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

[Stanislav]

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.

I found it interesting, even humorous, that by the 3rd or 4th switch to WFAA-TV, ABC was grandly referring to WFAA as "Our Dallas newsroom" and Jay Watson in turn was calling WFAA "The ABC news information center for this area." Pretty high-falutin' language, there. As if this were some permanent, ongoing, established setup instead of an ad hoc thing thrown together in a time of "controlled panic." (Yes, I know that phrase was Bill Ryan's on NBC, but it probably sums up all three networks' situations on 11/22/63.) It's almost like the #3 network was putting on airs, trying to act like, "Oh, we do this kind of stuff all the time...no biggie." :

BTW, clear something up for me, if someone can, as I've never watched WFAA's archived coverage in full. In-between times when WFAA was feeding reports to ABC, were they continuing to broadcast local coverage in Dallas? Or, by the time the set-up was in full swing, were they relaying the ABC network feed at that point? (I believe the former is the case, but I'm a little confused.)

 

[mleach]

BTW, clear something up for me, if someone can, as I've never watched WFAA's archived coverage in full. In-between times when WFAA was feeding reports to ABC, were they continuing to broadcast local coverage in Dallas? Or, by the time the set-up was in full swing, were they relaying the ABC network feed at that point? (I believe the former is the case, but I'm a little confused.)

WFAA was indeed doing their own coverage when they didn't stay with ABC. As I mentioned before a good chunk of WFAA's local JFK coverage is online. www.archive.org
type in WFAA and that should take you there. At one point during WFAA's local coverage, they did some live shots direct from the WFAA-TV and radio newsroom. People running around and lots of cigarette smoke..cant get any more live than that.

 

[mleach]

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.)

I have always wondered about that one myself. Maybe there were some radio stations in certain parts of the country where Kennedy wasn't popular who stuck with regular programming. However the only one I can think of who took that route was an AM station in my hometown of Winchester, Virginia..AM 610 WHPL. Many people including my own parents have told me for years that WHPL did very little Kennedy coverage because the owner at the time..well simply because he didn't like John Kennedy. For that weekend WHPL stayed with playing country music and yes from what I was told...they still aired the commercials. As if it was like "business as usual".

Oddly to those from outside the Winchester area, WHPL DID provide 24/7 coverage earlier that year on another news event...the death of country music great ( and hometown gal ) Patsy Cline. Some years back I actually heard of a tape of that coverage..wall to wall featuring even a member or two of the WHPL staff on location who did reports live from the crash site in Tennessee. "..I am touching the plane that had taken the life of our Patsy !!". Commericals? Not during their coverage of Patsy Cline's death.

But WHPL did next to nothing when it came to coverage of Kennedy's death. Sad !!!!

 

[Stanislav]

BTW, clear something up for me, if someone can, as I've never watched WFAA's archived coverage in full. In-between times when WFAA was feeding reports to ABC, were they continuing to broadcast local coverage in Dallas? Or, by the time the set-up was in full swing, were they relaying the ABC network feed at that point? (I believe the former is the case, but I'm a little confused.)

WFAA was indeed doing their own coverage when they didn't stay with ABC. As I mentioned before a good chunk of WFAA's local JFK coverage is online. www.archive.org
type in WFAA and that should take you there. At one point during WFAA's local coverage, they did some live shots direct from the WFAA-TV and radio newsroom. People running around and lots of cigarette smoke..cant get any more live than that.

All I've ever seen on archive.org is the two hours of brief excerpts WFAA put together one year after the assassination. (2 hours out of 4 days of coverage is pretty piecemeal.) Are you implying that there is some link on there to more complete footage?

 

[mleach]

BTW, clear something up for me, if someone can, as I've never watched WFAA's archived coverage in full. In-between times when WFAA was feeding reports to ABC, were they continuing to broadcast local coverage in Dallas? Or, by the time the set-up was in full swing, were they relaying the ABC network feed at that point? (I believe the former is the case, but I'm a little confused.)

WFAA was indeed doing their own coverage when they didn't stay with ABC. As I mentioned before a good chunk of WFAA's local JFK coverage is online. www.archive.org
type in WFAA and that should take you there. At one point during WFAA's local coverage, they did some live shots direct from the WFAA-TV and radio newsroom. People running around and lots of cigarette smoke..cant get any more live than that.

All I've ever seen on archive.org is the two hours of brief excerpts WFAA put together one year after the assassination. (2 hours out of 4 days of coverage is pretty piecemeal.) Are you implying that there is some link on there to more complete footage?

My bad...I could have sworn there was another clip to the FAA coverage that was a lot longer than 2 hours but I guess it has since been taken down. Maybe whoever had uploaded felt that the one clip was good enough. I wish the latter had remained though.

 

[cspotrun]

its amazing how ill prepaired the TV networks were in covering it! talk about being caught with their pants down. i remember at the time, RADIO did as good IF not a better job in covering the story because the TV networks had NOTHING to put on the screen but panicked anchors reading wire copy! of the big 3 networks CBS was the most composed, although abc seemed to have more video thanks to the local Dallas affiliate(who did an incredible job). as far as local radio i remember the top-40 station WIFE-who just weeks before dropped the CBS radio network, got a feed via telphone from a Dallas station and re broadcasted it during the first 5 or 6 hours then played "Quiet" chamber music the rest of that weekend. if you ever get the chance to hear the KLIF Dallas radio coverage, it was amazing.

 

[bpatrick]

At the time it took about ten minutes for the cameras to
warm up before the anchor could be put on the air. It
was because of this that CBS built a "hot" studio, with
cameras ready to go at all times, and the anchor on the
air from the beginning. I suspect ABC and NBC did the
same thing.

I should also mention that WGBH was not the only
noncommerical station airing NBC's coverage that weekend.
Our WUNC, Chapel Hill, also did so, but for a different reason:
Raleigh/Durham had only two commercial stations at the time;
WRAL carried ABC's coverage; WTVD, CBS's. WUNC also carried
"The Huntley-Brinkley Report" for a time afterwards; WRAL had
Ron Cochran and WTVD, Cronkite.

 

[Stanislav]

-- 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...)

Hate to quote myself, but I'm still curious as hell as to why ABC used the KRLD (a CBS afffilate) feed for a time. Anyone know? Given the confusion that day, and the turmoil surrounding setting up that first remote, it is possible that ABC was expecting a feed from WFAA, saw something live from Dallas on the AT&T lines, and mistakenly assumed it was coming from WFAA?

 

[mleach]

-- 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...)

Hate to quote myself, but I'm still curious as hell as to why ABC used the KRLD (a CBS afffilate) feed for a time. Anyone know? Given the confusion that day, and the turmoil surrounding setting up that first remote, it is possible that ABC was expecting a feed from WFAA, saw something live from Dallas on the AT&T lines, and mistakenly assumed it was coming from WFAA?

My guess as to why ABC used KRLD's feed..again just a guess but maybe at the time all or most of the Dallas-Fort Worth stations may have had some sort of "gentlemen's agreement" with each other. In other words maybe what had happened was that perhaps ABC did go to WFAA and they (WFAA ) were in turn were using the KRLD feed. For some big planned event ( like this luncheon ) rather than having a bunch of stations there, only one or two were there so maybe KRLD had offered their service to WFAA. Of course back then ( from what I read about ) local television stations in many markets didn't look at each other as the "evil" competition, more like "friendly rivals who work together" and there was respect. Example..In Pittsburgh when WIIC channel 11 had signed on the air for the first time, guess who spent big bucks in the local papers welcoming them to the airwaves and wish them much success? It was KDKA-TV channel 2 !!! Today chances are that would NEVER happen.

 

[Ultimajock]

-- 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...)

Hate to quote myself, but I'm still curious as hell as to why ABC used the KRLD (a CBS afffilate) feed for a time. Anyone know? Given the confusion that day, and the turmoil surrounding setting up that first remote, it is possible that ABC was expecting a feed from WFAA, saw something live from Dallas on the AT&T lines, and mistakenly assumed it was coming from WFAA?

...well, as Jay Watson indicated in the studio during the first few minutes of the WFAA coverage, KRLD was set up for a pool feed of JFK's speech to WFAA (and WBAP) and, consequently, WFAA used the feed whether JFK spoke there or not. The ABC usage of the KRLD pool feed being relayed to them from Dallas probably matches up with your question...

 

[Stanislav]

-- 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...)

Hate to quote myself, but I'm still curious as hell as to why ABC used the KRLD (a CBS afffilate) feed for a time. Anyone know? Given the confusion that day, and the turmoil surrounding setting up that first remote, it is possible that ABC was expecting a feed from WFAA, saw something live from Dallas on the AT&T lines, and mistakenly assumed it was coming from WFAA?

...well, as Jay Watson indicated in the studio during the first few minutes of the WFAA coverage, KRLD was set up for a pool feed of JFK's speech to WFAA (and WBAP) and, consequently, WFAA used the feed whether JFK spoke there or not. The ABC usage of the KRLD pool feed being relayed to them from Dallas probably matches up with your question...

Ah, yes...I had forgotten that KRLD was providing local pool coverage from the trade Mart -- that explains it. Also explains why, in the Trade Mart footage, I don't believe you ever hear Eddie Barker mention KRLD -- he identifies himself by name, but not by station calls -- because other stations were also using that feed.

This all brings to mind a related question that I posed some time ago (in some ancient thread on here) concerning the AT&T coaxial network. All three networks, after some false starts, established live circuits from their Dallas affiliates that day. (CBS already had one in place to get the Trade Mart speech from KRLD for taping and later use; NBC and ABC set up circuits "on the fly" with some false starts and initial technical problems from WBAP and WFAA, respectively.) And all three would also have been sending their network feed out on the same lines to various markets. The technical questions I had posed that were never answered were: just how much bandwidth was available on those coaxial lines; i.e., how many separate video signals could a section of the network handle at one time? And how were those signals resolved into discrete feeds at the receiving end; i.e., were there different "channels" or frequencies for each that you could switch between much like switching channels on any TV receiver? My layman's technical knowledge of TV/video is far from exhaustive, and limited to what I have picked up over half a century of TV Geekdom, but I always thought that what was transmitted over the coaxial circuit was discrete (line) video and audio, not an RF signal that would be transmitted in a particular swath of frequencies.

 

[Ultimajock]

Ah, yes...I had forgotten that KRLD was providing local pool coverage from the trade Mart -- that explains it. Also explains why, in the Trade Mart footage, I don't believe you ever hear Eddie Barker mention KRLD -- he identifies himself by name, but not by station calls -- because other stations were also using that feed.

...I think you're right about that latter point. I'll have to look at it again, but in both the CBS national coverage and the WFAA local coverage (or the circulating clips of the latter), I recall it's Walter Cronkite and Jay Watson who specify KRLD and CBS in their comments, and Barker mentions neither company at any point...

 

[bpatrick]

I may be restating the obvious here: both KRLD
and WFAA had planned to cover the Trade Mart
speech; it sounds like KRLD was to provide the
pictures, and Eddie Barker (KRLD) and Jay Watson
(WFAA) were to provide commentary to their
respective stations.

I have to get in a personal note. That weekend
was the first time I ever heard of WFAA (after all,
I was living in North Carolina). Thirteen years later,
I moved to Dallas, and you can only imagine what
a thrill it was to actually get the station that provided
so much of what I saw Nov. 22-25, 1963. Plus the fact
that by 1976 WFAA was about to be cited by the Columbia
School of Journalism as one of the two best news opeations
(WCCO was the other) in the country. Best to Tracy, Iola,
Troy, and Verne, and to Murphy Martin, wherever you are;
R.I.P. to Bob Gooding and especially the three guys who
made Ch. 8 the best in the '70s and '80s: station president
Mike Shapiro, general manager Dave Lane (two of the classiest
people I've ever met anywhere), and news director Marty Haag.

 

[cspotrun]

here's something you won't see on TV, the anchorman smokin' a cigarette! i'm not sure if it was common in 1963 or it was just the stress of reporting the assination of a President.

 

[bpatrick]

I don't know if the Surgeon General's report linking
smoking and cancer was general knowledge in 1963
(I keep thinking it was about 1965), although Edward
R. Murrow (who smoked constantly on camera and
eventually contracted lung cancer) did a report on
the linkage on "See It Now" in 1955. Before that,
John Cameron Swayze's newscast on NBC was sponsored
by Camel and called the "Camel News Caravan."

I can't recall seeing Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, or
Cochran regularly smoking on camera. And although he
didn't smoke on camera, Peter Jennings took up the habit
again after 9/11; it probably hastened his death. So I
suspect it was the stress factor behind your seeing anchors
smoking that weekend in 1963.

 

[mleach]

I don't know if the Surgeon General's report linking
smoking and cancer was general knowledge in 1963
(I keep thinking it was about 1965), although Edward
R. Murrow (who smoked constantly on camera and
eventually contracted lung cancer) did a report on
the linkage on "See It Now" in 1955. Before that,
John Cameron Swayze's newscast on NBC was sponsored
by Camel and called the "Camel News Caravan."

I can't recall seeing Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, or
Cochran regularly smoking on camera. And although he
didn't smoke on camera, Peter Jennings took up the habit
again after 9/11; it probably hastened his death. So I
suspect it was the stress factor behind your seeing anchors
smoking that weekend in 1963.

The Surgeon General's report linking cigarettes to cancer came out in early 1964...and on a Saturday as not to wreck the stock market. Yes I too think it was the stress factor as to why one saw the anchors smoking doing the JFK coverage back in 1963. Maybe it was uncommon to see a news person on the set and on carema smoking but on other shows such as talk shows..that was a different story. Tom Snyder and Johnny Carson both smoked on their shows well in the 80s and who can forget Morton Downey Jr. ( though just before his death from lung cancer Morton slammed himself for doing such a thing ).

Interesting people still smoke on TV today ..of course not the person doing the interview but rather those who are being interviewed. Like what I saw on E! a few years back when actor Vince Vaughn was seen talking about his recent new movie ( The Break-Up )..while he was smoking a cigar and the one night a year ago while flipping through the channels I saw an interview with actress Jennifer Aniston and her then BF singer John Mayer ...sitting in a hot tub puffing away on their Marlboro Lights. But then again none of this is really a surprise as even today as a good many of the big movie/music stars from the past 10 years from Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan to rockers like Blink 182 to country's Toby Keith and Tim McGraw to even Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys...all of them were/are big time smokers..and many of those hardly hid their habits like Brad Pitt and his cover on the Rolling Stone..withOUT Dr. Hook though. ;D

 

[cspotrun]

I don't know if the Surgeon General's report linking
smoking and cancer was general knowledge in 1963
(I keep thinking it was about 1965), although Edward
R. Murrow (who smoked constantly on camera and
eventually contracted lung cancer) did a report on
the linkage on "See It Now" in 1955. Before that,
John Cameron Swayze's newscast on NBC was sponsored
by Camel and called the "Camel News Caravan."

I can't recall seeing Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, or
Cochran regularly smoking on camera. And although he
didn't smoke on camera, Peter Jennings took up the habit
again after 9/11; it probably hastened his death. So I
suspect it was the stress factor behind your seeing anchors
smoking that weekend in 1963.

The Surgeon General's report linking cigarettes to cancer came out in early 1964...and on a Saturday as not to wreck the stock market. Yes I too think it was the stress factor as to why one saw the anchors smoking doing the JFK coverage back in 1963. Maybe it was uncommon to see a news person on the set and on carema smoking but on other shows such as talk shows..that was a different story. Tom Snyder and Johnny Carson both smoked on their shows well in the 80s and who can forget Morton Downey Jr. ( though just before his death from lung cancer Morton slammed himself for doing such a thing ).

Interesting people still smoke on TV today ..of course not the person doing the interview but rather those who are being interviewed. Like what I saw on E! a few years back when actor Vince Vaughn was seen talking about his recent new movie ( The Break-Up )..while he was smoking a cigar and the one night a year ago while flipping through the channels I saw an interview with actress Jennifer Aniston and her then BF singer John Mayer ...sitting in a hot tub puffing away on their Marlboro Lights. But then again none of this is really a surprise as even today as a good many of the big movie/music stars from the past 10 years from Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan to rockers like Blink 182 to country's Toby Keith and Tim McGraw to even Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys...all of them were/are big time smokers..and many of those hardly hid their habits like Brad Pitt and his cover on the Rolling Stone..withOUT Dr. Hook though. ;D

Hell, Obama smokes cigarettes, and he's raising taxes on em'! the last president to smoke? Gerry Ford(a pipe)... trick question? there was Clinton with his "Cigar". NOW BACK TO THE NEWS...... i think Cronkite smoked a pipe but i'm not sure if he picked it up at the end of those early broadcasts or not.

 

[mleach]

Hell, Obama smokes cigarettes, and he's raising taxes on em'! the last president to smoke? Gerry Ford(a pipe)... trick question? there was Clinton with his "Cigar". NOW BACK TO THE NEWS...... i think Cronkite smoked a pipe but i'm not sure if he picked it up at the end of those early broadcasts or not.

Cronkite was/is a pipe smoker but there was a time back in the 50s he was a spokesman for Winston cigarettes. Actually Winston I believe had fired Cronkite over..grammar. Of course back then the slogan was "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should". However to Cronkite he felt it should had been "Winston tastes good AS a cigarette should". Cronkite said the latter on the air one day and Winston dropped him as their spokesman.

 

[drt]

.... and there are some public figures that really didn't want the public to know that they smoked.

Former First Lady, Pat Nixon was one; I never realized she smoked until hearing the fact from a reliable source; the protocol was (at least in 1972) the press was not to take her picture if she was smoking or even had a cigarette in her hand or nearby.


drt

 

[bk77]

.... and there are some public figures that really didn't want the public to know that they smoked.

Former First Lady, Pat Nixon was one; I never realized she smoked until hearing the fact from a reliable source; the protocol was (at least in 1972) the press was not to take her picture if she was smoking or even had a cigarette in her hand or nearby.


drt

Jackie Kennedy smoked. Now maybe that bit of information was hidden from the public when she was first lady but later when Jackie became part of Doubleday Publishing, she pretty much stopped hiding her habit from the public. Not only were there photos taken with her smoking in her office but in some of them one could even see Jackie's brand. Salem.

And President Kennedy was a smoker himself...cigars !! There are films out there showing JFK just a puffing along.