I was the production manager at the OETA Tulsa office for the first three years of its existence.

We used to use the microwave link to do Tulsa cut-ins in the Oklahoma Report. Once we got that link up, it was used quite a bit by the local stations to send video to OKC.

It seemed most afternoons, a photographer from one of the stations would drop by a tape, OETA/OKC would call and we would feed it. Channel 8 used to use us to feed stuff to CNN. One day the CNN guys had been calling for hours because they were expecting a package from 8. When 8's tape arrived, it was just a short vo with nat sound. The CNN guy went nuts, so I offered him our story on the same subject. They took it and I saw the thing air a hundred times over the next day.

We also used to do a lot of live-interview stuff. CBS's overnight show would pre-tape a lot of interviews in the afternoons and the guest would come to our studio. I remember Roy Clark, Mike Synar and a few other local politicians doing this.

I think I mentioned this before - years ago when Don Lundy's Dad was a Greyhound bus driver - one time someone at a toll gate gave him a tape for OKC as he was westward bound with a bus full of passengers.

The ever resourceful Denny Lundy slapped a ticket on it - Greyhound IS an interstate carrier too - and it ended up at the OKC bus depot. Someone had to pay a $6 or $8 bus express fee to retrieve it!

Add to John Hillis' story - I think we traded with 5 for a while I was at 6 - things happened in OKC and 8 stopped trading with former sister station 9 and went KTVY as a Capitol city partner. Seems like 8 traded with 4 during election years and 9 at other times. Every couple of years this happened.

But I also remember one time on a weekend before this arrangement - an intern or photog picked up a tape destined to another Tulsey station, we called the OKC "partner" to tell them of our faux pas, the desk man there (maybe another intern), said no problem - use the video if we could. We showed KOCO video in Tulsa on 6 of a semi-big news story that no other station had!

I am sure that weekend desk guy got a kick in the butt for that decision, then again maybe still there is a photog awaiting a tape from KOCO at that turnpike gate.....

Longtime PBS czar Bob Allen at OETA - at state expense - built the Tulsey/OKC microwave link - I think it was 2 way no less. Before KETA was doing local programming in Tulsey - he envisioned all the news directors coming forward to beg him to use "his" microwave to feed news stories back and forth - maybe even pay OETA for this. He always assumed he could gain the upper hand over "real" broadcasters with his schemes (kind of like in "Pinky and the Brain"). To my knowledge, the only time anyone might have hooked into the OETA microwave net was to carry the "state of the state" or gubernatorial debates or actual governor's swearing in ceremonies.

It would have been a potential source of revenue for OETA but back then - as John Hillis can tell ya - no one had $$$.

News was not the big money-maker - it was often considered the big money-loser and budgets were miniscule...

John Hillis' Turnpike exchange is a great bit of history. It happened after I left, so I never knew about it. Items such as this really show the importance of this site.

Got an e-mail mentioning the turnpike trade, which I think was a unique Oklahoma institution.

Oklahoma City and Tulsa stations swapped news material between each other in the dear dead days before satellite and fiber optic lines by a kinder, gentler, means: some poor station employee was dispatched to the toll booth of the turnpike to flag down an unwitting motorist, give him a box of tape or film, and ask him to leave it with the toll taker at the other end.

Given that it took a couple of hours to make the drive, it was possible to have a story that aired at 6 O'clock in OKC on the 10 O'clock news in Tulsa, and vice versa. The swaps were pretty much a daily event.

The only cost was an occasional t-shirt dump for the toll booth people and a Thanksgiving turkey (a likely trade-out from Safeway) for every toll collector every year. Henry Lile was often the guy to make the runs for KOTV. I went with him one November noontime to help pass out the frozen birds and howdy up the toll booth folks.

All 3 stations used this method. During my tenure, KOTV swapped with KWTV; KTUL with KTVY; and KTEW with KOCO. I'm not sure if there was an unwritten rule that turkey distribution rotated, or if the poor toll takers got three birds in November to be defrosted throughout the holiday season.

Given the oddity of the process, it was remarkable how well it worked. Once in a while, you'd get a call from some motorist in Joplin or beyond who forgot to drop the tape off, but rarely did a driver refuse to take the tape and I never heard of anybody leveling a pistol at Henry as he stood outside the toll line flagging them down, not even those suspicious types with Illinois plates.

The site looks great! For all those Mazeppa fans looking for memorabilia, we're updating the site and will be adding some goodies to the online catalog at www.mazeppa.com.

Each visit to your site conjures up some long lost memories of Tulsa TV. I recall a blind guitar singer named Hymie who sang "Honky Tonk Angel" one Saturday night on the Billy Parker Show.

Fantastic Theater was also something I looked forward to each week, at least until The Uncanny Film Festival & Camp Meeting aka Mazeppa made its debut. Our routine was to hit a movie, stop by Shotgun Sam's for a pizza, and pull into the driveway just in time to see Mazeppa! Lawzee.

During the summer I looked forward to staying up late and watching all those big fish being caught on The Joe Krieger Sportsman Show (fishing at Lake Euchie with the little round man).

Thanks for the help with my guestbook, and for making this site available. The effort you put into the site really shows.

Steve Todoroff

Houston, TX

You're welcome, Steve..."The Billy Parker Show" had not previously been mentioned. Does anyone know if it was a Tulsa production?

Lynda Carter - **WONDER WOMAN!** - is here at my place of work in DC today. She has lived in DC for about 15 years.

She is in our studios shooting "wrap-arounds" for BBC Television's re-airing of her series over there as a part of a '70's TV retrospective. Something American TV networks wouldn't do, would be to bring back a 20 year old show!

One of our project managers - a woman who is a workout fanatic/body builder and mucho attractivo - was with Lynda in the studio and dressing room. Lynda was complaining about heat from the lights and doffed her blouse and top in front of the project manager. Yoicks! She said for all the boys/men/males with adolescent fantasies about WONDER WOMAN! - she "is real". May they not wonder no mo'.... I think some of the grown men in the managers' meeting that heard of this - cried. It was amazing how many people that didn't need to be near the studio/dressing rooms were there today - "to do something".

Bad side of WONDER WOMAN! - she also smokes like a fiend.

She certainly does! (Sorry, thought I was the Playboy editor for a moment)

The story about network patching for coast-to-coast (a term never used now) switching reminded me about the patch cord problems at KAKC in 1951-52. KAKC was very primitive, even by contemporary standards. The large patch board was some distance behind the announcer, who ran the board in combo fashion in a room without any kind of soundproofing.

Additionally, the patch board was unreliable. Insert a cord, and the patch might work. Do it again, and it wouldn’t. One evening I made a patch to bring in Mack Creager in from Texas League Park, something I done several times before. I had Mack’s position on the board in the “preview” position, so that I could hear him call me when he wanted to let me know he was there, and that he was ready to go on the air.

About 60 seconds before he was to go on, I heard Mack’s voice. “Frank. Are you there.”

“Yes, Mack. Well go on in 50 more seconds. I’ll do the usual intro.”

“Frank. Are you there?”

“Yes, Mack. Don’t you hear me? We’ll go on in 35 seconds?”

“Frank. I can’t hear you. Are you there?”

I rushed to the patch panel. Everything was perfect. I reinserted all the cords, and leaped back to the board.

“Frank. Where are you?”

“Mack, if you can hear me, go on…….NOW.” I flipped the switch putting Mack on the air.

“Frank. Are you there? Come in Frank.”

Back to the patch board. This time in a panic. Meanwhile, Mack was still talking. I went back to turn Mack’s switch off so that he wouldn’t be on the air in case he let loose with some profanities.

The dead air was deafening. Mack’s voice was becoming more shrill.

I jumped back to the patch board, uttering a jumbled mixture of oaths and prayers in the same breath. Fortunately, Raymond King strolled into the control room. Why, I’ll never know, because he wasn’t working as an regular announcer any more . He saw what was happening, grabbed the patch cords, inserted them, then went to the board, and on the order wire, said, “OK, Twinky. Take it ….NOW!”

Mack immediately started his sportscast. I was as amazed as I was grateful. I asked Raymond what he did that was different from what I had done. He just smiled and left the control room.

Maybe it was because I didn’t call Mack “Twinky.”

Thanks, Frank.

Great site. Now I can find answers to all those burning questions like what was the theme from Fantastic Theater? and whatever happened to Greer's Stereo Tape Center? Anyone have any related memoribilia to trade or sell? Feel free to drop me an email.
Cheers,
Scott

I have heard from another individual interested in buying Mazeppa posters. If anyone has some to sell, let me know and I'll hook you up.

Here is a postscript to the section about Jerry Lester and Dagmar. Lester was the top-rated TV comedian, and Dagmar was only his foil, mainly prominently displaying her more than ample bosom.

Fast forward many years: I saw both of them on a TV talk/interview program several years back, probably in the '80s. Dagmar was much, much funnier and sharper than Lester, who mainly had his ego to sustain him.

I remember Dagmar from her appearances on the Jack Paar show in the early 60s.

Tuesday nite brain dump:

I remember the Hamm's beer bear cartoon commercials running here in Washington in the mid/late 50's, so t'wasn't just a Midwest thing. A little Indian kid beating on a tom-tom for the rhythm track and the bears dancing and singing "from the land of sky blue waters..." I dimly recall the moving Blatz bottle cap, too. And, of course, Bill the bartender from the Friday Night Fights for PBR. We've come a long way in this PC age, no?

Breathy (or breathless) Vicki Monks was at KWTV, at least during my tenure. KOTV did the Turnpike Trade (have we ever discussed this precursor of satellite news exchange here?) with KWTV, and I remember the signout "Vicki Monks, Newsroom Nine" all too well. Pam Olson, another distinctive, shall we say, voice, who ultimately went to CNN, was also a Niner.

I guess the Corps projects that created the Port of Catoosa and the reservoirs I can't recall upstream ended the Arkansas flooding, but, as we found out along Mingo Creek, when a lot of rain falls with no place to go, it backs up.

Ex-KTUL'er David Evans, now Tech Supremo at KOCO, sent me the "You Know You're from Oklahoma" list. Even though he went to KU, he's one of the good 'uns. I could add that Tulsa was the one market where Pepsi outsold Coke until the late 70s at least, and one of the spawning grounds of the "Pepsi Challenge" commercials that drove Coke bosses to try to reformulate the product in the 80s.

Oklahoma night tonight on the little radio station I listen to in Manassas: In a 15-minute block, Patti Page, Kay Starr, Hank Thompson, and Anita Bryant.

And finally, as Paul Harvey would say, closed circuit for Mike Bruchas. I have a 3/4" copy of your "Gremlins from the Kremlin"--at least in part. It's down here in the basement alongside Henry Lile's tornado film and some of my regretable efforts as an on-camera reporter, including a Johnnie Lee Wills gig at Cain's that I think you shot. Haven't looked at it in 20 years, but I guess the oxide hasn't fallen off yet.

Brain emptied. Back to the Salt Mines.

Pauline Lambert owned Tulsa's most successful brothel until RIDESHY rode into town. There is a recent World story about this, but it isn't in the archive.

I thought I saw Pam Olson on OETA recently.

You guys are scarin' me - John Monks is still alive????

Hadn't heard that name in 15-18 years!

His niece or shirt-tail relation (breathy) Vickie Monks was a reporter in OKC at 4 or 9 I believe!

Help me Tulsans - was the Corps of Engineers attack on flood plains in Tulsa prompted by the BIG FLOOD just mentioned? Ya know - they have never left!

Also do any of you remember the old Caterpillar Tractor "image" ads they used to do in Life and Nationl Geographic in the 50's and '60's? Always in b&w. Showin' them big Cats on major world-shakin' projects. Seems to me I remember a Cat ad showing work somewhere in OK....

No, John Monks passed away in late 1997. In a Tulsa World article, he was remembered as having said that cockfighting is the FIRST thing outlawed by Communists (he left the second item to our imagination).

The '56 Arkansas River flood got Frank Morrow apprehended by police--and why not? I was unluckier.

There was some sort of pool television coverage, with the old bulky truck parked along Riverside Drive, providing breathless Tulsans with pictures of the muddy water (in black and white, of course) rolling along toward the South. I was asked by someone, about four p.m.. at KOTV to go to the site and relieve John Chick, who had been stuck there for three or four hours and wanted to go home.

That was fine with me. John was a friend of mine, anyway. I called my wife and told her I would be a little late getting home. (She was to hear that story for years to come, but that's an entirely different area.) I went to the remote, relieved John, and stood by for whatever reports I might have to make. There were none. The river just roiled and rolled and the light faded.

By midnight, I had tried to get someone to relieve me, but nobody knew anything and they were signing off. Good night, Jim.

There were no cell phones, no communication with anyone, and I was miles from any pay phone. I waited all night for somebody to remember I was there. By dawn, I got word to my wife that I was still in place and would she get me the hell out of there. She tried, but, of course, it would be a Sunday and nobody at the station could do anything.

Finally, she called Wrede Petersmeyer or somebody high up and they called somebody, who told somebody, who didn't do anything, and I was finally relieved at about two o'clock in the afternoon.

It should have been a tip off as to what the rest of my career would be like.

During the notable floods on the Arkansas in 1956, KRMG was providing maximum mobile coverage. We divided our times between following tornadoes and covering flood scenes. Bob Parkhurst and someone else had a mobile telephone units installed in their cars, thus giving us four mobile units, including the Newsmobile.

One evening at about 10:30, Larry Strain was using the Newsmobile; so, I jumped into Bob’s car and headed out. After dropping by the Highway Patrol office to check on road closures, I was going south down 31st Street, intending to check out the Arkansas, then to drive down Highway 64 to the Cimarron River bridge, which was in danger of collapsing.

Suddenly, the lights of a police car flashed behind me. I knew I wasn’t speeding, but I pulled over anyway. After both vehicles came to a stop, I heard a voice yell, “Get out of the car, and put your hands on top of the vehicle!”

I wondered what the hell was happening. Tulsa cops weren’t known to behave that way for a simple traffic stop. After doing what I was told, I saw two young policemen approaching cautiously, one with a drawn pistol. That quickly silenced my nascent, wise-ass retort that I had been silently rehearsing.

Now they were close enough so that I could hear their breathing. They were scared to death. They were wheezing, trying to breathe, the way people do when they are petrified at something. “Keep your hands up there!” one of them barked, as the other began to frisk me.

I had to be calm. Someone had to. I quietly asked them what the trouble was. “Shut up and don’t move! Give me your driver’s license.” I was going to tell them that I couldn’t do both, but decided to get out my wallet---very slowly. I explained who I was and what I was doing. They didn’t believe it. I suggested that they look into the car and see the radio equipment.

Finally, they calmed down, and began to breathe normally. They explained that they had received an emergency call, notifying them that an armed robbery had just taken place nearby, and that the felon was fleeing in a car with the same description as the one I was driving. I asked them if I were in further danger of subsequent stops as I continued on my way. They said that would report the situation, and that there would be no more touble.

I frequently wonder what would have happened if the police in 1956 were as trigger-happy as they are today?

A few notes from "ancient history," as Mike Ransom's great Web site reckons time:

When KOTV began programming as Oklahoma's second TV station in November, 1949 (a few months behind WKY-TV in Oklahoma City) the purchase of a television receiver was still a pretty big investment for many families. But we TU students, who had scraped together thirty bucks apiece to buy Pilot Radio's "Pilotuners" so that we could hear KWGS on our AM-only radios at home, got an unexpected bonus: KOTV sound comes in clearly just below the FM band (so does the sound of all other Channel Six stations in their respective areas).

This meant that we could listen without a TV receiver to Tulsa's only TV station and hear the evening news block (the order then was News, Sports and Weather third, in the carefree days without memory of a recent tornado disaster). We heard TU student Bill Sheil's spiel during sports for "Hamm's, the beer refreshing, from the Land of Sky Blue Water," immediately followed by the drumbeats for the dancing bears cartoons Hamm's used.

In 1952 KOTV got cable--the AT&T circuit distributing the national networks "live." NBC's "Today with Dave Garroway" was the first "live" show in June (KOTV carried programs from all networks until 1954 when KVOO-TV and KTVX came on). Late night, we got NBC's "Broadway Open House" with Jerry Lester--but we in the Pilotuner audience had to visualize the impressive proportions of Dagmar, whom Lester used as a comic foil. And we imagined the big Blatz beer cap twisting back and forth when we heard "I'm from Milwaukee and I oughta know,It's Blatz, Blatz, Blatz, Blatz, Blatz wherever you go."

Only Jim Ruddle, Mike Bruchas and others with a Chicago or Upper Midwest experience, where Hamm's and Blatz flourished, will recognize all this (probably). I don't think Hamm's ever advertised in Oklahoma again (a distribution matter, not Sheil's spiels) and I don't think Blatz ever did, except on network shows.

Another commercial jingle I heard or read somewhere: "Ask for McSorley's beer and ale, Fine in a stein, grand in a pail"

.....And I don't even like beer!

We discussed Griesedieck and Falstaff beer in Guestbook 43, for you beer fans.

Mister Webmaster, delete me if you've heard this one, but I got this e-mail in the last week, and, while I'm sure it's going around, it may be fresh enough to rate the space:

You know you're from Oklahoma if:

1. It doesn't bother you to use an airport named for a man who died in an airplane crash.

2. You have used the phrase "fixin' to" during the last twelve months.

3. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding

4. You've ever been excused from school because "the cows got out".

5. You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Gotebo, Okemah and Chickasha.

6. You can remember the name of the last state legislator to introduce a bill involving castration and he didn't mean farm animals.

John Monks? Surely someone proposed this more recently than he...not "surely", but "Shurden", Frank Shurden of Henryetta. There was a very funny article in the Tulsa World that mentioned Shurden's bill ("Demos, GOP on the lookout for `The Scout'" by Chuck Ervin, 5/17/1998; a mysterious personage named "The Scout" ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle in our state Capitol by distributing an extremely irreverent newsletter.)

Speaking of ruffled feathers, John Monks also spoke out on cockfighting back in the 70s. He said that cockfighting was the 2nd thing that communists took away when they took over. Never did find out what the 1st was...could it be...naw!

7. You know exactly what calf fries are, and eat them anyway.

8. You can recall hot summers by the year they happened easier than you can remember your other's birthday.

9. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies.

10. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door but by the availability of shade.

11. You have owned at least one belt buckle bigger than your fist.

12. A bad traffic jam involves two cars staring each other down at a four-way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the other go first.

13. You know in which state Miam-uh is and in which state Miam-ee is.

14. Your "place at the lake" has wheels under it.

15. You aren't surprised to find movie rental, ammunition and bait all in the same store.

16. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F150 4x4 is.

17. You understand the difference between 3.2 and 6 point and more than once you've made a beer run to another state.

Baxter Springs, KS bartender, 1971: "You really like to mix 'em up, don't you? (referring to all the different brands of beer ordered by the then 18 year old webmaster). At that time, you had to either be 21, have a female accomplice, or a find a lazy clerk to buy beer in Oklahoma.

18. You know that everything goes better with Ranch.

19. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.

20. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel.

Finally, you are 100% Oklahoman if you have ever had this conversation:

"You wanna Coke?"

"Yeah."

"What kind?"

"Dr. Pepper."

My first job at 8 was part time projectionist, part time film make up. I got to cut all the movies, because Euell Golden had a bad habit of cutting out the scenes that made the films classics. Those were the days....they insisted I screen all the prints before putting breaks in. It was nice to get paid to come to work and sit and watch Frankenstein and Citizen Kane in the same day.

That does sound like a dream job...typing "Ledbetter" into the search engine reveals that he visited us near the bottom of Guestbook 34, and left his email address.

Don Lundy and Jim Reid may also remember handling old b&w cartoons in film prep at KTUL - either the emulsion was scraping off or - I was told - at one time a graphite-like powder was on the prints to lubricate them.

Anyway when you cleaned the cartoon reels - a gray particulate would come off on the cleaning clothes from the b&w shows only.

There were still WB B&W prints hanging around when I came to work there.

I wish I had gotten some of those because many of them were originally made in B&W. The color early '30s WB cartoons had been badly colored in Taiwan.

Jim Reid - of the great WB B&W cartoon give-away- you may remember that Glenn Blake/Howard Sanders managing Production (both of whom took a lot of prints) later discovered that WB wanted the B&W prints back! They did a buck and wing on this - I guess WB was told all were destroyed when we got the color prints. I believe they ORDERED staff to return prints to cover their butts but I don't think anyone did.

I only got about 7 including a very anti-Japanese Popeye copy. Matt Bunyan and I later speculated that some folks either pitched their prints or their wives did when cleaning out their respective garages! Very few of us transfered them to junk 2" stock or the then new anemic Wollensack (really Sony) sole 3/4" deck at 8. 3/4" tape was very expensive then for crappy quality stuff. We could not afford to do this often. Many of the WWII cartoons were not in the color package (too racist or too old for the audience) and every now and then a WWII anti-Japanese cartoon might appear. I have a color print badly chewed up of "Gremlin from the Kremlin" that depicts Hitler as a jackass. I am sure WB "sanitized"their later cartoon packages. For newer cartoons we watched ABC's Bugs Bunny/RoadRunner show on Saturday mornings (a Tuma high point if on a Saturday shift for stealing snappy remarks for Zeb bumpers BESIDES recording them off our existing cartoon package!) and a several times it had primetime airings.

Do you remember the red/white/gray/pink Crusader Rabbit episodes - the late Euell Golden told us that it showed great as b&w but we could not figure out the "color" on the prints. I guess the syndicator figured color was coming and prepared. As a tiny tot - I loved these on WGN in Chicago but as college kid thought they stank.

8 also - thru General Mills - who then owned the rights - ran the 15 minute show of Rocky & Bullwinkle with cereal spots. I think at times this aired at 8am on Cartoon Circus in the pre-Good Morning America days then maybe in Zeb. This was always a favorite and I remember Cy Tuma roaring at the puns.

Mike Denney would cackle at the old WB RoadRunner cartoons in Zeb as if he hadn't seen them so many times before. He too was a big WB fan.

Euell Golden told us sometimes the big film distributors wanted movie ads returned or trashed - but many times he just let me have them. It was also this way I got b&w Griffin's Coffee spots and several Coke spots with singalongs by Anita Bryant!

I have ABC b&w Lawrence Welk and Efrem Zimbalist JR spots for the FBI series - all are tagged "in color" which makes this so much funnier! So much for days as KTUL projectionists!

BTW tonight I am supervising GoodLife TV cable network master control - our B movie or "Unclassic" film was the 1959 Steve Reeves' "Hercules Unchained!" As I recall 8 did NOT have this kind of film in the 70's but 6 did! The scary thing is - I saw this in a theatre originally with my Mom and li'l brother when new....

I have a very prized keepsake from my days at channel 8.

Mike Bruchas has written about the file cabinets behind the studios. That was my favorite spot in the whole station, I used to spend hours looking at the great stuff in those cabinets. One day just before I left, I discovered they were doing a major cleanup at the station. I went back to check the room with the file cabinets to find that everything had been tossed. It was a tragedy.

There was a dumpster sitting there with trash from another part of the shop area. Sitting right on top of the trash was John Chick's "Mr. Zing" zookeeper's hat. He didn't wear it much, mainly in the beginning of the show. I have seen a few pictures of him wearing the hat.

By the way, any of you KTUL alums have any prints left from the "great Warner Bros. B&W cartoon giveaway"? It happened right before I came to the station so I missed out. I collect 16mm prints now and am always on the lookout for old cartoons.

Forgive me if I I'm going over previously mentioned material, but I am slowly making my way through the previous guestbooks.

Mike mentioned Cy Tuma having conversations with the transmitter engineer over the color bars before sign-on. I worked quite a few sign-ons and at that time Cy would do a little "radio show" that we all joking called "The Johnny Tuma Show". Since he didn't get around very well, I'd be back in projection loading the day's film or slides when I'd hear Cy on the air say "Mr. Reid, if you can hear this, I sure could use another cup of black" (meaning coffee).

I was looking through some boxes the other day, and found a couple of tapes. One was the tape that the news dept made for Jeff Rosser's bachelor party when he married Barbara. The other is the film Carl Bartholomew made for the Christmas party in 77 or 78. It's some pretty funny stuff. I'll take it into work and capture some jpg's off them and send them to you.

I've also seen the two Larry Miller's mentioned. I worked with both of them. When Channel 11 opened in Tulsa with OSU Larry as GM, I was the first production manager. The other Larry I worked many weekend sign-off's with at channel 8. He used to turn up every speaker on the second floor after the late news and blast Beach Boys music out at an alarming level. He also had a habit of making odd announcements on the building page. The audio guy and I, the only two other people in the building used to enjoy them, but the security guards downstairs would sleep through it.

One night we had a very gung-ho security guard working. At one point during the late movie, Larry got on the building page and said "will the security guard please check the fire in the parking lot". We laughed and thought that was pretty "out there', but within 10 minutes the whole building was crawling with Tulsa Co. sheriff's deputies. The guard thought the station was being taken over by terrorists or something.

Thanks for another good Cy Tuma story. I got to meet the latter Larry Miller with Mike Bruchas at Channel 8 last year. We'll be looking fer those JPGs!

Wow, Jim Back is speaking my language! I think it was mandatory that all people growing up in view of OKC TV had to know who Don Wallace was. It doesn't seem that long ago since he retired. I remember him doing wildlife reports on the McCain bros. show on KFOR (then KTVY). I'm not surprised that a station is carrying reruns of his show. KSBI was doing that before I moved here in '97! Ronnie Kaye is great. I grew up knowing him only as the "NewsTouch 25 guy" on KOKH. Little did I know of his radio history. Didn't he used to do a music show on WKY-TV in the 70s? I was a little surprised to hear him on a station ID for KJSR 103.3 about 2 years ago. Also a class guy.

How did I miss Tony Sellars' visit to TTM?! Tony was the only thing that made WWLS radio listenable back before it merged with KXXY-AM and formed 'The Sports Animal'. I think he also used to be a sports reporter on KWTV.

Now I'm getting all OKC-TV nostalgic and such-like!!

I just finished reading an interesting article written by and about long-time Oklahoma City personality Don Wallace. I know this is a Tulsa broadcast forum, but hey, this is close. Besides, I figure anyone who went to college at OU or OSU in the 1960s will know the name from WKY.

Anyway, he says he started on radio right out of high school in 1948. He says that as the medium evolved he was a "radio announcer, air personality, then a disc jockey, in that order."

He says he was the first to do "Teen Hops" in Oklahoma, doing them first in Tulsa, then OKC. Does anyone remember him working in Tulsa?

He lists the WKY lineup during its Top 40 days as Ronnie Kaye, Dale Wehba, Danny Williams, Howard Clark, Johnny Dark and Chuck Dunnaway. Is there any market in the country that did NOT have a Johnny Dark? Ronnie Kaye and Danny Williams are STILL on the radio today, on KOMA.

He says he talked management into letting him do a fishing show on WKY-TV in 1965. It was 15 minutes long and he did the entire show himself, from filming it, to editing it, hosting it, selling the spots, and syndicating it. In 1971, Wallace Wildlife moved to prime time. He says he talked station management into putting him on Thursdays at 9:30 PM, against Marcus Welby, M.D. ("the hottest show in America" at the time, he says). He admits he got his chance because management was frustrated that NBC had no strong programming to counter against Welby and there was not much risk. Wallace conceeds he didn't beat Welby in the ratings, but says he was a "strong second." (Of course he fails to mention there were only three stations in the market at the time!)

Only in Oklahoma could we have a local fishing show on a network station in prime time! Not only that, but he says KOPX (an OKC station owned by PAX-TV) is currently showing RERUNS of those 30 year old fishing shows!

Wallace is now 70 years old, and retired; but he still does appearances at fishing tournaments and such.

As we learned in Guestbook 19 from Tony Sellars, Dale Wehba is Skandor Akbar's cousin. Danny Williams was the announcer on "Championship Wrestling", seen on KOTV in the 60s and 70s. I also remember Ronnie Kaye on WKY from my term at OU. There is some good history at KOMA's web site, http://www.komaradio.com/2000.

This is Guestbook 50.

Just archived Guestbook 49 where newcomer Jim Reid told the infamous Beth Rengel story (he was the director that day), and remembered the beginning of KCGT, Channel 41 down on the Main Mall (now in the process of being dismantled and turned back into a throughway). He also told a story about breaking up John Hudson (or at least paralyzing his gift of gab).

Loretta Young (Christopher Lewis' mother) was a topic. So was Tulsa native Tony Randall. Don Norton gave us some more background on Harry Volkman, Tulsa's 1st TV weatherman. There were several other 1st time visitors to the site...welcome! There were visits from the regular writers to the site as well.

Check it all out, then leave your comments in this Guestbook.