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As long as we've got Mr. Sartain himself on the line, which is pretty darn cool, how can I get my hands on a copy of "Scope Them Turkeys?" All back-channel efforts have failed to date. Want to do a cover version for next Daddy A Go Go CD. Thanks, and I love to stop by this place.

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Following Tony Sellars' lead - I have 2" tapes that I haven't played in years of political spots (like Fulbright's last campaign) that I used to collect and other news stuff like Chet Huntley's obit broadcast. Most of the oxide is probably bad on this. I had a good deal of OK newscasts I directed but I presume these on 3/4" might not play back.

We salvaged, kept, finagled these tapes because they were important to US to save. They were important moments in history for us. We bought tape, salvaged near dead tape, and "inherited" tape from stations to do this - many of mine are dead spot reels that agencies didn't take back.

I do know folks with old but working 3/4" and even Betacam machines at home that still pull these tapes out on special occasions.

Ditto I collected film trailers that stations showed for local Tulsa theatres and glommed on to some old 8 stuff from ABC that was being thrown out - some day - will get this to webmeister Ransom to post. Most of it is pretty scratched after so many airings on projectors.

My guess - is some day in the near future we can stream or store all of this digitally at home or via our computers before all the tapestock decays and won't play.

BET (Black Entertainment TV) is working on archiving thousands of hours of 10 year old shows to something digital (not tape) for access 10-15 years from now.

Ditto the Smithsonian is playing with digital storage of film material I hear.

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Mike Bruchas is correct about the lack of historic sense of management and employees of the TV Stations. I concur that KOCO tossed a majority, if not all, of the old news film and even early 3/4" stuff there, because they "ran out of room to store it". KFOR (Channel 4) still has a good bit of theirs, since there are still some old timers like Oliver Murray who would pitch a fit if it disappeared.

I have about 500-1000 3/4" tapes of KOCO and KWTV newscasts, specials and raw footage from 1976-1987 and even some film from 1976-78 stacked up in my garage. Also have a good number of Tulsa Cable Sportscene shows and raw interviews from 1987-1988. Don't really have the time or equipment to dub them to VHS or some other format, but I also don't want to destroy what I'm sure is the only recorded archive of what was on the air then.

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Are the Craft-matic bed spots still running on the air in OK? They were a staple of UHF stations when I worked there. I think they also tried to run versions of this like the "siding telethons" formerly run on Tulsey and OKC stations.

Noticed now all the infomercials my client and cable network, GoodLife TV (formerly known as Nostalgia Television) runs - have links to e-commerce or internet sites. We are becoming an e-commerce user country! Who would have thought of junk fax-mail just 10 years ago? Now we are barraged with junk e-mail (I seem to get a lot from Korea and the UK for nonsense -- sure I will send THEM my Visa card number to order something!!! No way.)...Yup we are going thru a great change in how advertisers reach the "home audience".

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If you go to http://www.kfor.com/specials/remember_when.asp , you can order a video which chronicles channel 4's 50 years of service. I know they haven't thrown away stuff that dates back to the mid 60's. They have a segment that runs every week called "Looking in the Vaults" or something like that. It basically describes some big event or news story. KOCO only has stuff from the mid 70's on from what I understand. I have a tape somewhere where they did an expose on the history of the station. My favorite segment of this was when they showed an audition tape of former Miss America and OKC news anchor Jane Jayroe. THAT was comedy!

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Film archives - there ain't that many left in Tulsa or OKC I imagine. Seems everyone saved footage of the then awful McAlester Prison Riot of the 70's, OU's biggest wins and biggie tornados but when I worked in both markets - management often had thrown out past archival footage.

In the 80's KTVY in OKC still had hundreds of hours of kinies (kinescope recordings), film and tape - I wonder what they still have?

At KTUL in the 70's film was stored in the back of the studio - some of it later doomed to the hot old garage-like shop behind the station.

When I was at 6 and had a room in the old part of the building - management NOT news management went on a clean-up frenzy and pitched lots of old KOTV-shot commercials AND old old cored news footage.

At KOCO we had a lot of stuff dumped to 3/4" but no one ever kept up with archiving the reels. It was stored up in an often stifling loft off the studio. Editors could find recent reels and that 1 reel of McAlester footage or OU winning some bowl game - but never anything else unless they personally stashed it.

To me this WAS Tulsa and OKC history in video or film - but to the ever changing revolving door station management and even often news staff with NO sense of history - it was just wasting space. Who cared about this old junk? It is/was a sad commentary on the people in the TV business....

On another note - a prospective tenant was here where I work today - it brought OK back to me. They did JC Watts', a very white-haired Frank Keating's, and Wes Watkins' election/re-election TV spots both positive and negative ads. Often some of these you never saw in OK - were deemed too hard or too "softy" to air...My boss was impressed I knew who all these folks were (JC was from OU Football). It IS a small world!

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WOW! What a great place to conjure up memories. You're doing a terrific job.

I need to think in sentences, now, not paragraphs.

I started at KOTV in 1977, hired away from KWTV in OKC, by then news director, Doug Dodd. Great guy, good 'pipes' and I hear a terrific lawyer.

Working with Pitcock, Vaughn and Lee was an absolute trip. The newscasts, particularly the 6pm show, were never strictly formatted. We could break format, it seemed, anytime. The highlight was the end of show schtik with Lionel. I tell co-workers today about a newscast that ended with the anchors talking to a puppet and they look at me like I'm crazy.

Lee Woodward is easily the most talented person I've ever worked with. He could have done anything and gone anywhere in television.

My wife was with an ad agency then. She got ahold of the 'Q' ratings, or likeability studies, for local television talent. Lionel was number one. Lee was third. I teased him about that.

I ran into his brother, Morgan, in LA about a year ago and was happy to hear Lee is doing well.

I can confirm the Moose teleprompter story in an earlier posting. I was there.

Henry Lile, a terrific person, was the prompter operator. He was in stitches.

I learned two valuable things from Clayton: bring your 'A' game everynight, because he would. Secondly, never take the newscast home with you. "Seven O'clock comes every night" was one of his favorite quotes.

When Clayton left to go to NJ and a public TV newscast, we acquired Jim Hale and Melanie Roberts. Hale was legend in Cleveland, OH. Melanie, I believe, came from Lexington, KY.

They never had a chance. Corinthian, for whatever bizarre reason, decided to 'can' the 6p news and move the early newscast from 5-6p. Needless to say, most of our viewers were on the Broken Arrow expressway at that hour.

At 9p (like now) CBS was non-existant, save for "Dallas" and we had little lead in audience.

Most of all, KTUL was so dominant. They had some terrific anchors.

The 'Moose' return tour, that lasted about a week, was another bizarre KOTV episodes. I think they had him doing commentaries, at the end of the shows. "Kamikaze Television" is how Vaughn referred to it, on Clayton's return from NJ.

Lionel was told not to refer to Pitcock as "Moose" upon Pitcock's return. It was a 'bit' for about two days. After that, "The King" called Bill: "Moooooooster Pitcock". I thought our illustrious management team was going to gag.

We did a weekly fishing segment with Joe Krieger. I called him "Mr Live Bait". I'll never forget a morning in the spring when Krieger took Clayton and I out bass fishing. Had to be at the dock at 5:30am after anchoring the night before. Couldn't figure out whether Vaughn was comatose or sea sick! Incidentally, we both worked that night.

Nice to see postings from John Hillis. Have only seen him once here in DC. He was a talented producer when I worked with him at KOTV.

After Tulsa, I worked in Tampa-St Pete for six years, then Cincinnati for nine, on both TV and radio. I've been in DC since 4/96.

It's been awhile since I've been back to Tulsa. I've always said, it is the most comfortable place I've ever lived. And for someone who was just 'cutting his teeth' in the television news business, a town that was very, very kind to me.

I'll keep reading. Hope to see more postings. And keep up the good work.

Ken, we remember you very well back here in Tulsa. It's wonderful to hear from you...and what a great post!

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This is great!! I remember staying up late on Saturday nites watching Mazeppa, Yehudi Menu, El Destructo, Judy Judy, Coach Chuck, Hoss Chopwright and Johnny Donut..... I also had an Uncola underground card and a seb'm up gizzer blinkie. But I also had a 45 RPM record that Mazeppa put out on Brass Monkey records. Side A had the tune "Scope Them Turkey's out", and side B had "What's So Funny?" I think I wore it out playing it so much.

I also remember Mazeppa had "Re-bel" Jeans as a sponsor. They could be purchased at the "...downtown, southroads, T.U., Springdale, Eastgate..." Froug's locations.

And, yes, Greer's was a sponsor also. I remember this because there was one located not too far from my house at "fourteen seventeen east eleven-teenth..."

To TTM and G. Ailard S. Artain:

Thanks for the great memories!!!!

Wade Hemmert Tampa, FL

Wade, you just added more to our collected Mazeppa lore ("fourteen seventeen east eleven-teenth", Rebel jeans at the "...downtown, southroads, T.U., Springdale, Eastgate..." Froug's locations, El Destructo) ---thanks. Could you tell us a bit more about El Destructo?

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Oh, and Larry Burnett is at KLAC in LA.

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I'm sure Steve Zabriskie did play by play for the NY Mets for several years. As recently as 1996, he was set to take over the mic for the Boston Red Sox. Whether or not that has happened, I dunno. I'll check on that.

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Back to sports guys? Where is Steve Zabriskie these days and did any one find out which radio station Larry Burnett might be working at in LA?

Webmeister Mike Ransom has an off air shot of Bill Teegins (his name is really spelled Tietgens as I recall) from his "big hair" days in Amarillo at KAMR/Ch.4 - the NBC station there - which should soon be appearing here shortly. We also hope to get an updated picture of a skinny Ken Broo from WUSA, too. The catcher's garb pic looks like it came from an old KOTV ad.

Broo could be hilarious on the 2 way radio at 6. I remember something about him playing assignment editor (not really) and "dispatching" Losure and me (after I job switched to PT news shooter) to an "exploding dog story" in South Tulsa at some arcane far South address = I think we about had a wreck laughing at this, though I think either John Hillis or Doug Dodd may have been the originator of this joke. It was a hot Summer in '77 and a lot of things were inexplicably exploding then.

Speaking of the days of 2 way radio to all news cars - everyone scanned the competition for stories. Bud Blust - pictured on this site, was the king of scanners at 8 and had good ears for hearing and discerning multiple radios squawking at once. Ditto John Bateman at 6 and long-time Bob Brown photog. Before UHF high band and encryptioned radios made listening in now nearly impossible, 8 then 6 always seemed to have the newest scanners in town.

Many a loose-lipped reporter or photog may have burbled a breaking story over open air waves and had the competition racing to the site.

For a curious quirk or maybe where KOTV had their antenna and repeaters - at one time we could pick up KOCO's frequencies from OKC and talk back and forth in the late 70's some nights. Yes - pranksters often acknowledged calls at 6 meant for 5 crews, too. 5 must have changed frequencies because this ended...

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Hey, it's been a blast to read the site again. I'm glad this is becoming as popular as it is. I was pleased to read about Margaret Radford and how her career has continued on the left coast. And, my favorite show was Uncle Zeb and the spider monkey ...classic live tv! I am amazed at the list of tv folks I'm putting together to send you (it just keeps getting longer and longer) but I was thinking that maybe someone out there has enough memorabilia to put together a site about radio here in Tulsa in the early days. (I spent a few years doing that too!) Well, time to go back to work, but I intend to keep checkin' the site!

Duane, the radio page is off and running (under "Other Tulsa stuff")! When you have your list ready, send it on, and I'll get it added to the large list linked from the main page. Once it is submitted to the search engines, this site should be turned up when someone scans for one of those names.

Thanks for your efforts.

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Football football football!

If you worked at KTUL in the 70's - you got it a lot! Webmeister Ransom has pix of a KTUL crew doing an NCAA "split" for ABC sports. (Here it is...MR) We used the WFAA truck because it was "network class" compared to 8's rehabilitated mobile post office white whale. Jimmy Leake liked buying this icons of American postal history then turning them into custom car haulers for Horseless Carriages Unlimited. KATV had one of the last ever made - KTUL's was a lot older. Our place in the corporate pecking order with company President Bob Doubleday in Little Rock meant 8 was a second-class winner...

8's truck was used for smaller more local sports events or doing pick-up feeds for out of town stations like WAVE-TV in Louisville that covered all the Univ. of KY bassetball games.

The one thing we all learned in working at the Skelly Stadium or Fairgrounds Arena - was have a man shadow the building electrician. When games end - in Tulsa to shoosh folks out - they start turning off or flashing lights. NOT GOOD when you are broadcasting live. Several times during 10pm post game basketball feeds we had someone literally pull the plugs on lights - no matter whom we cleared staying on with AFTER a game. I remember a WAVE feed where all went well till wrap-up time. The electrician stayed clear of the power box after many admonitions not to touch (I think I gave him a $20) but a doofus guard at the Fairgrounds turned off the lights mid-broadcast of a feed to Louisville - which trashed someone's newscast mid-feed.

Back to footsball. 8 produced the Barry Switzer OU show (which we won away from KTVY), a Jimmy Johnson (then who??) OSU Show, numerous TU football coach shows - though these only ran 30 minutes - the "biggies" OU & OSU ran an hour. We also carried KTVY's Bob Barry OU football show at a later time; the Larry Lacewell Show - who was OU defensive coach at one time and may have done this at 8; and the most painful show till Lou Holtz appeared at Arkansas - THE FRANK BROYLES SHOW!

Sister station KATV did the Broyles show and we ran it Monday nights after ABC's NFL Football and the late news. The idea was to boom into NW AR and do big spot sales - it never happened sales-wise. We could not stand Broyles, after a while he sounded like Foghorn Leghorn with his,"Ya see now, don't ya see..." remarks (about 500 times in an hour - grrrrr.). It may have been also 60-90 minutes in length.

After NFL who would be up till 2am on a worknight watching this? This was probably 1 night of the week the KTUL night staff got no viewer phone calls unless we had bad weather!

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Friends, this is the Jerry Ralph R.B. Bob Beavis Furniture Revolution. Just come on down. Ping Pong balls, we got 'em. We got your hobby horses, and your horses without a hobby. All ya gotta do is just come on down to the Jerry Ralph R.B. Bob Beavis Furniture Revolution and remember. You can't turn right, you turn

OK...thanks Jerry Ralph...I don't think there was a left turn there...hope you are OK.

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Oh, boy, why would I still remember this show theme after all these years?

"It's Mr. Zing and Tuffy time, so come along with me.
Come along and don't be late, we'll all have fun, you'll see.
There's Mr. Zing and Tuffy and all the things so great,
So, stay with us right here on Channel 8."

My head hurts.

MITCH

Your headache is our gain. Added the song to the Mr. Zing and Tuffy page.

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Hey, I can't help it that my Underground Card was disintegrating.

It was in my wallet for all those years. No wonder Teddy Jack's looks pristine. I doubt he needed to use it for discounts, since as a TV star, he probably got all kinds of stuff for free! What schmoe working the counter at Der Wienerschnitzel would have had the nerve to hit him up for money?

I think Teddy Jack had a little help with his... he probably had his own Uncola card valet.

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I'd forgotten about the "Round Mound of Farm Ground" Gene Wheatley. He actually came to OKC (what do you want, "Okie City") from Tulsa and I worked with him on the noon show. He had his own office and a station-supplied pick-up truck, which was only use , as far as we could tell, to feed his own cows. And he also had a huge collection of bolo ties and neck bandanas that he wore on the air. I think he was probably the last TV farm director in the state.

Back to Arke. He was married to Deborah Lindner, who anchored the weekend news at KTUL and Arke was weekend sports anchor. Both had gone to the University of Missouri and had worked briefly at KOCO.

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See the bottom of this Guestbook for a slide of "Teleshopper". According to Mike Bruchas, it was an idea 20 years before its time... "KTUL had phonebanks staffed by retirees, who directed callers to merchants. It flopped."

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Chris Lincoln is, of course, running Winner Communications out of Tulsa. This is basically a free lance company that will tape and cover sporting events. Some of Chris' proteges include Becky Dixon and Jeff Medders. Current KTUL sports photog/anchor Jon Klaussen works for Winner, I believe. Winner has been going since 1981, I don't know when Chris left KTUL. He also does a horse racing show for the ESPN networks, and it runs weekly at various times. I believe you can catch it on ESPN Wednesday afternoons at noon or 1pm CT. He looks pretty much the same these days, big guy, big thunderous voice. I dropped him an email about the site sometime ago. He's a busy guy this time of year, though.

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Here's a story about Chris Lincoln.

It may have been in '76 - but KTUL for years telecast the Pro Am Golf Tournament from Southern Hills Country Club and it was a hoot to work on.

Channel 8 had pulled out all the stops - as usual - the Pro-Am had prestigious Tulsa sponsors and it WAS local with big name golfers.

After the event was a "wrap party" thrown by the country club for all the members and staff that helped plus the KTUL crew.

Duke Baul and John Heatley are African-American and ran key cameras on the event that year for KTUL. Evidently it was passed on to 8 personnel that Southern Hills was "restricted" and John and Duke would not be welcome at the party.

During the event they had had no problems getting food out on the course I guess, but after a marathon hot, hard day - they were to be denied access to food and refreshment.

Chris heard about this and had more than a slow burn - the crew was a part of making all happen and he could not believe this was happening in Tulsa in the late 70's. He was very unhappy - but all he could do was get burgers from the kitchen staff (largely African-American) for the guys. Chris also kept his time on the hill there short and came back early - seething on how the crew was treated. At the station, we all learned about this and it ticked a lot of us off.

GM Tom Goodgame and Programming Director Bob Hower learned about it later - both would not have approved this treatment of staff either.

As I recall Chris couldn't believe that this kind of discrimination still existed in a town as sophisticated as Tulsa. A lot of us couldn't either.....

SHCC demeaned itself with that action.

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Awk - I forgot about Carl Arke (say Arkie)!

Chris Lincoln used to have a picture of him at KOMU as a sportscaster and pre-his diet days. He is a big-framed guy. He told us how much he lost once and I can't remember. In his KOMU days his eyes seemed lost in his face. When he came to 8 - he was big but not that large-girthed.

Don't think he was EVER as big as Farm Director (at KOCO) Gene Wheatley. Didn't Gene work in Tulsa, too?

I'd have to guess Chris' sportcoat size (from Connolly's) as about 54-56).

Webmeister Ransom has a pic of Chris and one-time TU football coach F.A. (Fine And?) Dry which he has yet to post - Chris looks normal in this. (It has now been posted...MR)

Okay here it is, secrets revealed - we used to call the jumbo hamper Chris' former wife Debbie brought lunch in --- "the wicker semi-basket" because of its magnitude. It was about 36' long!

Not that Chris ate that much but Debbie cooked a lot and loved to share food with folks in the newsroom....

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Why do they call it Wolf Brand Chili? Don't know that this is the real answer, but . . .

Let's see. Take the word "Brand" out, and you get Wolf Chili. Uh! Oh! Where's the beef? Suddenly I don't want to go there.

It seems so simple when you explain it...

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Maury Ferguson is still in OKC, but retired. They took him off the Fred Jones spots just a couple of years ago. I'd be interested in the whereabouts of Carl Arke, who was a Chris Lincoln protege around 1979-80. He went to Salt Lake City, but I never heard anything about him after that.

Incidentally, if anyone could provide Chris' coat size at his largest, I might have a prize for you.

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_Still_ a killer time-waster! Youse guys do good woik.

How about Mr. Sartain's radio spots for Coney Islander in mid-late 70's. I remember that tag line: "5 locations in Greater Tulsa, none in Lesser Tulsa."

The Wolf brand chili spot musta been a southwest regional. I remember it running in New Orleans when I was growing up there in the early 60's. They re-shot it in color probably in '65 or thereabouts, and it was still running when I left Tulsa to go East in '79. Like the Shawnee jingle, I guess they figured that they had arrived at chili nirvana and stuck with it. Ten-second film commercials like that must have driven the projectionists at stations nuts, because the film chain had to be threaded and all that stuff run. For a good film chain guy, two or three minutes of work for a 10 second spot.

Since in my recollection, we never ran a Shawnee spot on KOTV, I always figured they were some stealthy part of the unholy Griffin-Leake alliance. We had Cain's coffee in channel 6 Bunn-o-matic (not sure whether it was Jim or Susan though).

Finally, Johnny Martin. "it's case night, Friday night in the city, and play night," came, I'm told, from the fact that Budweiser sponsored Johnny (3.2 Budweiser, of course, in compliance with the state constitution, which forbade advertising of anything stronger. CBS used to send us the list of wine spots running on the net on the TWX, because we had to black 'em out. Pandemonium would break out when one would get by and we'd corrupt Sooner morals by plugging Ernest and Julio), and he was telling everybody to go out and buy a case for Friday nights. Ergo, case night. Johnny is one of a string of now-departed nighttime disc jockies who were local legends. Felix Grant here in Washington, Larry Regan in New Orleans to name a couple of my acquaintance.

Has anyone heard from Doug Dodd? I had dinner with him at the 1984 Democratic Convention when I was with CNN and his wife was a delegate. Doug probably got out of tv and went to law school at the right time. Surely he's online, and somebody had to tell him his pik-cher is on the front page. What hair we had in those days!

Left a message for DD recently...

Thanks for the answer to the Johnny Martin question and the dissertation on Wolf brand chili (did they call it "Wolf brand" because they were afraid of the name becoming synonymous with chili, like Sanka brand for decaf coffee? Seems unlikely.)

Added the "case night" answer to the Tulsa Radio page.

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Yoicks! I forgot all about Kanchi - which was designed to raise money for the arts and Tulsa museums via an auction of goods and services.

We ran it for a couple of nights a year - I think on weekends but I may be wrong, though I do remember it airing once or twice AFTER late news.

It was a "good corporate citizen" thing on behalf of 8 but I am not sure who was the person that first started it. This may be a question for Betty Boyd....

I DO remember a lot of rich Tulsa folks there and good catering for THEM.

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Speaking of KTUL telethons, Mr. Bruchas, how 'bout Kanchi? I guess it was actually an auction, but it's always fun to watch paintings go for thousands. I know they had it for many years, but I haven't seen it in recent years.

I had a possible Don Woods sighting Sunday afternoon! He was at the Home Depot on 71st looking to buy a rosebush. Wasn't positive if it was him, but looked very similar. If I were a braver man, I would've slipped him the URL. Of course, if I could've been given a little *$omething* under the table, it would've been a major confidence boost! ;)

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Gailard Sartain has a cameo on "Pirates of Silicon Valley", airing tonight on TNT!...later...Good show! GS played Ed Roberts, who created the first personal computer, the Altair, in 1975. In the movie, Bill Gates persuades him to pay double the proposed royalty for the operating system.

The script for this movie appears to have been patterned closely on the PBS special, "Triumph of the Nerds":

http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part1.html

In 1978, Ed Roberts returned to his first love, medicine, and retrained as a doctor.

I'll put a brief video clip out here in the next day or two!

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Hep me. Wasn't Yehudi Menu known in real life as Arnon Sebran? Wasn't his Dad cantor or rabbi at one of Tulsa's congregations? I think I remember him also playing an accordion on UFF&CM.

Where is he now?

How about Judy Judy - where be she?

If you just arrived here, be sure to go back and read Guestbook 11...we just said hello again to G.Ailard S.Artain, aka Mazeppa Pompazoidi! Go ahead and rub your eyes in disbelief, but it's the truth!

We also heard directly from Dan Satterfield and Bill Mitchell!

Welcomed newcomers Mitch Schauer, Bill Groves, Tony Sellars, John Lawrence and S. Bittner, and continued to get great stuff from regulars Mike Bruchas, Erick Church, Jim Back and Don Lundy.