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Tulsa TV Memories: The Sports Page |
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1955 IDs; 1st row: Tom Jenkins, Ken Vandever, Mack Creager,
(from Guestbook 2) Mike Bruchas said:
Hal O'Halloran was replaced at KTUL for reasons never understood.
He tried a fishing show after that for a while shot by former KTUL photog,
Johnny Rauser - maybe Looboyle's or someone sponsored it.
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. 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?
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....
(from Guestbook 12) Erick Church said: 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.
Football football football!
If you worked at KTUL in the 70's - you got it a lot! Webmeister Ransom has
pix of a
KTUL 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.
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!
Dwayne Parsons was at 6 for awhile in the early 90's. He's now at KBTX in Bryan, TX: http://kbtx.tca.net/newscrew/parsons.html Dick Pryor had a stint at KJRH in the early 80's. Although I remember him for his loooong tenure at KOCO in OKC. He's now a lawyer, and news anchor for OETA: http://www.oeta.onenet.net/dickpryorbio.html I also located John Anderson, who was at 6 in the early and mid 90's. He's at KPHO in Phoenix, but there's no bio for him there. Oh, and Larry Burnett is at KLAC in LA.
I think the exploding dog story was born of a too-hot summer afternoon (never many of THEM in Tulsa!) and the knowledge that KTUL was monitoring the two-way. Somebody decided to see how far we could string them along, so Losure and his tyro photog were dispatched to a scanner report of an exploding dog at about 121st and Memorial, or however far south we thought might realistically be able to lure 'em off Lookout Mtn. It was hot then, and streets were buckling, so dogs exploding might not be a big stretch.
I remember Creagar's baseball broadcasts at KAKC very well. I used to drive him nuts by playing Ravel's "Bolero" between halves of a double-header. It ran twelve minutes and allowed me some time away from the board. My first job at KSEK (The Keystone of Southeast Kansas), in Pittsburg, required me to do both live and wire report baseball games of the Pittsburg Browns. The wire reports came in on a ticker with a superannuated Western Union guy handling the tape as it came in. This was a paper tape, with small characters printed on it. "S1S" was "Strike one, swinging," "B2O" was ball two outside, and so on. The crack of the bat was accomplished by hitting a small baseball bat, about a foot long, that hung on a string near the mike. It was rapped with a xylophone mallet. The best at game recreations was, hands down, Gordon McLendon, aka "The Old Scotchman," who owned a string of radio stations, starting with KLIF, in Dallas. McLendon created the Liberty Network which broadcast recreated games, that is, wire report games that were eventually outlawed by the FCC. Two of his most memorable broadcasts involved wire breakdowns. In one, he had the batter hit something like forty-five foul balls, each one colorfully related by McLendon. He would say things to his sidekick, Jerry Doggett, such as "Jerry check and see if the record books have a section on foul balls. This must be close to the record." The best though was one time the wire went down for ten or fifteen minutes and McLendon invented a dog that ran on the field. For the entire period until the wire was restored, McLendon described the delightful chase of the dog, the involvement of the umpires and the players as the beast cavorted around the diamond, always eluding the grasp of those who were chasing him. It was as good as a movie. See pictures of McLendon in action, doing wire recreations at The History of KLIF Radio. Read about Gordon McLendon's movie, "The Killer Shrews", on this site. |
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Webmeister Ransom has a pic of Chris and one-time
TU football coach F.A. (Fine And?) Dry which he has yet to post. (displayed
at left...webmaster)
crew doing an NCAA "split" for ABC sports. (displayed on the right...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...
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!
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.
