Retro: Dallas/Ft. Worth Friday, November 22, 1963

[bpatrick]

Note that I said if "FKB" had been delayed it
would have been in the Mountain time zone. As
I recall, Mountain stations usually carried daytime
shows at the same time as in the Eastern and
Central time zones; and there were some (such as
in Denver) that did the same thing at night, mostly
on the weekends. So "FKB" probably did air at 10:30
AM (MT), followed by "General Hospital" at 11, then
local programming until "Day In Court" at 12:30. But
ABC probably notified all of its affiliates that what we
now call a "special report" was coming (as it did the
day Pope John Paul II was shot), and once the network
was up and in place, the report aired.

I still believe the Pacific stations were into local programming,
since 1:30 PM (ET) is 10:30 AM (PT), when Kennedy was shot.

 

[wbhist]

Then the question becomes this: What would have been Washington, DC station WMAL's (now WJLA) schedule up to 1:30 P.M.? They were another major ABC affiliate.

 

[mleach]

(Suggestion to all: grab it while you can before some ABC lawyer DMCA's it into oblivion...)

For some reason I doubt that would happen unlike with the yanking a few years back of ABC's 9/11 coverage.,,at least with this. Just about everyone on the ABC coverage has since passed on and it wouldn't surprise me if the current staff at ABC today doesn't even remembers Ron Cochran. With 9/11 OTOH...except for Peter Jennings..all the anchors and reporters are still alive...and a good many of them I am sure have egos.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

After watching part one of the coverage on You Tube, I have this
piece of speculation:

It seems to be a recording of the network line from somewhere
downline, and it probably was from the 1:30-2pm ET period.
Obvious 5 kHz Telco line audio (as previously noted), the audio
promo over credits, the ABC system cue promo, then the "closed
circuit" slide during what would normally be :63 or :73 of black.
Since this picks up with--as noted--not earlier than the second
bulletin, it may have been an affiliate somewhere that decided
to "roll tape" after seeing and airing the first interrupt.

Since ABC was local from 1:30-2:30, could this have been a
refeed of the Father Knows Best episode from 12:30? Perhaps
ABC El Lay needed it fed again for the left coast feed due to
VTR problems? (The unfolding events in Dallas made all this a
moot point of course.)

If only we knew what ABC was scheduled to send down the net
from 2-2:30 ET during the second half of "station time."

 

[Stanislav]

I've only watched through part 4 of the ABC coverage so far (I'm on a lousy connection, so I tend to just download stuff like this when I'm away from the computer, then view it later), and I find three things of interest:

-- I did not know that ABC picked up and used some of Eddie Barker's live reporting from the Trade Mart from CBS affiliate KRLD-TV. I wonder if and how that was authorized by KRLD and/or CBS, or for that matter whether it was formally authorized at all. (ABC may have simply taken in upon themselves to grab the first thing they saw that might provide more information, and as the old saying goes, "it is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission." Just ask Richard Nixon...)

-- It is obvious that Cochran's talkback/IFB audio can be heard through a lot of the broadcast, sometimes clearly enough to be understood. At first, I thought perhaps his mike was picking it up, particularly when he had his headset down around his neck, but you could also hear it pretty strongly even when his headset was on. Unless that was a very sensitive mike (or Cochran had a hearing problem and the thing was cranked to "11"), is it possible that the other audio was crosstalk somewhere in the audio feed itself?

-- Finally, maybe it's just me, but with Ron Cochran's vocal qualities and inflections, doesn't he sound a bit like Robert Benchley? ;D

 

[Stanislav]

Also odd that even as Cochran was reporting the various unofficial reports of JFK's death (the rumors at the Trade Mart, the comments by the priests, etc.) and cautioning viewers that nothing was as yet confirmed, nevertheless they kept sticking up a graphic of JFK with "1917-1963" on it.

BTW, at the first network switch to WFAA, does Jay Watson actually misstate the calls of his own station as "WFA-TV," or does he just slur over it so quickly that the two "A's" sort of merge?

 

[mleach]

I went back and watched the first ABC/JFK clip...did anyone noticed that promo that said "the new..ABC" ?? What was up with that? The only thing I can think of is that the "new ABC" was nothing more than that new logo which of course ABC still uses today.

 

[Stanislav]

I went back and watched the first ABC/JFK clip...did anyone noticed that promo that said "the new..ABC" ?? What was up with that? The only thing I can think of is that the "new ABC" was nothing more than that new logo which of course ABC still uses today.

"The New ABC" was the branding/slogan the network used beginning with their Fall 1963 premieres. Remember, traditionally the Big Three came up with a new catchphrase/slogan each Fall when the new crop of shows debuted, and use of the phrase would persist well into the New Year.

These are (per Wikipedia) the annual new slogans used by ABC for 1963-69:

* 1963: "The New ABC"
* 1964: "Wild World of Entertainment" (Or is that supposed to be "Wide?")
* 1965: "Turn on the Excitement!"
* 1966: "7 Nights To Remember"
* 1967: "A Very Special Season"
* 1968: "Find Your Own Thing!" (Gawd, how "sixties" can you get?)
* 1969: "Meet Us in September"

 

[Stanislav]

(Suggestion to all: grab it while you can before some ABC lawyer DMCA's it into oblivion...)

For some reason I doubt that would happen unlike with the yanking a few years back of ABC's 9/11 coverage.,,at least with this. Just about everyone on the ABC coverage has since passed on and it wouldn't surprise me if the current staff at ABC today doesn't even remembers Ron Cochran. With 9/11 OTOH...except for Peter Jennings..all the anchors and reporters are still alive...and a good many of them I am sure have egos.

The ABC 9/11 coverage, as well as that of several other networks, is currently available at the Internet Archive.

 

[mleach]

* 1968: "Find Your Own Thing!" (Gawd, how "sixties" can you get?)

LOL...maybe so but its still much better than "ABC..start here". ;D

 

[bpatrick]

The ABC logo as we know it has been around
since the fall of 1962. "Wide World Of Entertainment"
was the '64 slogan (also the name of ABC's late-night
show in the mid-'70s).

And does anyone remember the tone that accompanied
"The New ABC"? It went something like, "de de do doot
DEEEEEE." I remember that when WGHP High Point, NC,
signed on in October 1963 they bought time on sister
radio station WKIX Raleigh and used that tone at the
end of their promos.

 

[Stanislav]

The ABC logo as we know it has been around
since the fall of 1962. "Wide World Of Entertainment"
was the '64 slogan (also the name of ABC's late-night
show in the mid-'70s).

And does anyone remember the tone that accompanied
"The New ABC"? It went something like, "de de do doot
DEEEEEE." I remember that when WGHP High Point, NC,
signed on in October 1963 they bought time on sister
radio station WKIX Raleigh and used that tone at the
end of their promos.

You can hear it on Part 1 of that ABC JFK coverage, right after the end of FKB. Unfortunately, it's all wombejawed because it comes right at one of those points where the tape goes flukey. (Did they even have time base correction in those days? Was there always such a massive, several seconds long loss of sync every time the source feeding a VTR was changed?)

 

[Rob Jason]

I watched most of the ABC coverage last night -- fascinating stuff. We've seen the CBS and NBC coverage time and again, but to see how the "third network" handled things...Well, now we know why it may've taken so long for this tape to surface. Calling it a "train wreck" early on is maybe harsh, but -- boy -- to have a stagehand in the shot for much of your coverage -- while they tried to set up a curtain as a backdrop, and set the lights -- in their newsroom -- is bad. And to not be able to do something as basic as get a phone line up on the air--? But I think WFAA's coverage, with the eyewitness interviews on videotape -- and putting their chief photog on the air, to describe the film fresh out of the processor -- was outstanding, and NBC had no innovation like that in their earliest hours. It's also neat to see the WFAA anchor directing the news coverage from on-camera -- when he gave that one guy directiosn to go back to the newsroom, and wait for film crews to come back, etc.

Think it's possible that all this tape archive came from WFAA?

I've read that this event (and the network's reaction to it) was the impetus for building ABC News into what it is now -- a year later, they would hire Peter Jennings -- a short while after that, Ted Koppel and Sam Donaldson came on board.

I heard a phoner from Bob Walker in the coverage -- I remember when he was an anchor on ABC radio in the eighties.

 

[Stanislav]

I watched most of the ABC coverage last night -- fascinating stuff. We've seen the CBS and NBC coverage time and again, but to see how the "third network" handled things...Well, now we know why it may've taken so long for this tape to surface. Calling it a "train wreck" early on is maybe harsh, but -- boy -- to have a stagehand in the shot for much of your coverage -- while they tried to set up a curtain as a backdrop, and set the lights -- in their newsroom -- is bad. And to not be able to do something as basic as get a phone line up on the air--?

Keep in mind that there was nothing even close to our modern-day 24/7 news cycle with continuous coverage and the ability to pretty much go anywhere in the world quickly and seamlessly. The networks were dealing with an unexpected and utterly overwhelming breaking news story that was changing by the minute. Cameras and lights took time to warm up; those huge 2" VTRs were notoriously touchy and usually took some time to be properly aligned before use; remote feeds that normally took many hours to set up and test were being executed in a matter of minutes; all those clunky preparations and set-ups you see exposed to the world were normally done off-air, off-camera, and with due diligence and care instead of being quickly slapped together under conditions of extreme pressure and, for many, emotional turmoil. To me, the JFK coverage, with all its glitches and faults (especially in the early stages) offers a fascinating behind the scenes glimpse of TV technology and infrastructure of the era.

But I think WFAA's coverage, with the eyewitness interviews on videotape -- and putting their chief photog on the air, to describe the film fresh out of the processor -- was outstanding, and NBC had no innovation like that in their earliest hours. It's also neat to see the WFAA anchor directing the news coverage from on-camera -- when he gave that one guy directiosn to go back to the newsroom, and wait for film crews to come back, etc.

ABC was damn lucky to have a decent affiliate in the same city as where the assassination took place. Without the ability to switch to the "scene of the crime," it would have been hours and hours of talking heads, phone reports, rip-and-read wire copy, and wirephoto stills held up to the camera.

Think it's possible that all this tape archive came from WFAA?

We've already established that this was probably taped off the network feed by some affiliate along the line, and if the theory of there being a second feed of Father Knows Best that day (either by design or to cover an error) is valid, it could theoretically have been any station along the line in any time zone. It's entirely possible that as WFAA was taping their own coverage for history, another VTR may have been running on the ABC feed to preserve that as well. So you would have had WFAA's continuous local coverage on one machine, and the ABC coverage including the periodic cutaways to WFAA on another. (And there would have needed to be a third VTR available to feed the previously shot local tape to New York -- anyone know how many machines WFAA actually had in 1963?)

 

[wbhist]

The ABC logo as we know it has been around since the fall of 1962. "Wide World Of Entertainment" was the '64 slogan (also the name of ABC's late-night show in the mid-'70s).

Which leads to this query: Was the title of their 1970's late-night show derived from that 1964-65 slogan?

As to the ABC coverage of the JFK assassination: In the context of what was mentioned by Rob Jason, Ron Cochran's description of the setup as "impromptu" was unintentionally funny - because it seemed their whole news operation in those days was impromptu.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

...anyone know how many machines WFAA actually had in 1963?

The '63 and '64 Broadcasting Yearbooks show WFAA-TV with five (!) VTRs.
Compare to KRLD-TV and WBAP-TV each having only two.

An interesting side question is why five? They didn't need to do any net delays
(other than any out-of-pattern scheduling of their own choosing). Perhaps ABC
used WFAA-TV as the origination point for spot regionalization (aka cut-ins) to
a particular piece of the network? Although in 1963 more spot inventory would
have been on film rather than tape. Didn't KRLD/KDFW-TV perform a similar task
for CBS later on (1970s)?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

And does anyone remember the tone that accompanied
"The New ABC"? It went something like, "de de do doot
DEEEEEE."

It was typically used with video of an ABC studio camera (TK-60?)
in motion at the beginning of the system cue.

This was one of many "Identitones" created by Eric Siday. Others
include the Screen Gems "snake tag" audio (maybe the "dancing
sticks" too), the CBS color intro sounder, and the pre-1968 ABC
Radio news intro theme.

BTW, anyone know who did the earlier Screen Gems logo audio?
Whevener you heard that at the beginning of a program on a local
station, the first thought was "oh boy, Three Stooges!"

 

[cspotrun]

KRLD (KDFW) Ch. 4 (CBS)

1 PM Kennedy Address (the one he had been
scheduled to make at the Trade Mart--
by now, all three networks were on the
air with assassination coverage, so what
follows are the pre-empted programs)

And that is why CBS had an immediate advantage over the other networks in the initial coverage. CBS had already set up a circuit to feed KRLD coverage of the speech to New York, where they could videotape it and possibly use some clips on the evening news that night. So, as soon as Uncle Walter went on the air, within the first 20 seconds he was able to immediately cut to the Trade Mart where Eddie Barker was reporting on-air. By contrast, as anyone who has seen the A&E special "JFK: As It Happened" knows, NBC had to set up a feed from Dallas (from WBAP) "on the fly" in a matter of minutes -- not an easy task with the technology of the era -- and the first WBAP reports were marred by technical problems.

interesting observation, the NBC coverage with McGee & Huntley on that set, that seemed to be thrown together, was in B&W, but the WBAP studio cutaways carried by NBC were in COLOR(i didn't know local stations were doing color newscasts)

 

[wbhist]

It was typically used with video of an ABC studio camera (TK-60?) in motion at the beginning of the system cue.

Sure was a TK-60, of which ABC purchased several in 1963. By contrast, the "new" B&W cameras CBS purchased during 1962-63 to replace their old RCA TK-10/30 and TK-11/31 cameras (in keeping with their "anything but RCA" equipment purchase ethos) were model Marconi Mark IV.

As for that Siday Identitone - PAMS (a Dallas company, incidentally) did a similar tone (with similar synthesizer equipment) to start off the American Contemporary news sounder when that and the other three sub-radio networks of ABC took to the air in 1968.

It's also interesting that at the time of the JFK assassination, NBC was way ahead of CBS in the nightly news ratings race - yet NBC's coverage, by comparison, seemed more like ABC's in terms of quality at the outset as the events in Dallas were unfolding. Especially when one compares with CBS's coverage after the cameras were set up in the newsroom.

Incidentally, Bill Ryan, one of the many anchors of the NBC News coverage, was co-anchor (with Gabe Pressman) of New York City's first half-hour early-evening local newscast, The Pressman/Ryan Report, on WNBC-TV from 1963 to 1965. What brought that newscast to an end was the station's decision to tack on another half-hour, thus creating NYC's first hour-long early evening local newscast, which they then renamed the Sixth Hour News (although, in terms of who was anchoring, it was essentially the "MacNeil/Pressman Report" in all but name, since Mr. Pressman's new co-anchor then was Robert MacNeil - yes, he later of MacNeil/Lehrer fame; and he who was on the other end of the phone line with Frank McGee during NBC's JFK assassination coverage).

 

[pqgeorge]

KRLD (KDFW) Ch. 4 (CBS)

1 PM Kennedy Address (the one he had been
scheduled to make at the Trade Mart--
by now, all three networks were on the
air with assassination coverage, so what
follows are the pre-empted programs)

And that is why CBS had an immediate advantage over the other networks in the initial coverage. CBS had already set up a circuit to feed KRLD coverage of the speech to New York, where they could videotape it and possibly use some clips on the evening news that night. So, as soon as Uncle Walter went on the air, within the first 20 seconds he was able to immediately cut to the Trade Mart where Eddie Barker was reporting on-air. By contrast, as anyone who has seen the A&E special "JFK: As It Happened" knows, NBC had to set up a feed from Dallas (from WBAP) "on the fly" in a matter of minutes -- not an easy task with the technology of the era -- and the first WBAP reports were marred by technical problems.

interesting observation, the NBC coverage with McGee & Huntley on that set, that seemed to be thrown together, was in B&W, but the WBAP studio cutaways carried by NBC were in COLOR(i didn't know local stations were doing color newscasts)

There were some early converts to color on news and local programs. Of course, WBAP-TV (now KXAS) Channel 5 in Dallas/Fort Worth was one of them. In Boston, where I'm from, the original WHDH-TV (Channel 5, Boston) was 100% local color from day one (11/26/1957). All live local newscasts on WHDH were in color.

Back to the JFK assassination issue. During the weekend of 11/22-24/63, WGBH-TV (the local "educational" station on Channel 2) was running the same NBC coverage that the local NBC affiliate WBZ-TV (Channel 4, Boston) was running. Even then, WGBH-TV was no stranger to NBC programming. Channel 2 also ran "The Huntley/Brinkley Report" and "Meet The Press", minus the commercials of-course (as WGBH-TV is a non-commercial station).

Since all networks were suspending all commercial programming until Monday afternoon, WGBH-TV would have no problem running the NBC feed intact.

Which brings up one question. Did any station around the country (dare to) run any commercial programming during the course of that horrible weekend? I hope not, but if so, who did? (BURRRRRRRRRRRR.)