......
Noon Hardy Boys
12:30 American Bandstand
1:30 College Football ( Ohio State vs. Perdue )
5:00 Wide World Of Sports
6:30 Dan August
7:30 Lets Make A Deal
8:00 Newlywed Game ( story goes WHTN had cut the show off halfway )
( Programming suspended due to the crash )

what would had aired...
8:30 Lawrence Welk
9:30 Deadly Game
10:30 POW In Vietnam
11:00 Journey To The Center Of Time
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

How did they cover it? Did they get live shots from the airport? How did they fill all that time? How long did the coverage go that night?
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

Rob Jason said:
How did they cover it? Did they get live shots from the airport? How did they fill all that time? How long did the coverage go that night?
Click to expand...

Just before the start of the filming of "We Are Marshall", I was listening to the Hoppy Kercheval West Virginia Talkline radio program and they interviewed a group of people who lived in Huntington at the time of the crash. One woman was at a theatre when the crash happened only to jump up and run outside ( this was in the movie ). Several of the guests made the claim that within minutes of the plane crash it seemed just about everyone in Huntington was going to the crash site and/or the airport. This could explain the actions of WSAZ, WCHS and WHTN ( WOWK ).

Local TV coverage of the crash was brought up on the program since a member of the WHTN sports department was on board the plane. According to what I heard on Talkline, WSAZ had allowed Andy Williams ( likewise with WCHS with Mission Impossible ) to air in full and afterward some announcer took to their airwaves to tell the very few number of viewers what had happened and then WSAZ & WCHS both would go off the air for the night out of respect for the victims and families. However a caller to Talkline did make a mention that WCHS had carried the audio from their sister radio station for several minutes and a shot of the Marshall University logo before they too would sign off for the evening.

WHTN channel 13....in the movie the scene where Bob Eubanks was on the Newlywed Game on ABC when WHTN would flash a bulletin on the bottom of the screen with news on the plane crash. According to Talkline, about 5 minutes after that bulletin WHTN would "turn off" the Newlywed Game and for several minutes did coverage of the crash but like the others after showing the Marshall logo they would be off the air by 9:30 at the latest.

Being such a small market as the Charleston-Huntington is and knowing that they will have just about zero viewers and considering that everyone in the area had already knew what had happened, I can see WSAZ & WHTN simply telling their employees to turn off the transmitter, lock the door and go home for the night. WCHS being a Charleston station may be a bit of a surprise though but then again they were the market's CBS affiliate at the time anyway.
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

mleach said:
Just before the start of the filming of "We Are Marshall", I was listening to the Hoppy Kercheval West Virginia Talkline radio program and they interviewed a group of people who lived in Huntington at the time of the crash. One woman was at a theatre when the crash happened only to jump up and run outside ( this was in the movie ). Several of the guests made the claim that within minutes of the plane crash it seemed just about everyone in Huntington was going to the crash site and/or the airport. This could explain the actions of WSAZ, WCHS and WHTN ( WOWK ).

Local TV coverage of the crash was brought up on the program since a member of the WHTN sports department was on board the plane. According to what I heard on Talkline, WSAZ had allowed Andy Williams ( likewise with WCHS with Mission Impossible ) to air in full and afterward some announcer took to their airwaves to tell the very few number of viewers what had happened and then WSAZ & WCHS both would go off the air for the night out of respect for the victims and families. However a caller to Talkline did make a mention that WCHS had carried the audio from their sister radio station for several minutes and a shot of the Marshall University logo before they too would sign off for the evening.

WHTN channel 13....in the movie the scene where Bob Eubanks was on the Newlywed Game on ABC when WHTN would flash a bulletin on the bottom of the screen with news on the plane crash. According to Talkline, about 5 minutes after that bulletin WHTN would "turn off" the Newlywed Game and for several minutes did coverage of the crash but like the others after showing the Marshall logo they would be off the air by 9:30 at the latest.

Being such a small market as the Charleston-Huntington is and knowing that they will have just about zero viewers and considering that everyone in the area had already knew what had happened, I can see WSAZ & WHTN simply telling their employees to turn off the transmitter, lock the door and go home for the night. WCHS being a Charleston station may be a bit of a surprise though but then again they were the market's CBS affiliate at the time anyway.
Click to expand...

Boy, how times have changed, huh? Can you imagine, in this day and age, any station with a local news operation, in ANY market, no matter how small, actually leaving the air instead of covering a story of that magnitude?

I wonder, in that situation, whether the decision to go off-air was arrived at independently by each station, or if it was a mutual agreement, preceded by phone calls between them?
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

Stanislav said:
Boy, how times have changed, huh? Can you imagine, in this day and age, any station with a local news operation, in ANY market, no matter how small, actually leaving the air instead of covering a story of that magnitude?
Click to expand...

Had the Marshall University airplane crashed happened today, Stanislav, you are right. Nobody would go off the air. I can think of two reasons why. Technology and competition..lots of it now, not so much in 1970, even less in West Virginia. Plus being a small market I have doubts WSAZ, WCHS and WHTN had much in the way of the number of employees to had been able to do a marathon-live coverage of the crash into the night. Also Marshall University at the time ( kinda still is now ) is not very well known from outside West Virginia and the surrounding states so to expect lots of coverage from the big three networks of the time, highly unlikely.


Stanislav said:
I wonder, in that situation, whether the decision to go off-air was arrived at independently by each station, or if it was a mutual agreement, preceded by phone calls between them?
Click to expand...

I think its a case of "...what can we do now?" sort of thing at least with Huntington's WSAZ & WHTN anyway. The movie and books about the crash over the years pointed out more/less that just about everyone in town wanted to be at the University, airport or at a church, not in front of the TV set. With WCHS, I am sure it was out of respect plus with a lack of staff & equipment more/less forget doing team coverage all night long.
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

In 1970, in the Charlie West/Huntington market, there were no minicams.
News footage was shot on film. So after you shoot it you hustle it in to
your film lab (if you had one) or a local public lab that you use, assuming
your contract had them there on Saturday nights in case you shot new
stuff for your 11 PM 'cast.

I think I can safely say no local station had a mobile unit (there were no
"live trucks" then). Even if you had a mobile unit and sent it to the
airport, try to get a hold of a Telco guy to set up a local loop from the
remote site back to your station without the several days notice needed!
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

Anyone know what aired (or supposed to air) the next day? Personally, I would think the tragedy affected the stations' schedules for several days afterward.
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

Some time ago I seem to recall reading a website done by a student of Marshall University who was there at the time of the plane crash that had killed their football team and she was comparing the crash to the death of Kennedy in 1963.

With that being said can you imagine what would had happened say had JFK been assassinated in someplace like in Casper, Wyoming rather than a big city such as Dallas? Do you really think Casper's KTWO would had been able to do the same type of job as Dallas' WFAA was able to do when they covered the assassination of President Kennedy? Hardly !!!

I can see why the Huntington, WV stations decided to simply go off the air. They really were on their own.
 
Re: Retro: Charleston & Huntington Saturday, November 14, 1970 ( Marshall Crash )

mleach said:
Also Marshall University at the time ( kinda still is now ) is not very well known from outside West Virginia and the surrounding states so to expect lots of coverage from the big three networks of the time, highly unlikely.
Click to expand...

Well known to me, anyway, since they are conference mates (CUSA) with my alma mater (UCF), both having moved from the MAC, and we also played them a few times even back when UCF was independent.
 
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