Retro: Denver Friday, November 22, 1963

[bpatrick]

I hope to try to clear up some of the confusion
about Mountain and Pacific schedules the day
JFK was killed. Here's what was scheduled in
Denver that day (sorry, I don't have access to
Phoenix or Salt Lake City schedules but I suspect
these are pretty typical). I'll put Los Angeles network
stations on another posting, so you can get an idea
of what the Pacific stations had planned.

These are from the Denver Post.

KCTO (KWGN) Ch. 2 (Ind.)

7:55 News Capsule
8 AM Bozo
9:30 Romper Room
10:30 Bingo
11:30 Mike Douglas
1 PM Girl Talk
1:30 Sugar And Spice
2:30 Bat Masterson
3 PM Magic Carpet
4 PM Bugs Bunny
5 PM Maverick
6 PM Target: The Corruptors
7 PM The Outlaws
8 PM Bronco
9 PM News, Weather, Sports
9:30 Steve Allen
11:10 News Wrapup
11:20 Movie: "Creature With The
Atom Brain"

KOA (KCNC) Ch. 4 (NBC)

7 AM Today
8 AM Say When!
8:25 NBC News
8:30 Word For Word (COLOR)
9 AM Concentration
9:30 Missing Links (COLOR)
10 AM Your First Impression (COLOR)
10:30 Truth Or Consequences (COLOR)
10:55 NBC News
11 AM December Bride
11:30 Ann Sothern
11:55 News Summary
12 N People Will Talk (COLOR)
12:25 NBC News
12:30 The Doctors
1 PM Loretta Young
1:30 Communications Satellite: first trans-
Pacific program sent via Relay to Japan
with JFK, NASA head James Webb, and
the Japanese ambassador (whose name I
can't read)
1:45 You Don't Say! (COLOR) (joined in progress)
2 PM Match Game
2:25 NBC News
2:30 Make Room For Daddy
3 PM Matinee Block
5 PM Sea Hunt
5:30 Huntley-Brinkley Report
6 PM Channel 4 Reports
6:30 Bob Hope Chrysler Theater (COLOR)
7:30 Death Valley Days
8 PM Jack Paar (COLOR)
9 PM Harry's Girls (aired at 9:30 ET)
9:30 Zane Grey Theater
10 PM News, Weather
10:15 Tonight Show (COLOR)
12 M Tomorrow's News

KRMA Ch. 6 (NET)
this is all I have

6:30 What's New
7 PM French 5
7:30 Art Of Seeing
8 PM Festival Of The Arts
sign off 9:30 PM

KLZ (KMGH) Ch. 7 (CBS)

6:30 Sunrise Semester (for once, I'm
not going to give you the topic
because it's not listed)
7 AM Captain Kangaroo
8 AM CBS News (Mike Wallace)
8:30 Rayburn Reports (and I know it's
not Gene)
8:45 Lee Philip Show (Ch. 7 was apparently
one of the few CBS affiliates to carry
this show, hosted by the future co-creator
of "Y&R" and "B&B" with husband Bill Bell)
9 AM Jack LaLanne
9:30 Pete And Gladys
10 AM Love Of Life
10:25 CBS News
10:30 Search For Tomorrow
10:45 Guiding Light
11 AM Bob Butz News
11:15 Art Gow
11:30 As The World Turns
12 N Password
12:30 Art Linkletter's House Party
1 PM To Tell The Truth
1:25 CBS News
1:30 Edge Of Night
2 PM Secret Storm
2:30 Bingo
3 PM Checkmate
4 PM Fred And Fae
5 PM 5 O'Clock Report
5:30 CBS News (Walter Cronkite)
6 PM To Tell The Truth
6:30 Route 66
7:30 Beverly Hillbillies
8 PM Movie: "Jubal"
10 PM News, Weather, Sports
10:30 Movie: "The Wild One"

KBTV (KUSA) Ch. 9 (ABC)

7 AM Denver Today
7:15 Dick Lewis Cartoons
8 AM King And Odie
8:15 Our Miss Brooks
8:45 Mid-Morning News
9 AM Price Is Right
9:30 Seven Keys
10 AM Tennessee Ernie Ford
10:30 Father Knows Best
11 AM General Hospital
11:30 Four Million (don't know what
this is)
12 N People Are Funny
12:30 Day In Court
12:55 ABC News (Lisa Howard)
1 PM Queen For A Day
1:30 Who Do You Trust?
2 PM Divorce Court
3 PM Trailmaster
4 PM Space Angel (COLOR)
4:05 Popeye Theater (COLOR)
4:30 Mickey Mouse Club
5 PM Leave It To Beaver
5:30 ABC News (Ron Cochran)
5:45 News, Weather, Sports
6 PM Highway Patrol
6:30 77 Sunset Strip
7:30 Burke's Law
8:30 The Farmer's Daughter
9 PM Fight Of The Week
9:45 Make That Spare (time approximate)
10 PM News, Sports
10:15 ABC News (Murphy Martin)
10:25 Weather
10:30 Movie: "Not As A Stranger"
1 AM News, Weather
1:05 Movie: "Two Years Before The Mast"

 

[Ultimajock]

KLZ (KMGH) Ch. 7 (CBS)

8:45 Lee Philip Show (Ch. 7 was apparently
one of the few CBS affiliates to carry
this show, hosted by the future co-creator
of "Y&R" and "B&B" with husband Bill Bell)

...hmmm...anyone know if this would have been from a CBS network feed, either in-pattern or tape delayed, or from a bicycled video originating from WBBM-TV/2 Chicago?...

 

[bpatrick]

Undoubtedly a tape delay; the show aired on
CBS at 4:30 (ET).

 

[searadiofreak]

A curiousity...why different prime-time programming on the same day on the CBS affiliates in Denver and L.A.?

It also appears that prime-time started at 6 or 6:30 in the mountain time zone. Perhaps they were taking the east coast feed?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

What a find! Thanks, bpatrick. Confirms that the ABC and NBC affils
were in local time from 11:30-12:30 or 11-12 MT, and all three daytime
schedules were, for the most part, aired live net from New York.

KBTV (KUSA) Ch. 9 (ABC)
6:30 77 Sunset Strip
7:30 Burke's Law
8:30 The Farmer's Daughter
9 PM Fight Of The Week
9:45 Make That Spare (time approximate)

While 4 and 7 had somewhat "torched" prime time schedules, with a combo
of local movie, syndication, and network shows delayed from another night,
the above channel 9 sked is rather interesting, since it's all "in pattern."

The 1964 yearbook shows KBTV with two VTRs (KLZ also two and KOA with
three), so that should be a pretty good indicator of how many they had to
work with in November 1963.

It would be a given that 9-10pm was a one-hour tape delay from the network
(live boxing/bowling), but with two tape machines you can't delay all 3.5 hours
of prime time an hour, much less record a backup. As KTVK Phoenix did in that
era, KBTV must have aired 16mm film prints shipped to them by ABC. As KTVK
ran the shows same night, I have to assume KBTV had the same arrangement,
especially since at the time Denver was a larger TV market than Phoenix.

I can't say for sure how KBTV was able to record a backup of their one-hour
delay of the 8-9 network hour with only two VTRs, since you need to do the
primary record on two reels. A guesstimate--VTR1 records 8-8:54 while VTR2
the entire hour 8-8:59. You take the risk of no record backup for the last :05
or so of the hour.

Then there is what may have occurred during the summer after Colorado started
observing DST in 1965, coupled with the one-hour delayed feed for standard time
areas that the nets had through 1966...but that's for another thread sometime!

I've mentioned this before, but if anyone knows a real "old timer" master control
or VTR operator from the Denver affils in the 1960s, alert him to this board!

A curiousity...why different prime-time programming on the same day on the CBS affiliates in Denver and L.A.?
It also appears that prime-time started at 6 or 6:30 in the mountain time zone. Perhaps they were taking the east coast feed?

El Lay got the left coast feed 7:30-11 PT which was a mirror of the New York feed
three hours earlier. Same thing for the rest of the Pacific time zone.

All Mountain zone stations received the New York origination--if they were on the
Telco circuit. Some smaller markets had a microwave link from, or an off-air pickup
of, a larger MT market. In the 1960s, there may still have even been one or two
that weren't interconnected to anything and had to have 16mm films, kinnies, and
perhaps--on rare occasions--video tapes shipped to them.

From the limited MT 1960s postings we've had on R-I, prime time on most Mountain
zone stations was 6:30-10 on weeknights. Weekends varied.

 

[searadiofreak]

Thanks for the detailed answer. Sounds like if you were a viewer in Denver during this era you really depended on the tv listings!

 

[azumanga]

KOA (KCNC) Ch. 4 (NBC)

1:30 Communications Satellite: first trans-
Pacific program sent via Relay to Japan
with JFK, NASA head James Webb, and
the Japanese ambassador (whose name I
can't read)

No doubt JFK's bit would've originated from Dallas.

Of course, I wonder if they used this program to break the news of JFK's death to Japan, if the satellite was activated at all that day.

 

[cdsull502]

Kennedy has pretaped his remarks commencing the service from the White House Rose Garden a few days before he had left for Texas. It's ironic that the host for the recorded dedication program was Frank McGee of NBC, as the satelite was a RCA product. Of course, at the time the special was supposed to air, McGee was live on NBC reporting the President's death. Some years ago, MSNBC's Time and Again ran segments from the never aired program as part of a retrospective documenting the last week of JFK's life.

 

[searadiofreak]

Yes, I have a copy of the wall to wall coverage that NBC provided on 11/22/63. Frank was indeed the man to announce his death on NBC. They had numerous technical problems getting audio on the air from Dallas. That, probably more than anything, helped speed up the technology to cover live, breaking news. So, perhaps, in an odd way, Kennedy's assasination changed television news.

 

[bpatrick]

And as I mentioned on the Dallas thread for this
same day, CBS constructed a "hot" studio with
a camera ready to go, so that the anchor could
be put on the air immediately; remember that it
took about ten minutes from Cronkite's first report
interrupting "ATWT" until his face was shown on-camera.

Re weekend schedules in the Mountain time zone:
I have posted Denver schedules from 1967 some time
ago. Normally Channel 9 ran everything in pattern
from 6:30-10 ("The Invaders" was delayed on Tuesdays
from 7:30 until after the 10 PM news), but on the weekends
it followed the East Coast thusly:

SATURDAY
5:30 (7:30 ET) Dating Game
6 PM (8 ET) Newlywed Game
6:30 (8:30 ET) Lawrence Welk
7:30 (9:30 ET) Piccadilly Palace (summer replacement
for "The Hollywood Palace"
IIRC, "ABC Scope" (10:30 ET/8:30 MT) was delayed until
Sunday afternoon.

SUNDAY

5 PM (7 ET) Voyage To The Bottom Of
The Sea
6 PM (8 ET) The FBI
7 PM (9 ET) The ABC Sunday Night Movie

I seem to recall Chs. 4 and 7 running their respective
networks pretty much in-pattern, on the East Coast
feed, except that "It's About Time" (7:30 ET/5:30 MT
on CBS) did not air in pattern in Denver.

 

[Stanislav]

And as I mentioned on the Dallas thread for this
same day, CBS constructed a "hot" studio with
a camera ready to go, so that the anchor could
be put on the air immediately; remember that it
took about ten minutes from Cronkite's first report
interrupting "ATWT" until his face was shown on-camera.

Actually 20 minutes -- the first bulletin interrupted ATWT at about 1:40, and they went live with video right after the brief station break at 2:00.

Related: if you look at NBC's coverage, the first time they switch to David Brinkley in Washington, the picture is rather lacking in contrast, kind of washed-out looking. I've always figured that the cameras in that studio weren't quite warmed up as much as they should have been, but they didn't want to wait any longer to get reaction in the capital. By the second switch to Brinkley, the video looks fine.

 

[mleach]

I have to assume KBTV had the same arrangement,
especially since at the time Denver was a larger TV market than Phoenix.

True Phoenix today is a bigger market than Denver. Interesting it wasn't that long ago where I read on another site ( radio-insight? ) where someone had predicted that by 2012....Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas and Tuscon will all be bigger TV markets than Denver and Colorado Springs will be "within ballpark". Should be interesting to see how that "prediciton" will pan out.

 

[searadiofreak]

I have to assume KBTV had the same arrangement,
especially since at the time Denver was a larger TV market than Phoenix.

True Phoenix today is a bigger market than Denver. Interesting it wasn't that long ago where I read on another site ( radio-insight? ) where someone had predicted that by 2012....Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas and Tuscon will all be bigger TV markets than Denver and Colorado Springs will be "within ballpark". Should be interesting to see how that "prediciton" will pan out.

If you look at the hard numbers, Salt Lake, Alburquerque, Vegas, and Tucson have a ways to go to catch up to Denver. Salt Lake is growing fast, Vegas has slowed down. Salt Lake may catch up, but it will take atleast a decade or two...