Retro: Salt Lake City, January 2, 1950

[charlestondxman]

This schedule is from Salt Lake City, UT, January 2, 1950. Television had just started there in 1948, with KDYL (now KTVX) on April 19 (it was on experimentally from Nov. 1946).

This schedule is what was listed from the Salt Lake Tribune (newspaperarchive.com, may have been more in daytime), and shows you how small the schedule was here compared to a market like LA or New York, which were connected to the network lines.

All times Mountain Standard Time (MST)

KDYL-TV 4 (NBC)

1-5pm Test pattern
6 Test pattern
6:30 "What Makes Rain" (Educational feature)
6:45 Roberta Quinlan and Guests
7:00 "Swingin' On Down" (Riddles half)
7:30 "This Heritage of Ours" (Film, hour variety show)
8:15 Moments in Music featuring Jelesnik
8:25 Ken Maynard "Valley of Terror" (Western)
9:25 Evening Fashion
9:30 Charade Parade
10 Sign-off

KSL-TV 5 (CBS/ABC/DuMont)

7:15 Test Pattern
7:30 Lucky Pup
7:45 Children of China
8:00 Famous Jury Trials
8:30 Front Row Center
9:00 "Jane Eyre" on Studio 1
10 Weather Forecast
10:05 Sign-off

Since the telco lines at the time had not reached Salt Lake City, and because the networks didn't have the funds to transmit coast-to-coast sports events, none of the bowl games that day were shown on national television (on locally, though)

However, they were on national radio, as the Rose and Orange Bowls were on CBS (Mel Allen, Red Barber announcing respectively), the Cotton Bowl was on NBC (Bill Stern), Mutual had the Gator Bowl (Al Helfer), and ABC had the Sugar Bowl (with Jim Britt).

 

[Stanislav]

KDYL-TV 4 (NBC)

1-5pm Test pattern
6 Test pattern

Wow, the test pattern was so popular, it merited TWO separate listings!

6:45 Roberta Quinlan and Guests

8:15 Moments in Music featuring Jelesnik

Assuming these were local yokels, as I find nothing on Google or Wikipedia for those names.

9:30 Charade Parade

Gee, wonder what THIS show consisted of? I guess Charades was an ideal game for early TV -- very visual, simple rules, no elaborate sets or props required, etc.

KSL-TV 5 (CBS/ABC/DuMont)

7:30 Lucky Pup

The Adventures of Lucky Pup, which by some point would be (or had alreadybeen) retitled Foodini the Great.

This schedule is what was listed from the Salt Lake Tribune (newspaperarchive.com, may have been more in daytime), and shows you how small the schedule was here compared to a market like LA or New York, which were connected to the network lines.

Nevertheless, I'm sure in some of these outlying, isolated early markets, to have TV at all was pretty exciting, despite the relative blandness of the schedule.

 

[mleach]

Meanwhile over in the next state to the east Colorado..it would still be a few years before Denver would get it's first TV station.

I remember reading on this site that despite the lack of a local TV station, TV sets were actually being sold in Denver. With that being said, I wonder if those in Denver were able to get some dx'ing out of Salt Lake City at the time of these listings? Kansas City? Albuquerque?

 

[w9wi]

Meanwhile over in the next state to the east Colorado..it would still be a few years before Denver would get it's first TV station.

I remember reading on this site that despite the lack of a local TV station, TV sets were actually being sold in Denver. With that being said, I wonder if those in Denver were able to get some dx'ing out of Salt Lake City at the time of these listings? Kansas City? Albuquerque?

Salt Lake and Albuquerque are too close for skip, and tropo wouldn't make it over the mountains. Kansas City, certainly possible but probably not very often.

I've read articles in the TV repair trade magazines of the time confirming that people were buying TV sets in Denver well before they got their first station. They were indeed DXing -- Kansas on tropo, pretty much everywhere on skip.

 

[Stanislav]

Meanwhile over in the next state to the east Colorado..it would still be a few years before Denver would get it's first TV station.

I remember reading on this site that despite the lack of a local TV station, TV sets were actually being sold in Denver. With that being said, I wonder if those in Denver were able to get some dx'ing out of Salt Lake City at the time of these listings? Kansas City? Albuquerque?

Salt Lake and Albuquerque are too close for skip, and tropo wouldn't make it over the mountains. Kansas City, certainly possible but probably not very often.

I've read articles in the TV repair trade magazines of the time confirming that people were buying TV sets in Denver well before they got their first station. They were indeed DXing -- Kansas on tropo, pretty much everywhere on skip.

I've mentioned this before, but I'm told that some Denverites in that era had a "phone chain" of sorts where they would alert one another when "skip" was in so they could watch some TV. I think the whole thing was organized by an enterprising TV dealer who had prematurely laid in a stock of sets in anticipation of the coming of local TV, then was stymied by the "freeze." This enabled him to sell off some of his otherwise useless sets.

If it seems odd for more modern viewers to imagine trying to enjoy a TV show via skip, remember that back then there were very few stations on the air, so you generally avoided the CCI problems of multiple stations trying to come in on the same channel. While you would still have to deal with the inherent fading and variations in signal level, a stable enough skip "cloud" could provide relatively steady reception to the same area for a long enough period of time to hone in on one station and follow a single program. Though, given the seasonal nature of skip, there would have been long periods of the year when nothing was in. Fortunately, the whole makeshift setup would only last a couple of years until the freeze was lifted and Denver got its first local station.

 

[bpatrick]

Roberta Quinlan was a singer-pianist with a show
on NBC at the time.

I know that it wasn't uncommon in the early days
for stations to sign on and off throughout the day,
and "test pattern" would be listed when it came on,
but this "test pattern" listing defies explanation.