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I think Larry Burnett is at KLAC radio in Los Angeles. I believe he is/was the radio voice for the LA Lakers.

Another former Tulsa sportscaster, Bob Healy, is the main NEWS anchor at KOLR in Springfield, MO.

Bob Stevens, who used to be at 6, went to Cleveland for awhile, and is now at ESPN co-hosting the late afternoon edition of SportsCenter. Here's his bio:

http://espn.go.com/editors/studios/bios/bs.html

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Duh! This internet thang continues to amaze me. And in a business where folks move around so so much - I found Jay Berry's web-page!

Try

http://www.detnow.com/about_7/anchors_reporters/jay_berry.html

There is Jay and his bio!

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Okay - from KTUL - let's try to find (Sylvester) Jay Berry - a Tulsa transplanted sportscaster last heard of in Detroit, doing sports there for many years.

I think he was 8's first African American sports anchor. He cut his teeth at 8 but made a name rom himself in Detroit.

Anyone run across him lately???

Larry Burnett who worked at 8 as a reporter/sports, maybe also a stint at 6, then ESPN - was last heard of in L.A. at a west coast sports channel. At TU - he and Bill Teegins both seemed most likely to succeed in sportscasting and I think both may have done TU games on KWGS as undergrads.

When Larry was working in either Denton or Sherman-Denison - they had only 1 portable ENG (video) camera to shoot all news and sports stories in town with.

When it would break down - he said they ran LOTS of on camera "readers" and did studio interviews till it was back in service. Heaven help you if a really big story "broke" when it was dead.....

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How about a "Where are they now" on former sportscasters. What started me on this was an article recently in the Daily Oklahoman (or "Daily Disappointment" as Frosty Troy used to call it) recalling old sportscasters in the OKC area.

The paper told the story of a Gen. Mgr. of KOMA in 1945 who was driving through Cheyenne, Wyoming when he heard a guy doing play by play of High School football on the local station. The GM persuaded the guy to move to OKC where he did OU football and basketball, Oklahoma A&M basketball, and OKC Indians (later the 89ers, now the Red Hawks) baseball. The man was Curt Gowdy.

Bobby Murcer of the NY Yankees did play-by-play of baseball in OKC as well. The article says Skip Caray (son of Harry and currently doing play by play of the Atlanta Braves) did Tulsa Oiler games in 1963.

Ross Porter left ch. 4 in OKC and has been doing play by play of LA Dodgers games for 23 years.

Ted Leitner graduated from Oklahoma State in the mid Sixties, then worked at KWTV. He's now in his 20th season as the voice of the San Diego Padres.

Bob Carpenter is a long-time Tulsan who is in his sixth year doing Cardinal games, and even Walter Cronkite once worked OU football for WKY.

Who else can we think of. Ken Broo has been mentioned a couple of times at this site. There was Steve Zabriski; Bill Teegins (now in OKC), and (of course) Chris Lincoln. I remember Chris's wife Debbie had a cookie store at the Farm shopping center. And, of course, Chris made the news big time when he goofed up the post postion announcement for last year's Kentucky Derby. Oops.

So who else have I forgotten?

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Hooray for Buddy Allison! He's still kicking and ticking!

Buddy worked in radio before KOTV, doing store displays and product displays for I think KTUL radio. This must be a lost promotional tool that most folks forgot. Wish I could remember more.

I think Buddy also told me that the West end of the KOTV parking lot used to be the old Tulsa Police Station. Does anyone remember this? KOTV was in what I heard was originally an International Harvester dealership. I think they were across the street at ne time (the IH dealer). If we can connect with Buddy again - he could give us the scoop!

Speaking of 1 man ad agencies - Jim Wheaton is best known for his radio work but Charlie Riley was a guy who did TV spots - but never on camera, he wrote and produced them.

He seemed to make the rounds with the smaller Tulsa area Chevy/GMC dealers for basically did newspaper ad buys (maybe some design but the World/Tribune used to have a dept. for that!) but a fair amount of TV car ads. I think he was the guy that once said in the booth at KTUL while doing a studio session - give him $30,000 a year, his health, a happy family and a new Chevy Suburban (or some other BIG GM product on a trade-out from a client) every year and that's all he needed for THE good life in Tulsa.

Sounds small money-wise now, but in Tulsa in the 70's that was pretty good cash compared to what 8 paid us!

Considering that in high school and college I made up to $6.45 an hour clerking in a small camera shop in suburban Chicago in the late 60's and early 70's - my "big" raise when I became a junior producer/director at 8 in 1974 was to $2.50 or $2.75 an hour! Can I even get a cup at Starbucks for that now????

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Got an e-mail back this morning asking - is Larry Miller at KTUL the same Larry Miller from KOSU/OETA?

Nope. Though both ex-Navy guys with dry self-deprecating humor - they ain't the same. Larry Miller from KOSU/OETA I think has moved elsewhere (OETA loses a lot of good people for reasons I will not mention on this site). Larry Miller at KTUL was the first guy I knew to wear sandals all year round (with socks) whose nickname WASN'T "Moon Puppy". He had worked at stations in MO but at KTUL I guess is still a kind of jack-of-all trades in Engineering.

For years I worked with a lot of Buddy's - cameraman & philosopher Buddy Allison at KOTV (whom I wish had e-mail for his Tulsa radio & TV stories and corny jokes); the late Buddy Myers of OETA directing fame - but of more fame as an OKC jazz bass sideman/pick-up band player; and Buddy Squyeres - a talented producer/director in Amarillo whom I hope has moved on to a bigger market.

Leon Holland at KTUL and OETA - a great fix-it engineer and KOTV's other great studio cameraman/corny joke/pun practitioner - Leon Meier.

Add to this 2 Steve Smith named guys. One from IL & TU who worked at KWGS and KTUL, sold radio time for awhile in Tulsa, became a Tulsa cop, became a CPA, who quit TPD and worked for Tom Daxon as a state auditor/inspector in the Lloyd Rader/DHS probe days, and is doing something else now either in Bartlesville or Denver. The other Steve Smith was about 10 years younger; was ex-Navy and a crackerjack tape op in Amarillo. Someone said they thought he was marathon running these days.

Do you ever feel there are about only 26 people in the world? Or is it 26 names?? It seems that way in TV!

A message for Mike "Britches" from Buddy Allison: He is doing great. All the guys you and he worked with are retired. He wouldn't have a computer!

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Re the 2" Quad machine in Wichita that my brother found at his favorite tape distributors. He will shoot some stills so I can figure out what model Ampex it is.

As he says - it may prove to be ballast - often these things need a mega air compressor to run plus half the power of the Port of Catoosa.

Jack Hobson or someone like Senior Engineer Larry Miller from 8, who both used to "fly" these thangs might be able to make one work - BUT the machine is in Wichita and we still don't know enough on it. It may just be a glorified "prop" at this point.

We may contact the guys at http://www.servtech.com/~lionlamb/quadpark.html - they were on Ma Barker's links page ("Dinosaurs of Technology"). They are 2" Quad enthusiasts and also HAM radio guys that transmit Quad video over Ham radio - a neat technological marvel! They may have some ideas for us.

In a digression here from Tulsa TV Memories -- my brother also is networked to Beta-philes - folks still using Betamax machines and is a good source if you are looking for new Betamax tape - which Sony is phasing out. He also finds and sells (but not repairs) Betamax machines.

Hint - for years these were the favorites of TV engineers - why? They record better than VHS of that era but had great "true" stereo sound. Also TV folks often "recycled" spent Betacam news tapes in these decks. Betacam records/plays at 3x the speed of Betamax - so a 30min. Betacam tape (not BetaSP which is metal and would eat up the tape heads on a Betamax) will easily handle a 3 hour movie when recorded on a Betamax deck!

When you thought Betamax was dead - it was still being used (in it's newest INDUSTRIAL configuration) for motion analysis work. OU's Athletic Dept. bought several from Tom Roberts at Fairview AFX years ago for coaches' game film shooting. Yup the 16mm camera - shooting coaches films IS dead. Sony made a slo-mo/motion analysis viewing system out of the last Betamaxes and created small camcorders with BIG lenses to shoot game action from pressboxes. OU has probably moved on to DVCAM now.

In another digression here - my bro's former college room-mate is Japanese (who went to school in Winfield, KS!) and travels a lot to the US on business to KS, NC, SC and other locales. My brother has his daughter as an "adopted god-daughter" this Summer as she takes ESL classes in Wichita. His former room-mate, Noda, tells us Japan is bailing on VHS-C, the compact cassette VHS recorders. In fact my brother is sending the VHS-C adaptors to Japan for his friend - where you can't get 'em. We see them everywhere here at cut-rate prices but in Japan they are disappearing as everyone goes to DV (Digital Video) format machines. All of us think we are seeing "technology dumping" here by the big Japanese manufacturers of VHS-C camcorders....Now DON'T race out and by that DV cam yet -though I can tell you from working with "low end" $3000 DV cameras - the video is outstanding.

We have the issue of digital television coming, too, so if you need to buy a new VHS home machine - I advise - go cheap ($175-225) because in 2-3 years an analog VHS deck will be like a Betamax! It would be dumb now to buy DV as a home format till all of this shakes out, though a lot of QuickTime movie types and web designers are falling all over the format because it IS great! A lot of the cameras will let you use DV technology to shoot stills or full motion video. More "toys" to buy I guess.

Our generation will have spent billions more on consumer electronics than our folks did - trying to keep up with all the technological revolutions in consumer electronics/computing in the last 50 years!

My basic stereo was bought from SEVCO when the 1st Star Wars was new.

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Gary Chew sent the following intriguing comment re the mysterious 2nd half of the Mazeppa opening theme:

...some of what you've sent is getting through and ringing a bell in my head: Yes, the opening Mazeppa theme is more than one piece; if I remember correctly, I edited and spliced it together on 1/4 inch audio tape for His Eminence.

How about that!

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Brother Mike Bruchas is TU alum and worked at KTUL during the "8's The Place" slogan era on Lookout Mountain. Anyone know anyone wanting an AMPEX 2" QUAD drive recording machine? We've found one in Wichita that can be had for free for use as ballast or as the weights on a TU football practice sled or maybe the footing for a pier at Keystone Lake? They've also got new 2" QUAD tapes up here for $10.00 each which might make great Christmas wrap ribbons........

While I was going to College in Winfield , Kansas (Southwestern College) some of the few stations we could get, were from Tulsa, because there was some big hills (in KANSAS?) between us and the Wichita stations.....

Welcome, Alan.

Is there any way to use this Ampex machine to get 2" tape copied over to VHS? I think Jack Hobson here in Tulsa has some 2" tape, but no way to see it or use it.

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Jim Wheaton's name has come up on this page a few times. He was a colorful radio pitchman in the late 60s and 70s (and a little into the 80s)in Tulsa. His unique voice was heard on spots for Connor's Corner, Gary Henry Chevrolet, and many others. His most famous series of spots was for U-Need-M tires. That hokey tom-tom opened each spots, followed by Jim's gutteral, "Ugh! You need 'em tires?"

He was basically a one man ad agency; obtaining clients, buying time, writing and recording the spots, etc. He didn't pay too much attention to the length of his spots and the radio stations in those days didn't worry too much about it. (Unrelated to Wheaton, those live remotes from car dealers, etc., on Saturday morning back in the 70s never got within 50 yards of a stopwatch either) Anyway, I was Program Director for KRMG about 1981 when we added ABC Radio. I told the sales rep handling Jim's account that he would have to crack down on him because we had to meet the network. Jim got so mad at us "tampering with his creativity" that he pulled all his spots for a week or so. I had to send him a letter assuring him that he was wonderful, but if he buys 30 sec he gets 29 and if the spots went overtime we'd have to reject them. In response he bought a schedule for some client where he complained (in the spot!) about KRMG rejecting his spots, and used the last five seconds to count down to zero. He eventually got over it, however, and tightened up his spots, but he held a grudge against me ever after.

Sadly, Jim died of cancer in the early 80s. In what has to be in the running for all time worst example of tastelessness, Gary Henry resurrected some of his old spots about five years after his death and aired them awhile. Jim's widow complained and the spots were pulled.

Jim Wheaton was a colorful part of Tulsa broadcasting history.

Thanks for the info about Jim Wheaton.

I will pass this info on to David Bagsby.

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On holiday anchor duty here this week was former KOTV reporter Gail Pennybacher at WJLA - KTUL's sister station. She has been in DC for several years as a journeyman reporter.

Wasn't her Mom the long time Tulsa County GOP chairperson?

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A list needs to be made of the Tulsa TV personalities that need to be found/contacted about this site. May make things easier.

"Luther" made a similar suggestion...and it's a good one. I'll put a link to the list on the main page. I have some names to start it off...write in with any you think of.

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Another KTUL alum and Tulsa gal made good, Margaret Radford has been found!

At KNSD in San Diego! She worked for years at KGTV there, and I believe may have been at KFMB too.

Love this internet thang!

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As previously stated, the Mazeppa theme "A" section is by the Coon/Sanders Nighthawks but the "B" section is something else. It sounds like it was recorded in the 1930's and was probably from a cliff hanger serial like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. If any one out there knows the origin of this bit, please let me know or post to this site. I have just completed a cover version of the Mazeppa theme for an upcoming 'Tulsa' cd, and would like to give credit where it's due. Thanks.

Also, a reminder that David is looking for Jim Wheaton of "Ugh. U-Need-Um Tires" for his Tulsa CD.

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I'm glad to hear that you are including John Heatley in the site, I have known him for more than 30 years and his mom was my elementary teacher! Don't forget the old guys! Hey, if I remember and met Cy Tuma when he had no gray hair does it mean I'm really old?

I'm afraid so. ;-)

If you can get Mr. Heatley to visit the site and tell a story or two, then I would have some material to go with his picture!

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This will be a truly representative site if you also include more on the minority persons that have graced the small screen in Tulsa. Not only in front of the camera, but behind it!! I'll write again when I have more time.

Luther,

Thanks for taking the time to write!

Point well taken about minority persons behind the camera. I am very limited in the pictures and information I have, though. If you'd care to write a bit in the guestbook on the subject, I'm sure I could find a place to feature your comments.

I DO have a still of audioman/announcer Lawrence Heatley, which I will put into the photo album today.

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Yeah, I mentioned KTBO moving into the old KOCO building on NW 63rd & Portland in the last guestbook. I think it's funny how they've left up the old radar tower (at least I assume that's what it was). I wonder...did KOCO have their tower out there at their current site while the studios were still in town? Makes you wonder why 5 left those studios. I realize they're much more spacious, but KOTV has been in their cramped corners at 3rd & Franfort forever. KJRH has been in their Brookside studios since the 50's. KTUL's building new studios in what was once a parking lot on Lookout Mtn.

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Don't know who did sports at KOCO before Jerry Park. Dean Swanson was a dry but nice guy I was told - after he had pioneer RK surgery on his eyes at the Dean McGee Eye Institute, he looked a lot different. I am not sure where he went after 5. If we can get Jim Rankin from OKC - an old 5 hand - on-line, maybe he can tell us.

You know as soon as 5 moved to the new digs on Britton Road - Trinity took over 5's building for a religious station way back when.....

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2 r's and 2 l's? The KWCH website only has one l. Looks like their webmaster's not paying attention! I don't remember Merrill at KOCO. The only weather guys I can think of from the late 70's and early 80's are Fred Norman, Ross Dixon, and Wayne Shattuck. Seems like it was Fred all by himself for a looong time. I remember they had Fred with weather, some weirdo doing sports, and Dean Swanson with news. I loved Dean. Seems like he just disappeared in the late 70's.

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Merrill Teller - that's 2 r's and 2 l's he used to tell folks. He was a substitute weatherman at 5 but then did OETA's weather for about a year till he moved to Wichita. Hard to belief 15+ years later he is still there!

He may have worked in OKC for Ross Dixon at "Zephyr" - Ross' private weather forecasting service. A lot of "cast off" weathermen from other stations did. You did forecasts for PSO, farmers, construction companies. The idea was to cut the client's losses if a bad day looked eminent.

In Amarillo at 6am on KVII - we used to broadcast announcements for crews building a power plant in the middle of nowhere and for other "exposed" workers - whether or not to come to work.

Incidentally Jerry Brown - who worked in Wichita, has been in DC at both KTUL's sister station WJLA (a revolving door for most) then I think back to Wichita and now is at Fox's O&O WTTG as early morning and relief shift forecaster. (WTTG - which incidentally is the oldest station in DC in continuous operation! They were an "indie" and did news before the rest of the country's Fox stations started doing it!).

Erick said there is NO WB station IN TULSA? Far out! Sounds like someone needs to bring it in, at least as a low power station - to get on cable!

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KWCH 12 in Wichita used to be KTVH 12. I logged on to their webpage and noticed that Merrill Teller is the meteorologist at 12. He was with KOCO-TV 5 doing the weather.

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KTEN has offices in both Ada and Sherman. Their transmitter has always been located just north of Lake Texoma, from what I understand. They were ABC/CBS for several years, and KXII was CBS/NBC. In later years, KXII committed to CBS, and KTEN was ABC/NBC. Recently, KTEN went more to NBC/ABC/Fox, but I think they're all NBC now. There's a low power station down that way in Sulpher, KOKT, which is a UPN outlet.

The plumbing baron you're talking about is the owner of Locke Supply Co. They had a license to operate for many years before signing a station on in 1989. KSBI is still on air in OKC. They also own LP's in Edmond, Stillwater, and Sapulpa. I think if you're in west Tulsa, you can pick up the Sapulpa station on channel 15.

Odd that you mention the WB network, I was talking with a friend about that earlier. Since TCI stopped carrying WGN, Tulsa has been without WB programming. KWHB carries 7th Heaven from them, and their cartoon package, but that's it. Hopefully something will happen soon. I thought channel 44 would go WB, but they're a PaxNet affiliate now. KWHB won't be a primary WB affiliate as long as their owned by LeSea.

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KSWO has been there a long time as an ABC affiliate in Lawton - I vaguely remember some battle with cable there that wanted to charge exorbitant rates to carry the station. I think it was a classic case in the "must carry" FCC rules. A lot of OKC wannabes that didn't make it in that market went to Lawton to "play for a while in the farm leagues". Lubbock or Amarillo was rated higher as places to come from - if you wanted a job in Tulsa, OKC or even Dallas though.

Other than a couple of low power/"community" stations and the station in Claremore, what other stations in small-town OK exist?

In the early 80's - some plumbing "baron" in OKC was going to wire the state up with a low-power network of religious stations. Ex-KTUL engineer Tom Roberts's Fairview AFX wsa bidding on building this but I think the "baron" blinked at the cost.

I heard KTEN in ADA was sold and now is a satellite station of the station in Sherman/Denison. It was a neat little station (AM-FM-TV combo) that was ABC/CBS - kind of the way the Ft. Smith stations were till the 70's. You could be a primary affiliate of 1 network and a secondary affiliate of another but carrying less net programming. Now with LMA's - we have Fox stations running the on-air operations of WB or UPN stations as extra income in many markets. We need Don Lundy or Jim Back to talk more about LMA's here.

To gain a greater exposure the WB is playing with WeB - WB network brought exclusively to cable systems in markets without a WB station locally.

AT&T Long Lines was the national "cable" from NYC that all network affiliates in the Continental US got their signals on in the days before satellite feeds. Hawaii got their shows on videotape - 1-2 days later for many years, including network news - before the spread and price drop in satellite services.

It cost a lot of money for any market-sized station and there was no other way to get a signal in. KSN would be helped to exist by getting the network signal in from AT&T back then - then feeding by their own microwave network to the hinderland stations.

To beat this AT&T "tariff"- KVII in Amarillo spent $600,000 to build a microwave tower network from KSWO or the ABC station in Wichita Falls to Amarillo in the 70's. They used towers in SWPS (Southwest Public Service or their version of PSO) lots mostly, but some were in the middle of nowhere and the engineering staff often had to climb in 4WD Suburbans to go out and maintain them in bad storms. The units had like 3 hr. worth of battery back-up before any link went dead. The problem in a 6 or 7 hop chain was to find what link died. In really bad storms if we lost ABC via this route, they would bite the bullet and have AT&T in Amarillo drop a loop at KVII. I was told this was $1200 a day plus whatever installation. Luckily KVII was downtown and close to "the central office" of the phone company.

Getting in a network signal has changed so much!

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Ahhh...repeater networks. OKC and Wichita operate much the same way with these. Both cities are not only responsible for their local areas, but also for the western parts of their respective states. It seems to me that Wichita does a much better job of this. I don't know if Tulsa still operates repeaters...I assume not. OETA has 4 full power stations. KETA in OKC, KOED here in Tulsa, KOET in Eufaula, and KWET in Cheyenne. A couple of stations in the Ft. Smith area are what I call shared stations. 2 completely different stations simulcasting the same thing. KPOM/KFAA Ft. Smith and Rogers, and KHBS/KHOG Ft. Smith and Fayetteville. The latter of which is owned by Hearst-Argyle.

The Lawton/Wichita Falls market has always confused me. KAUZ and KFDX are in Wichita Falls, and then you have KSWO waaay up in Lawton. Wassup wit dat?

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Does anyone know if KOTV or KJRH still have repeater or "translator" stations up in SE KS or elsewhere?

In the pre-cable days and long before Low Power (er, I mean Community) TV transmitters, to reach more pockets of viewers and advertisers - stations had repeaters or translator stations.

Either with a signal taken off the air from the top of a 150' tower and re-amplified or it came in-bound via microwave to the local transmitter.

Stations in Tulsa, Amarillo, Albuquerque or even OETA could reach out to a bigger more distant audience with these. The repeaters swapped the stations to other channels so as to not cause interference in fringe areas where the signals might have overlapped. Hence a lot were true signal translators to other channels. They ran at lower power levels, too, than a "real" TV transmitter.

I think the KSN thing was an out-growth of this and small market stations that could not make it in areas with a limited population and revenue stream. I am sure though KAKE and other stations had repeaters.

Some had to be turned on/off manually - I think KOTV had a milkman in Coffeyvile in the 70's - that was their "engineer" there that did this and took meter readings for the FCC.

OETA spent lots of your tax dollars to put in a sophisticated phone dial-up system. A Master Control Operator in OKC could use a touch-tone phone to turn their state-wide repeaters on/off with. They had roaming regional engineers in different parts of the state that I guess stopped off to do meter readings.

Formerly, the FCC made you run station id's with the repeaters posted, several times a day. At KVII in Amarillo - besides owning KVIJ in Sayre, OK whom we bought from a competitor - we had about 14 repeaters that took up 2 full slides to show all on. Thank Gawd we did not have to read all the call leters orally! Often these were an amalgam of K-call letters and numbers. With the advent of cable in more and more smaller communities - I wondered if stations still used these (OETA I am sure still does).

On a personal note - NOT the opinion of this website operator - when I worked at OETA we discovered OETA seemed often subliminally "at war" with Wichita and Texas PBS stations. If you ever saw a map of a lot of the OETA translators - they were then mostly suspiciously are sited along the Northern and Southern borders of OK - often "peeking" into KPTS and Texas PBS coverage areas. I guess Eufaula got a full power station though suspiciously close to Tulsa - that beams into AR. We learned that many of these translators went to areas with legislators favorable to OETA in funding. OETA does get viewer funding, too, though. If a station on the KS or TX border has a stronger signal than a nearby but slightly distant city and you don't have cable - whom are you going to watch? PBS viewers DO open their wallets at fund-raising time and when at OETA - we often heard of letters and calls from folks thanking OETA for bringing in "non-offensive" family programming. A win-win for OETA.

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Duh! Thanks Erick for the KARD now KSNW clarification! Could have been both KARD/KSNW and the previous owners of whatever KWCH was called - both had repeater networks across the state? It has been a long time since last in Wichita.

Edwin Fincher or someone told me a long long time ago about a station in Hays,KS or some MORE god-forsaken place in KS that was on one of these networks but originally did local programming. They paid there staff pittances but had a "dorm" behind the studio for the cameramen to "batch" in and not have to pay rent to live away from the station. Talk about endentured servitude! But of course there was a Tastee Freeze in town to feed at! Does anyone have any idea where this was??

RL Bullock and Craig Smith came to KTUL from a station in Springdale/Ft.Smith, AR that now may be owned by Hearst/Argyle who own KOCO in OKC.

The station's original owners 20 some odd years ago, had a bad habit with payroll - they often DIDN'T pay their staff. I think RL said you might get paid 2-3 weeks AFTER normal pay was due or just about when you were ready to quit or be thrown out of your apt. by the landlord. They needed the engineers to stay on air so maybe they got paid a touch sooner.

I heard from another source (years later while visiting in Little Rock) that the station owners had an "in" with the local AR Dept. of Labor/Employment Commission or whatever it was called and whenever some employee complained about no pay for work - the owners mysteriously learned of this. Makes for an interesting workplace with lotta turn-over...

Oh yeah - supposedly when the State of Arkansas heard about these "leaks" later, they shook up that regional office - with a lot of chicken/hog plants up there you have to wonder who else (besides the station owners) was told of disgruntled workers' complaints?

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Does anyone know if Jim Wheaton of "Ugh. U-Need-Um Tires" fame is still around? I didn't see him in the phone book. David Bagsby could use his voice for his Tulsa Project.

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KARD, which is now KSNW, is the NBC affiliate, and they own/operate several "satellite" stations in Kansas. All of those stations' calls start with KSN-. It makes it easier to do newscasts for the entire state by just calling yourself KSN. They used to own the Joplin station, KSNF, up until a few years ago. KSN, of course, stands for Kansas State Network.

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Got an e-mail from a reader of this page - was confused about Doug Dodd.

Doug worked at KMOD in the 70's, went to TU then spent time in the USAF - protecting South Dakota from North Dakota or was it the Russian menace? (The only folks I can think of being famous from SD are Tom Brokaw and Lawrence Welk. ND is populated by a lot of folks that say, "eh". ND I think is a "closet Canadian province..).

I think he said he wanted a post as a press information officer but the USAF had too many of those - so he became a missile launch officer way down in a silo in SD. Never had that missile class at TU - must be at the School of Engineering...

He also worked in TV - I guess on his weekends off in Lead (say LEED)/Deadwood, SD at a station there owned by the Duhamel family.

When Doug got out of the USAF - he came back to Tulsa. KTUL knew of him as a former local radio voice - so he was hired as an announcer/audio engineer till they realized his talent in writing and reporting and he "moved downstairs" to the News 8 newsroom.

He did a great job there but for reasons I never knew - did the move to 6. I think he was acting or interim News Director there too.

Sometime after I left Tulsa I heard he went back to school to get his law degree.

It's Tulsa TV's loss but the legal profession's gain since he is a successful Tulsa attorney now.

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Wichita is a different but decent market. For years KAKE and KARD battled for ratings. Yes it is the KAKELand stations and KARD called itself "card". If anyone knows why they got these monikers - I would love to know!

Both spent bucks - one ran a cable newscast channel which was excellent, may have been an early SNC (the defunct Satellite News Channel) affiliate. The other did lots of remote work - I remember being at a mall up there and lusting after one of the small remote trucks. Very competitive.

I may be wrong but I think a former KTUL guy was manager at KAKE then went to WFAA in Dallas as GM for years. Mike (somebody) - who used to do "Let Me Talk to the Manager" on KTUL.

What is now KWCH became the news leader under new owners and a great manager - so much so it was profiled on 60 Minutes. I think the GM is at Fox in Chicago now.

Before this - it WAS a dog! KSN the hokey Kansas State Network owned it - including a station in Joplin. They had microwave links to a lot of small market places like Goodland and elsewhere in state, some doing a local news "cut-in".

My brother - a student in Winfield, KS in the early 70's - said the predecessor to KWCH's news looked like a guy at a kitchen table, reading the news with a bad chroma-key flat behind him. Often that guy was Bob Scofield - a former KTUL announcer whom TTM contributor Don Lundy worked with in his first tour at 8.

Can any of our No. OK readers tell us more on Wichita?

This is the start of Guestbook 10, by the way. We had just discussed jingles and slogans in Guestbook 9.