Note to Jim Back - yeah maybe I am getting too old. I am also cable-poor here - if you could mail me a cable box and about 1400 miles of coax....

Re "The Man Show" - have seen it and chuckled at times. Sophomoric guy stuff that we all regress back to....I guess "LifeTime" and "Oxygen" are "the Gal's show networks"! I actually applied at Oxygen on the operational side but never got a reject letter!

If you are an ole timer, you might remember this.

After World War II in the late ‘40s, when a network radio news or sports broadcast required a rare change from a speaker on the East Coast to one on the West Coast, it was not simply a matter of pushing a button, producing an instantaneous response. There always was this announcement first:

“We will now take you to (name) in Los Angeles, after a five second pause for switching.” (Or was it ten seconds?)

I never did know how this was accomplished, but I had visions of a nationwide scramble of people pulling and inserting patch cords in a well-rehearsed, coordinated effort across the country.

Hey Mike, ease up a bit. Remember, TV these days has no real purpose other than to attract eyeballs so stations and networks can sell time to advertisers. Today's generation does not expect redeeming social value or programming in the "public interest, convenience or necessity." I didn't watch "Survivor" either (well, I did watch about 20 min. of one episode about a month ago to see what all the fuss was about). It just wasn't interesting to me. But it's not as bad as some stuff that's been on TV from time to time. I suspect the reason we weren't interested is that we're too old for this sort of thing.

Now those girls bouncing on the trampoline on "The Man Show" . . . now THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!!!

Okay Okies and TTM readers - did you watch "Survivor"? Is it "breaking new ground in television" or dumb dreck?

I did Not watch it but CNN and CBS recapped almost all every morning after. Newsweek did a big splash on it. Washington Post Columnist Bob Levey does a turn on WTOP radio here 1-2 times a week and blasted it for all the right reasons. I did an "amen" e-mail to WTOP and their news director wrote back that I was in the minority. Most listeners blasted Mr. Levey on his bashing of the show and what it stood for.

For all the ratings points it supposdly earned CBS -and may be because of so many folks out at conventions from this town- I personally know of 3 people that watched it. In a staff meeting this morning of over 50 folks we did a straw poll and found only 5 that watched part of it or the finale.

It was NOT the final episode of MASH nor the Moonwalk.....

Been sailing for a few weeks and am just catching up on what's been written. A few comments:

Don Norton is THE source for early KOTV stuff. I'd forgotten about Tuma's beard and its repercussions. To add just a bit to what Don had to say about Volkman, Harry got his meteorological training at the Spartan School of Aeronautics. He had attended Tufts University before coming out to Tulsa to learn weather lore at Spartan and then began classes at TU. As I've mentioned before, he was followed by Bob Thomas at KOTV, who then followed him in Oklahoma City, and who then followed him at WMAQ-TV, in Chicago. Harry's still working in Chicago.

The WMAQ radio call letter travesty is a done deal. WMAQ was a major force in early radio and, as noted by Mike Bruchas (I think) inaugurated many subsequent radio and TV personalities. Mike Wallace and Studs Terkel worked as actors on various soap operas and drama shows there, the station had a full orchestra under the direction of Joseph Gallichio and presented major musical programs. When I worked there, John Palmer, John Dancy, and I did News on the Hour from Chicago.

Frank Morrow's remarks about radio drifters left out one important segment of that particular craft: The boozers. These guys would show up, audition, work for a few weeks, then, one fine morning, the program director would call you and tell you to hurry in to work, the new hire had failed to show up. He never came back and you could invariably find empty bottles in the space below the turntables.

Since my brother Steve mentioned our old color TV, I should add that it mets its fate one day while I was bouncing on the couch, flew off and landed on my head; at which time, the tube exploded. I don't remember this, but that was what I was told later. Don't build them like that anymore. My punishment/reward?...the TG&Y set....aaaarrrgggghhhh!

David is the one with protective headgear (eschewed by Steve). You can read about David's Tulsa-themed music projects here on this site.

In the very early days of TV in Tulsa there was such a great need to fill time that KOTV gave a half hour (each week, I think) to a Central 1950 senior, Peggy Phelp, to do something---anything. Because I was only on the program once, I don’t know much about the show.

Later, in about 1955, one of the stations gave TU students time for a series. It was good experience for the kids, although they only had on-camera involvement. I was only on one show, but one that I and my former roommate, Dave Hindman, will never forget. It was a Christmas show.

I had organized an octet to sing Christmas carols with other members of Kappa Sigma. Our objective was, not to just entertain on campus, but also to get invited to parties. It worked out great. We would drive around the rich part of Tulsa, find a big house where there were a lot of cars parked outside, walk up onto the front yard, and start singing. We always were invited in.

The producer of the TU television show heard about us, and asked us to sing on their program. We showed up, and sang one song at the rehearsal. Everything went smoothly. Dave Hindman was the host for the show. He had a lot of radio experience in Ft. Smith and Tulsa, but had done no TV up to this point. (He later worked at WKY-TV and radio.) Dave was doing fine, and we had performed our song well. As the program was about three-fourths over, the light went on Dave’s camera for the introduction of the next segment. Dave said about one sentence---and froze. The blood drained from his face. His eyes were glassy. His mind stopped.

In a panic, the floor manager grabbed me, pushed, and said, “Go sing another number!” The eight of us scrambled back in front of a camera and hurriedly broke into song. Meanwhile, people were performing mental resuscitation on Dave. We were then directed to walk off the set, still singing.

The camera was switched back on Dave, and he completed the program flawlessly. Although he and I were good friends, and did a lot of kidding and joshing back and forth, I never mentioned this incident to him. He never brought it up.

I remember our family having one of those big RCA color sets you guys were talking about (KVOO '64 election set photo). This thing was an important source of world information to my brother and I. If something was up with Astro Boy, Johnny Quest or Popeye, we were ready to respond!

When the old set went belly up, dad bought a TG&Y (no fooling folks) black and white set as a temporary replacement. It was good having emergency back-up. That way if we tuned in and Barnabas Collins was on a rampage, we could get our guns loaded and head for the cellar.

My brother and I were similarly well-informed about important world events.

For yet another look at where radio is going - go to www.worldspace.com.

Neil Huntley - a TV producer/director friend in DC is now their senior content producer here in DC. Worldspace will feed radio programming via a mini-dish on your home radios or is developing AM/FM/Shortwave + mini-sat dish radios in Africa, Asia and Europe. Talk about DXing! They can also feed data - hello internet in places with no phonelines? And they have done a videostreaming test (only about VHS quality video for NOW) - so as the world changes - your little antenna may get a video output spigot in time. The dish looks to be about 4"x4" in size.

XM was their US partner and Access (or is it Axxess?) and has a different agenda. So he couldn't talk much about where this service is going here in the US. The American partners are going after car radio service though first. Yup - nothing like being stuck on the Skelly Bypass in rush hour and have 175 radio staions to choose from - in your car - to while away the stopping and going....

We are spoiled by cable in the US but also pay for it to enrichen a lot of pockets. A lot of the world's less wealthy citizens still rely on local/shortwave radio for news and entertainment. That's whom Worldspace is going after. Africa is their first big market for service. Then Europe and Asia.

Radio costs overseas for receivers are now about $175-$375 (JVC, Hitachi and other brands) - in countries where available and monthly fee of $10 a month. A lot of spoken word and children's programming will be intermixed with all sorts of radio services, many indigenous language broadcasts. So if you speak Hutu but live in Amsterdam - you can get news in your home country language. They may have an industrial division to compete with Muzak for restaurants and the like with private music channels.

Unlike internet radio - you WILL be able to take this satellite-fed radio with you! But like the BBC will pay a monthly subscriber fee....I presume regional players like KVOO, may sometime in the future, affiliate with these folks to gain a wider audience as they did with internet radio.

I guess we are a'livin' in the rocket age of radio listenin'....

A few more tid-bits from "ancient history" for the younger members of our little club (glad to see it's not so "little" anymore):

Yes, Erick, Harry Volkman did work for KWTV--but he FIRST worked for WKY-TV. On October 1, 1955, a WKY-TV weatherman announced on OC Channel 4 that Harry Volkman had "resigned to seek other employment." On October 2, KWTV gleefully announced that Harry would join Channel 9 on October 31. In between those dates Harry went to a hospital for a minor eye operation (Contractual non-competing agreements apparently hadn't occurred to station moguls yet).

I have always been proud of getting Harry his first broadcast program, and Harry has always been gracious about acknowledging this. But I have to add that Harry was and is so talented and so good at what he did and does that he would have been "discovered" soon without me. But at least he got some practice first at KWGS. As "student program director" in 1949-1950, I arranged for Harry to do a five-minute weathercast at 10:15 p.m. (In those days, KWGS signed off at 10:30 through the week to, as Dr. Ben Henneke put it, "conform to the university's social schedule"--women living in dormitories had to be in by 10:30)

When Harry heard of a possible opening at KOTV, he left the KWGS program abruptly and we were left with a 5-minute "hole" labeled "weather" and no weatherman. Fortunately the transcription service KWGS was using had a number of cuts with a "bird's voice" chirping things like "Partly cloudy, nut much change in temperature." So we would play this cut or another, as appropriate, and the announcer-on-duty would follow with the official U. S. Weather Bureau forecast. The mythical bird was known as "Windy Weatherbird," which is probably why I was momentarily confused a few memory books back when Jim Ruddle asked about A. L. McCuistion and referred to all weather prople as "weatherbirds."

For Lowell Burch: I may have to back up a little bit on spelling Charlie St. John(n) with two n's. I'm positive I saw it that way at least a few times--but no one but Charlie would write it that way without prompting and I am sure he was publicized a little (not much station publicity for local people then) as Charlie St. John. Maybe Lee Woodward will weigh in on this.

I need to clarify another point, though: Charles went to KGUL (for Gulf) in Galveston, which Corinthian had bought planning to bring it into Houston. Thus was the origin of KHOU-TV, somewhat similar to KTUL's transfer of KTVX from Muskogee and KOCO's shift from Enid to Oklahoma City.

For Mike Bruchas: I also winced at out-of-state announcers mangling Oklahoma names. Shortly after World War Two, small Oklahoma radio stations discovered an audience for high school sports. However, for state tournaments they imported "experts" for the play-by-play. I recall one powerful girls' basketball team from Checotah referred to as "CHECK-o-tah" throughout their game--even though the announcers were probably right on the floor with that team.

Running long; thanks for your patience!

Thank you, Don!

I would love to find any old airchecks of me at KELI (1973-74) or at KTFX(1977-1980) where I was Cousin Lee Walker on the air. I would also love to find any video of my wife Sara Scott who was a news anchor at Channel 2 from 1977 to 1981. Thanks! My syndicated show now runs in Tulsa on KQLL Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight - Cool Bobby B's Doo Wop Stop!

We'll be on the lookout for any of this material, and also check out your show. Thanks for visiting, Bob!

Did any of you catch the A&E Biography program on Tony Randall a year or so ago? I was expecting to hear him sing the praises of the sainted Tulsa Central speech teacher Isabelle Ronan, like Paul Harvey does.

Instead, he admitted that he was never in any plays, although he did try out for some. He said that he was just considered an unpopular little wise-ass.

No, I wish I had caught it. It's hard to believe that he isn't a native New Yorker. Witty guy. I liked his version of the 30s song, "Boo Hoo". He also starred in the fantasy, "7 Faces of Dr. Lao", scripted by Charles Beaumont, a prolific writer for "The Twilight Zone".

When Christopher Lewis left Channel 8, he was replaced by his cousin, Vic Montalban.

I forgot to mention other KTUL alums down here. I still see Cindy Martin (now Stevens) quite a bit. She worked at the station as a director from '78 to '81. Steve Hamlin (Eng) is over at KXAS. I run into Stu Odell from time to time. About three years ago here, the weekend co-anchor was Phyllis Watson and the GM was Jeff Rosser, talk about deja vu. A few more have come through but my mind is going blank right now. I've found that if you stay in a place long enough, the same faces keep coming around again.

Talk about confusion. Read in a official Loretta Young bio that her sister is married to Ricardo Montalban. Do you have problems keeping Fernando Lamas and Ricardo Montalban UN-confused?

Last week - GoodLife TV cable ran at least 2 movies with her in as the ingenue - coincidentally. She was in a LOT of films in her long, long career.

Be prepared for more from AMC and Turner Classic Movies channels!

I'm at KDFW. When I came here in '84, it was a CBS affilliate owned by Times Mirror. It has since been owned by Argyle, New World and now Fox. Since the New World buy, we have been a Fox station.

The job I was originally hired for was as director for the promotion dept. I did all the post production that would be edited into the spots. It was a very low-tech setup.

Things have improved and new equipment was purchased and for the last 8 years, I've been an AVID editor. I'm still pretty much doing the same thing in the same department, just the technology has changed.

It's been nice catching up with everyone.

Note to Jim Reid - tell us what station in Dallas you have been at and what you are doing now.

Several years ago I thought you did a lot of on-air promotion creation.

Any other Tulsa alumns there with you?

I was the director of the short-lived KGCT Channel 41 newscasts live from the old Lerner's Clothing Store on the main mall.

They went on the air in April '81 and decided they needed another director. There were quite a few KTUL alums there, so my name was brought up. I was still working at 8 but in need of a change. Glenda Silvey, who I known through a movie trivia radio show I had done, called me and offered me the job. I took it, and even though it only lasted three months, I had a great time.

I worked with a lot of old friends and made some new ones. I got to work with one of my favorite people, Karen Keith, for about the fourth time.

John Hudson and I had crossed paths before, but I really got to know him here and he was one of the best I've known. I was very shocked and saddened to hear of his death a few years ago.

He used to brag that no one has ever been able to break him up on the air. Well, one day at 41, we were going to have an interview with some woman about something I've forgotten. When she walked into the studio, she had to weigh 300 lbs easy. They put her in a chair between John and Beth Rengel. Just before we came out of the commercial, I got on John's IFB and said "coming out to a four-shot". It wasn't the nicest thing to say, and I didn't have room to talk, but it caught John at the right time. I looked over to see him unplug his IFB and he didn't say a word throughout the entire interview. He came after me after that and said "man, you got me on that one!".

Thanks for the info about Channel 41's early days. Frank Morrow gave some examples of breaking up the announcer on Tulsa Radio, page 3. Also, thanks for the John Hudson story; Gailard Sartain had inquired about him in Guestbook 46.

Since stumbling on this site a few days ago, I have been reading and remembering quite a bit.

Several people have mentioned the Beth Rengel incident at Channel 8. I was directing the show that night, and it was a night from hell. Something had happened to the microphone multicable to the studio, so through the entire show, we would go to an anchor and have their mic not work. If Bob's mic didn't work, we went to Beth to read the story. It was a disaster.

Well, this worked until about 10 minutes before the end of the hour long show. I punched up Bob, and his mic was dead. I punched up Beth, her mic was dead. At this point I had nowhere else to go so I rolled the break and took black. Somewhere during the 5 second roll on the 2 inch machine, Beth's mic kicked in. That's when it happened. I didn't know what had happened till after the show.

I feel a little responsible for her leaving the station. A few weeks earlier, I had gone to George Stewart, the news director with an idea. I produced a new news open in pieces. I kept a reel around with all the anchors pictures. With very little notice, I could put together an open with the exact anchor lineup on it. This was meant to use during anchor vacations. The day after the "incident" when I found that Diana Moon would be filling in during Beth's suspension, I asked George if he wanted me to do an open with Diana in it. He said yes, so that's what I did.

The next morning, I woke up to Beth talking to John Ehrling on KRMG saying that she had been fired and she knew it because they had already gone to the trouble of producing a news open with Diana Moon.

It was an unfortunate incident...we'd like to think it wouldn't have the same consequences today. Thanks for the inside scoop, Jim.

Regarding the old radio station featured in "UHF":

It's still the transmitter home of KGTO AM-1050 (formerly KFMJ) on Edison at around 57th West Avenue.

The studios were last used on-air during the early - mid 70's when KFMJ sister station KRAV FM-96.5 switched formats from "Top 40" back to "Beautiful Music" featuring Skitch Henderson (before he got into trouble).

The station changed locations and formats next in 1975. The new location was 16th and Carson. The new format - "Top 40"!

Sonny, thanks for the info!

I read the Loretta Young posts from earlier this week. I worked with Christopher at 8 in the mid-'70s. The first time his mother came to visit, they had a big "Meet Loretta" party at Jeff & Barbara Rosser's. She was really fantastic. Being an old movie buff, I was extremely jazzed to meet her and made a fool of myself. Later on, I think she came to live with Chris and Linda and was at the station all the time. I remember directing the 10pm one night and looking through the glass into the middle edit booth and seeing her in there cueing up a 3/4 tape. Speaking of celebrities with Tulsa roots, I have my dad's old Central High yearbook with Tony Randall in it.

Jim, should you ever be in a position to send a scan of Tony Randall's high school picture, we'd be glad to see it out here!

I received the same email as Mike Bruchas. From what I can tell, email addresses from this guestbook have been gathered, and possibly sold, for spamming purposes. Although the sender was a Hotmail address, the recipient address was not me, but another regular poster to this site. I certainly hope this person didn't knowingly give out our email addresses for spamming. I have already sent a complaint about the sender to Hotmail abuse.

Now onto more topical items...

About the filming of the movie "UHF"...I know it was filmed in the vicinity of 71st and Lewis, but where exactly?

Perhaps I'm the last person to notice this, but I caught a few minutes of "The Outsiders" on cable a few weeks ago, and noticed that in one scene, a television is on with a test pattern, and the words "KOTV Channel 6. First In Tulsa." Was this phrase on the actual KOTV test patterns of the 60's?

Oddly enough, I don't think I got the spam (I usually delete stuff like that without even looking at it)...Erick sent me the spam; here it is:

Dear Sir/Madam,
I greet you with great honour and let me hope that you are fine. Sir I have a problem which I would like to help me out. I am a Ugandan student of age 16 studying in a certain school called Mengo in senior4.

I would like to proceed with my studies but I don’t have any one to pay for me my school fees. This was a result of the death of my parents a few years back. So please I am requesting you to sponsor me or if you can get me one who can do so.

I am looking forward to your help and let me hope that my request will be put into consideration.

Thank you.
Yours in need
(name withheld)

This is not an unusual "request" to receive on the internet. I trust that no TTM readers are likely to send money blindly in response to such an email.

The old Kensington Mall, now the TV Guide building was the site for most of the "UHF" shooting. The abandoned radio station used is on Edison; type "Edison" into the search engine to locate the Guestbook where that is mentioned.

It's been awhile since I saw "The Outsiders", but we know that "First in Tulsa" was a slogan used in the early 70s from the sound bite on the Lee Woodward page.

This is more of a "where are they now?" question. I am looking for information as to the whereabouts of the recent morning duo for KOOL 106. (Matt and Kelly)

Also when I was in the Air Force, stationed at KI Sawyer AFB, MI, I corresponded with Susan Silver, then a news anchor for a Green Bay, WI. She was kind enough to answer and make my stay a little more bearable in Michigan. This was in the latter part of the seventies. Anyway, I really enjoy your site. Keep up the great work.

Thanks...there is a picture of Susan Silver on one of the News pages.

I just found this website and it's like a blast from the past! I worked at KTUL from 1975 till 1981 and it was the most fun and rewarding job I've had. My first day of work I was sitting in B control when Cy Tuma noticed me through the window. He asked who I was, and the switcher told him I was the new guy. A few seconds later, he read the intro to the morning movie. "Welcome to the Channel 8 Morning Movie. This morning's feature is "If I Had A Million" starring Gary Cooper and Jim Reid." What a great guy!

There are a lot of Cy Tuma stories here. I will get them all together on a dedicated page soon.

I can remember when an RCA XL 100 was the pre-Sony days CADILLAC of color TV sets! My first b&w out of college was a Sears model for $52 or $57 USA made (Whirlpool!) 9" screen set that I bought at Sears at 21st and Yale.

But for years TV stations (8 + 2) bought nothing but "home sets" for use for monitoring as the cost was high on any color set -or- they were trade outs with Fikes, Reeves Boys, et al... You would only find "broadcast" grade CONRAC or Tektronix high dollar monitors in Engineering to shade cameras by or watch the air signal from. For years 8 had a massive, expensive RCA 25" (or so it seemed) reference monitor in a gigantic metal cabinet in Engineering.

One Xmas at 8 we got 4-8 new 19" Tektronix monitors in for the control rooms and Engineering and that WAS a better present than anything 8 gave us turkey or ham wise! Especially since the old home monitors often screeched and moaned as their power supplies self-destructed after running 20 hours a day (often left on 24!)and many times we thought they might blow up.

I think KTEW bought a passle of beautiful BARCO control room monitors from europe - which we all lusted after - following their debut at the NAB show. We heard that about 90 days immediately after they had been put in service, they "stopped matching" color and became boat anchors....

OETA's Bob Allen used to "congratulate himself" after successful "Festival" fundraising drives by buying (on state $$) newer and each time bigger Sony sets for his state office... That was okay - he gave his "cast-offs" to the studio and OETA in OKC always had good studio monitors!

Sounds like we need to make Ed Ellers an honorary Reeves boy, with two free tickets to the Fikes Center location. Good sleuthing on the RCA Victor TV Model. Color sets really took off in '64-'65, to the point that even CBS, which still smarted from the FCC's rejection of its color system a decade before in favor of RCA's (parent of NBC), had to start transmitting color programs.

Just archived Guestbook 48; this is #49.

We just heard about political conventions from the TV insiders' point of view. A new reader from Ada discovered that he wasn't just dreaming about the Mazeppa show. Loretta Young (who passed away this week) was discussed, and her Tulsa connections were mentioned. Cy Tuma was remembered again (he needs his own page). Weird Al Yankovic's movie, "UHF", shot at 71st and Lewis in 1988, was recalled. We learned what it was like to be a neighbor of Gailard Sartain and Leon Russell. Internet radio was also a topic.

Check it out, then add your own comments to this Guestbook!