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

[azumanga]

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.

One story I read was that Cronkite stayed as spokesman, but an off-screen announcer gave the slogan instead.

Though, as Winston asked in 1970, "What do you want" Good grammar or good taste?"

 

[bpatrick]

I've read in several places that Art Fleming,
host of the original "Jeopardy!", also did those
Winston commercials with the grammatical error.

Mike Wallace was the spokesperson for Parliament
cigarettes; he gave up that and all entertainment-
oriented work after the death of his older son in a
mountain-climbing accident in Greece in 1962. He
decided that the best tribute he could pay would be
to devote full time to news.

 

[mleach]

I've read in several places that Art Fleming,
host of the original "Jeopardy!", also did those
Winston commercials with the grammatical error.

Mike Wallace was the spokesperson for Parliament
cigarettes; he gave up that and all entertainment-
oriented work after the death of his older son in a
mountain-climbing accident in Greece in 1962. He
decided that the best tribute he could pay would be
to devote full time to news.

One learns something new everyday I knew about Wallace's son but I had NO idea that was the reason why he had gave up those ads and the other non-news things.

I believe the last male spokesperson for a TV cigarette commercial was David Doyle for Virginia Slims. David who of course would later go on to do Charlie's Angels, surrounded by all those sexy women wearing the latest fashions and whatnot saying "...if you ask me these Virginia Slims cigarettes are too good for women" or "...I have come a long way..baby"..then the girls would let him have it..like a pie ( or water ) in his face. LOL

Shades of Charlie's Angels BEFORE Charlie's Angels ;D

 

[Ultimajock]

I believe the last male spokesperson for a TV cigarette commercial was David Doyle for Virginia Slims. David who of course would later go on to do Charlie's Angels, surrounded by all those sexy women wearing the latest fashions and whatnot saying "...if you ask me these Virginia Slims cigarettes are too good for women" or "...I have come a long way..baby"..then the girls would let him have it..like a pie ( or water ) in his face. LOL

Shades of Charlie's Angels BEFORE Charlie's Angels ;D

...FWIW, actor Paul Dooley appeared in a cigarette commercial that was aired on the first Ed Sullivan Show The Beatles appeared on, on 9 February 1964; that commercial was edited out of the version that was released commercially on DVD and replaced with an additional Pillsbury spot. I seem to recall Dooley kiddingly complaining about it to the Los Angeles Times when the Beatles/Sullivan DVD set first came out...

 

[fortmill]

Of course, Laura Bush is also a smoker, though she sometimes denied it, especially when she was on the road campaining against---smoking.

 

[bpatrick]

Yes, I wonder whether channels 11 and 13 would have picked up someone else's programming (if that were even possible back then) or if they just signed off out of respect.

I have for many years wondered what KTVT-11 did, and never have gotten an informed answer. There is an intriguing photo in one of the dozens of JFK books (I forget which), showing a news conference at Parkland, and clearly visible in the pic is a KTVT studio camera! So, I wonder if they were covering some of the events (it doesn't appear that they had much of a news operation apart from the two daily 15-minute newscasts, which were probably just "rip and read") or if they were loaning equipment and techs to help the affiliates feed video to the networks?

KERA-13, broadcasting instructional programming, would probably have either signed off or simply maintained their schedule for awhile -- much as Nickelodeon stayed with their own school-age programs during 9/11 so as not to unduly alarm any kids who were watching.

The recent special about the JFK assassination on the History Channel
utilized footage from KTVT, so obviously they were doing something.

 

[cdsull502]

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

I think I can solve the mystery about KTVT's coverage of the Kennedy Assassination. If you go to the excellent site about the history of Tampa's WTVT (at one time both stations were co-owned), there is an interview with Crawford Rice, who managed both stations in his career. Towards the end of his interview, he talked about about how KTVT dealt with the situation during that weekend. He knew that as an independent with a very small news staff, he could not provide decent coverage of the assassination; he felt it would be bad taste to offer regular programming. He says he called WBAP-TV and asked the manager there if KTVT could carry the WBAP/NBC coverage. In trade, he offered to allow WBAP the usage of the KTVT remote unit, along with the services of the crew who manned it. He said that it was KTVT equipment that provided the live coverage of the Oswald shooting on NBC. Very interesting-- I wonder if stations today would cooperate in that manner.

 

[bpatrick]

After I saw the special, I regretted that I
didn't move to Dallas until 1976; the local
coverage of the aftermath of the assassination
was as good as anything I saw from the networks
(and it put WFAA on the map, since they supplied
so much information to ABC).

I don't know if two stations in the same market
would cooperate the way WBAP/KXAS and KTVT
did if something like that happened now, but maybe
some of you live where there are regional cooperatives
wherein the member stations exchange stories; we
have two in North Carolina--one consists of WFMY,
WBTV, WWAY (Wilmington), WRAL, and WSPA (Spartanburg,
SC, covering the western Carolinas); the other, of WGHP,
WSOC, WTVD, and WLOS (this was originally a consortium
of ABC stations but WGHP stayed after it went to Fox).
While that might not work for a story confined largely to
one city--as on November 22, 1963--it works when there
are stories spread out over large areas; for example the
kidnapping and killing of a 5-year-old African-American girl
in Lee County, NC in the last couple of weeks was reported
extensively by WFMY and WRAL, and the two exchanged
stories.

Yeah, I know somebody's going to ask: WWAY is an ABC
affiliate; the other stations in its consortium are CBS affiliates.
Why WWAY joined with the CBS group, I don't know.

 

[Ultimajock]

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

I think I can solve the mystery about KTVT's coverage of the Kennedy Assassination. If you go to the excellent site about the history of Tampa's WTVT (at one time both stations were co-owned), there is an interview with Crawford Rice, who managed both stations in his career. Towards the end of his interview, he talked about about how KTVT dealt with the situation during that weekend. He knew that as an independent with a very small news staff, he could not provide decent coverage of the assassination; he felt it would be bad taste to offer regular programming. He says he called WBAP-TV and asked the manager there if KTVT could carry the WBAP/NBC coverage. In trade, he offered to allow WBAP the usage of the KTVT remote unit, along with the services of the crew who manned it. He said that it was KTVT equipment that provided the live coverage of the Oswald shooting on NBC. Very interesting-- I wonder if stations today would cooperate in that manner.

...on 9/11, they certainly did; I have part of the KTLA/5 Los Angeles coverage on VHS, and at the time of the first tower's collapse they went briefly to ABC network coverage being anchored by Peter Jennings (tho that may have actually been what WABC-TV/7 New York was running and KTLA picked up the WABC feed rather than an ABC network line)...

 

[bpatrick]

KRLD (KDFW) Ch. 4 (CBS)

8:30 Twilight Zone


WBAP (KXAS) Ch. 5 (NBC)

9 PM Jack Paar (color)

WFAA-TV Ch. 8 (ABC)

12:30 Julie Benell (this show is interrupted by a
local reporter announcing that JFK has been
shot--programs that follow are pre-empted)


KTVT Ch. 11 (Ind.)

(I have no idea if Ch. 11 pre-empted the
rest of its schedule for assassination coverage.)

...the "Twilight Zone" episode was "Night Call," the one in which the elderly and disabled woman (Gladys Cooper) recieves strange telephone calls in the middle of the night. It was postponed and run instead on February 7, 1964, thus it would have been the episode The Beatles would have been able to tune in the evening of the day they arrived in New York for their first "Ed Sullivan Show" broadcast (THE BEATLES: THE FIRST U.S. VISIT shows them watching the "CBS Evening News" and "The Huntley-Brinkley Report"). The "Jack Paar Program" installment was the one on which the guests were Miss Miller, Liberace and Cassius Clay, postponed for broadcast until the following week; the discussion with Clay in which he recites his poetry about fighting then-champion Sonny Liston while Liberace accompanies him on piano is included in the JACK PAAR COLLECTION 3-DVD set. The "local reporter" who interrupted Julie Benell's WFAA 12:30 show was in fact Jay Watson, WFAA-TV's program director and an eyewitness to the assassination, as WFAA's studios were only a couple of blocks away from Dealey Plaza. I don't know to what extent KTVT had coverage, but when CBS bought the station a few years back, they went through the old films and found one where Jack Ruby was seen attending a Saturday press briefing by the Dallas Police Department...

Jay Watson was gone by the time I moved to Dallas; however, to stay on-topic, he must have gotten extensive airtime that afternoon because the History Channel special that aired last month showed him on the air quite a bit after breaking into Julie Benell's show; in fact, he had an eyewitness (I believe the same one who was hit by either a rock or a fragment of JFK's skull) on-camera and that may have been fed to ABC as well. As for Jack Ruby at the Saturday press briefing, I believe you can just barely make him out in the footage.

 

[Stanislav]

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

I think I can solve the mystery about KTVT's coverage of the Kennedy Assassination. If you go to the excellent site about the history of Tampa's WTVT (at one time both stations were co-owned), there is an interview with Crawford Rice, who managed both stations in his career. Towards the end of his interview, he talked about about how KTVT dealt with the situation during that weekend. He knew that as an independent with a very small news staff, he could not provide decent coverage of the assassination; he felt it would be bad taste to offer regular programming. He says he called WBAP-TV and asked the manager there if KTVT could carry the WBAP/NBC coverage. In trade, he offered to allow WBAP the usage of the KTVT remote unit, along with the services of the crew who manned it. He said that it was KTVT equipment that provided the live coverage of the Oswald shooting on NBC. Very interesting-- I wonder if stations today would cooperate in that manner.

Over many, many years of piecing together the broadcast-related events of that (those) day(s), this is the first I've heard of this. I know I've seen photos before of the scene outside Dallas Police HQ that morning -- I really wish I could find those again to see whether there is a marked KTVT van there.

If this is true, I wonder where WBAP's own mobile unit was staged? I'm guessing perhaps at the other end of the aborted transfer, the County Jail. (Needless to say, there was suddenly no need for any live shot from that location...)