• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

TV Mobile Van Mystery

S

Stanislav

Here's a little mystery recently posted at the Early Television Museum website:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/ktbx_mobile_van.html

A photo of a seemingly 60's era mobile van for "KTBX-TV channel 15." The poster can find no record of such a station (neither can I). He does make two mistakes -- he claims those calls are now on Bryan, Texas' channel 3, but that is KBTX-TV (classic transposition error) and the smaller lettering on the van looks to me like 'AJF Productions" (not "AIF" as he asserts).

I tend to think it is either, as the poster postulates, a prop from a movie or TV show, or (my alternate theory) just a van that some collector adorned with a fictitious logo. (Maybe the guy's initials are AJF? Probably not "TBX" as not too many surnames begin with "X.")

The paint job on the graphics also looks too new for this to be an actual 60's TV station van. But, is it possible some long-forgotten station in the UHF Morgue used those calls, even briefly? Or is it a prop? (Does anyone recall seeing a movie or TV show with such a station?) Or, as I suspect, is it just some collector's vanity project? Discuss!
 
That doesn't "solve" anything -- it's just a random news article that makes the same transposition error as the poster of the van photo. (I spotted a couple other articles on Google with the same goof.) The Bryan station is and has always been KBTX, not KTBX. (Not to mention they are on channel 3, and the "station" in the photo is channel 15.)
 
Perhaps a local cable TV channel programmed by a local TV production company and using a set of unlicensed FCC type call letters?
 
Possibly, but given the apparent vintage of the van and the graphics style, I don't know of any independently programmed local cable channels in the era, let alone ones that would have their own mobile production van. And channel 15 on cable would be a mid-band channel, which I don't think were in use then.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom