'53. Yeah, I'm being "that guy" again.
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What's the first memorable news story you heard about on radio?
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
Yes, the Mutual announcer told the audience that Lennon had been killed. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that in my original post.
That was the top story on TV that night and when I saw a cop car I thought that meant he had been arrested.
I also heard about 9-11 on the radio. I was on a Stardust affiliate and the DJ said the fact that a second tower had been hit proved the first one was no accident. I was picturing something like the Empire State Building being hit in the 40s. I arrived at the library where in the area that had computers we were getting updates. While I went back out to the car to hear Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" (since that came on as usual I figured maybe things weren't as bad as I thought) I didn't actively listen to the radio most of the day. I paid my power bill and the radio had news, and the same at Dairy Queen.
By the time I got in the car to go home it was wall to wall news on that station and I must have been the last person on Earth to find out the towers fell. The news anchor said, "They are gone!"
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Mine was the assassination attempt of President Reagan in 1981. I vividly remember my father having the radio tuned into the coverage on "The Country Giant" 820 WBAP on his '74 Gran Torino, after picking me up from school. I was 10.
I can't recall a first story but I do remember hearing how much trouble Nixon was in back in 1974, and part of his resignation speech when we were on the way home from somewhere.
Most of the time, dating from the JFK assassination, I heard about events first from TV. The major exception was 9/11. I was getting up just before 7 am in those days, because I had a pretty easy commute from Oakland to Pleasanton. So the clock radio was set to go off at 6:58 am for traffic and weather together on KCBS. That morning, the first words I heard were from Ron Lyons: "All air traffic in the United States has been grounded." OH, $*!T! After hearing about the first plane crash, we rushed downstairs to the TV.
I debated whether to go into work. I went ahead and did. Traffic on 580 was very light, so I got to the office in under half an hour. I brought along a GE Superadio, tuned to KCBS. People came by my office to listen because no one else had brought a radio. Shortly after 9 o'clock, our CEO (of a major brokerage) sent us all home. We were all stunned and took our time getting out of the building. That night, my husband and I joined one of our best friends for dinner where we all could just decompress and commisserate regarding the horrific events of the day.
Once air service resumed, I had a flight scheduled to the Midwest. That was a very strange time to be flying. Everyone was subdued and on edge.
I was listening to radio a lot that day.
By the time I first was given my first radio, on my 7th birthday in August 1962, I was already watching Huntley and Brinkley with my folks, so I really can't define exactly which memorable news story I heard on radio first. Probably the Cuban Missile Crisis a couple months after that, since back in those days, even the Top 40 stations had to air newscasts.
Cronkite for me, and I watched Eric Severaid's editorials. I was aware of the man but don't have any memory of what the editorials were about.
61 Big WAYS in Charlotte advertised news at :55, music on the hour.
I was just finishing navy boot camp during that time and don't remember anything about it until I got home on leave at Christmas. We were not allowed any form of media during boot camp.
I also grew up in a Huntley-Brinkley household. In 1982 (or 1983) he was in Columbia, Missouri for a "Nightline" broadcast in conjunction with the University of Missouri School of Journalism. I met him then. Insufficiently, I said to him, "I think you're a really good writer." His response, "A writer is all I ever claimed to be!"
Off topic, but I wonder if this had something to do with the University of Missouri's commercial TV station, KOMU-TV, Ch. 8 flipping from NBC to ABC in the Fall of 1982?
Jeffrey Dahmer's being beaten to death by another prisoner in 1994
It probably did.
The following is the story of the affiliation switch as I heard it. While this is third-hand information, key pieces have been confirmed by those in the market at the time with more direct knowledge.
Martin Umansky was the GM of ABC affiliate KAKE in Wichita, and also the chair of the ABC affiliates board. He was also a Mizzou grad, and a key executive in Chronicle Broadcasting, as was Amy McCombs, the CEO of Chronicle Broadcasting, based in San Francisco. Umansky was well-regarded among the affiliates - and even among some of the talent, indicated by a positive shoutout from Dick Cavett in a book that Cavett wrote. Umansky had lobbied for KOMU to become an ABC affiliate for a long time. During the 1970s, KOMU had been able to fend off those overtures, citing the quality of NBC's news operation as a reason to stay with the network.
As is well known, ABC beefed up its programming schedule in the late 1970s and then turned its attention to building up its news operation. ABC was dissatisifed with its Columbia affiliate, KCBJ, the only UHF in an otherwise all-VHF market. But it's not as if ABC did a lot for Channel 17. When it went on the air in 1971, KCBJ was essentially told, you can affiliate with us but you'll have to find your own network connection. For its first three years, KCBJ picked up network programming off the air from Springfield's KMTC (Channel 27), which in turn picked up its network programming from Joplin's KODE-TV (Channel 12). You can imagine what that looked like sometimes.
Channel 17 actually started turning a small profit within 18 months of operation and began turning its attention to addressing various deficiencies of what had started out as a shoestring operation. The first thing they addressed was the network connection. Around 1974, KCBJ built a private microwave relay from Kansas City to the transmitter site near Prairie Home. There was a two-way STL connection to Columbia as well for additional control, videotaping, etc. as needed. This was a big step up for KCBJ, but it also delayed work to build out its news department. For years, it avoided most direct competition with KOMU and KRCG, airing the Phil Donahue Show at 6 pm rather than news. Aside: it's notable that KCBJ was one of the first stations to sign up for the Donahue show, back when he was still based in Dayton, Ohio.
All these factors converged, and KOMU became more open to an affiliation switch. And so it was announced in 1982. I suspect that the Nightline remote was a sweetener for the deal.
The aftermath: KOMU switched just before NBC's ratings fortunes began improving. NBC did not hesitate: it quickly welcomed KCBJ into the fold. It was just before this time that KCBJ was starting to build a stronger local news operation (Kermit Miller was one of those hires; Kermit was - and is - excellent, and later went to KRCG where he still is. He's around my age - we knew each other during my KFRU days - so I marvel at that longevity). NBC provided much more promotional support than ABC had ever given to KCBJ.
The KCBJ chief engineer at the time told me later of another example of NBC's support. They approached him, telling him that NBC would be distributed on satellite by the time the affiliation switch occurred. They asked him, "would you like a satellite receiver?" No charge. The correct answer was obvious. As the CE told me, "It was Ku-band. It was beautiful." And no more 100-mile microwave relay to deal with!
Meantime, ABC tried to tell KOMU to find its own network connection. That nearly scuttled the deal. I suspect various phone calls were made between Wichita and New York and, sure enough, KOMU got a satellite receiver as ABC was also moving to satellite distribution.
All this also caused challenges for the local cable company, which had been using audio comparison hardware to determine when to black out signals from St. Louis. The St. Louis stations were still on AT&T, so that didn't work any more. Timers had to be deployed, and programming them was apparently a mess when that started.
By the time the affiliations switched back in 1986, I was in Houston, dealing with my own challenges, and I never heard what led to the reversal. By then, Stouffer from Topeka had bought KCBJ, renaming it KMIZ, and upgrading the station even more.
An irony of recent years is that, with the switch to digital TV, reception of KMIZ, as a UHF station, fared much better than KOMU and KRCG, which stayed on VHF...until last year, when they both switched to physical channels on UHF. What a turnabout from the 1970s!
Sort of related to this... I was dialing around on AM from Northeast Ohio in April of 1961 and happened on some very agitated announcing on Radio Swan on 1165 AM. As I listened, I found out that a bunch of anti-Castro "soldiers" from Miami had started invading Cuba with a landing at the Bahía de Cochinos, known as the Bay of Pigs. As the evening wore on, it became obvious that US military assistance that had been promised did not appear and that the "invasion" had failed.
I do remember reading, on an old website, that KCBJ got their ABC feed from KODE through KMTC, but I couldn't remember what website that was, maybe an old GeoCities website. Thanks for the information.
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