Stateline Master Document

BOOTH

IT WAS A THIN BLUE LINE ON A POSTAGE-STAMP SIZED SCREEN.  IT WAS ELECTRIC TELEVISION, FIRST DEMONSTRATED ON SEPTEMBER SEVENTH, 1927, BY A YOUNG GENIUS NAMED PHILO TAYLOR FARNSWORTH.  THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE CALLED IT "THE GREATEST WIZARDRY YET OF THE CIVILIZED DAY."

THE ADVENT OF THIS NEW MEDIUM STALLED UNTIL AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND THEN IT TOOK OFF IN ERNEST.

S200/9:59:38

GEORGE MILLER:  "WE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO RUN A TELEVISION STATION, BUT WE LEARNED ON THE JOB."

BOOTH

IT WAS AN ALMOST MAGICAL TIME HERE IN OKLAHOMA AND THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.

S103/13:00:17

LOLA HALL:  "WE DID ALL KINDS OF INTERESTING, DIFFERENT, THINGS NOBODY WOULD CONSIDER DOING TODAY."

S301/8:19:08

GAYLON STACY:  "IT REALLY TESTED YOU FROM A CREATIVE STANDPOINT TO MAKE WHAT YOU WERE DOING INTERESTING ENOUGH THAT YOU WOULD INVITE THE AUDIENCE TO GIUVE A FEW MOMENTS OF THEIR TIME TO WATCH AND HEAR WHAT YOU WERE DOING."

BOOTH

ON THIS EDITION OF STATELINE, THE PEOPLE WE'VE INVITED INTO OUR HOMES FOR DECADES--OKLAHOMA'S TELEVISION PIONEERS.

TRT

Voice Over

In the beginning there was static...a snow that danced across a 12 inch screen, and then a miracle happened. Faces appeared out of the void, faces and characters that would become as familiar as members of the family.

Clayton Vaughn

11:42:23     S-103

"My mother and dad had an appliance store in Cushing, Oklahoma."

Clayton Vaughn

11:42:53     S-103

"I remember that there was a television set in the front window of my father's store in the main intersection of Cushing, Oklahoma."

Clayton Vaughn

11:45:26     S-103

"I was just kind of stunned that pictures could fly through the air. I always felt that was sort of something that god never intended."

Voice Over

Out of thin air images appeared and entertained us in our homes, the big wooden box with the tiny screen brought the world into our living room.

Clayton Vaughn

11:44:20     S-103

"I remember delivering them and putting these ungainly antenna's on top of houses, where you'd have to climb up on top of the houses and assemble these things on the roofs and then nail them down so that they wouldn't be blown over by the Oklahoma wind."

Bill Thrash

11:08.41     S-107

"Oklahoma television really began June 6, 1949 when WKY TV channel 4 signed on. They were the only television station in the State of Oklahoma, but just a few months later KOTV in Tulsa came on. So there were two, Oklahoma City had one station Tulsa had one."

KOTV Sign On

"Our heavenly father we thank thee for the consecrated skills of the engineers and the patients that makes possible this great endeavor."

Bill Thrash

11:10:00    S-107

"In December of '53 KWTV channel 9 went on, on low power, because they wanted to get on the air in December because OU was playing in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1 and it was being televised on CBS."

Bill Thrash

11:10:35      S-107

"But in the spring of '54 they went on full power."

Bill Thrash

11:09.06     S-107

"KVOO came on in '52 and Lawton KSWO came on in '53 but then in spring of '54; Ada, Muskogee, and Enid all signed on with Television stations in those towns."

Bill Thrash

11:11:35    S-107

"Just a couple years later KXII in Ardmore came on and KETA, OETA's first station in Oklahoma City Came on in '56 with studios on the OU Campus, and the tower and transmitter right where we are now."

Television was a new frontier and its pioneers loved the freedom they found in front of and behind the camera.

Lola Hall

13:27:01    S-103

"It was new, it was a new industry. It was a fascinating industry and people were amazed to see pictures and to see news and all these things."

Danny Williams

14:10:21   S-202

"WKY TV operated out of the Municipal Auditorium on Couch Drive, and our studios were where the little theater was. They had the announce booth on that same floor, the control room was on the second floor. / We had a monitor in the hall and TV was so new and so fantastic in the 50's there would be 30 or 40 people out there watching that little old TV set every night."

Lola Hall

13:00:17       S-103

"It was an open, free, creative, wonderful time...creative people were attracted in droves / We did all kinds of interesting, different things nobody would consider doing today."

Fran Morris

13:40:51    S-103

"It was so spontaneous and so live that everybody came in ready to do their thing."

Don Woods

12:40:55     S-103

"I can remember back that I hardly called it a job. I have to back in and pick up my paycheck, because my life in doing television was so much fun I was ashamed to be paid for it."

Network programs arrived on film, leaving stations to fill the rest of the day with local shows of every kind.

Bill Thrash

11:30:44      S-107

"Titles like Sleep Walkers Matinee, At Home with Holly, Cooks Book, Wiley and Gene, Sooner Shindig, these were all programs done live."

Tom Charles

09:18:45      S-200

"Everything you did then 99% was live. You jump say from the announcer's booth run around in front of the camera."

Bill Thrash

11:32:11      S-107

"Well you're just swinging down to the next set and you move the cameras fast. You also in those days did live commercials within the live programming."

Danny Williams Commercial

"With liberal benefits for the treatment of other diseases named...

"

Danny Williams

14:11:00      S-202

"I heard that there were only 7,500 TV sets in the whole state...That's what I was told."

Lola Hall

13:27:01      S-103

"They didn't have the choice that they have now. That was a great advantage you know, for the ratings obviously."

Danny

14:10:05      S-202

"We did real good cause we were the only ones on the air..." (Laughs)

In 1950 WKY radio wasn't sure what to do with their new announcer, so they tried him out on TV. Danny Williams hosted wrestling program and an afternoon talk show.

Danny Williams

14:14:48    S-202

"Probably the funniest thing that happened to me in TV is one afternoon / I had this little kid on from Midwest City Elementary or somewhere, and one of my stock questions was "What does your daddy do?" And the little kid says "He's in Korea." And I said isn't that great, you probably get to sleep with your momma." "He said "Yeah, every night but Tuesday and then Uncle Phil comes over and sleeps with her."

(Music Hit & Fade)

Ida B

11:10.47      S-200

"When I started my show I called it at home with Ida B."

Ida B

10:38.47      S-200

"I designed my show "The Ida B Show" from ladies home journal table of contents. So in 1960 I was probably the first magazine show on but I didn't call it, but that's what it was."

(Ida B show intro with music)

"From the studios of KOCO TV it's "The Ida B Show," now here's Ida.  Good morning....waking up at six o'clock in the morning and seeing the heavy clouds with the sunrise coming up underneath them was a beautiful site to see.

Every weekday morning Ida cooked, gave household tips and even interviewed celebrities.

Ida B

11:04.09      S-200

"Ann Margaret, she wasn't a real big star yet. / Of course John Wayne, Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart."

Ida B & Jimmy Stewart

"This is a picture that promises to be one of the very outstanding westerns pictures...did you film it on location or in Hollywood?  Monument Valley, a lot of it. Monument Valley and around, around Hollywood."

In the days before satellite interviews it was common to bump into a movie star in the hall at the station...in town to plug a new picture. Or the studios would fly local reporters out to the set.

Gaylon Stacy

8:13.30   S-301

"MGM was shooting several pictures at the same time all over Europe / They would provide the stars for the shows and you would interview them. I got twenty six or twenty seven interviews with people like Rachel Welch, Robert Wagner, Edward G. Robinson, Anthony Quinn."

Gaylon Stacy & Anthony Quinn

Mr. Quinn, Gaylon Stacy from Oklahoma City. Yes. We want to ask you now about your current property...your current job, "The 25^th Hour." Yes. What about the screenplay appealed to you as an actor and tell us something about it...well, the interesting thing is that..."

Gaylon Stacy

8:15.53      S-301

"They were really pros they knew we were after good program material and those pros knew how to give it to you."

(Nat Sound & Voice )

"News According to Doyle, a comprehensive report of the news, sports and weather..."

Ernie Schultz

15:01.53     S-107

"The minute television news hit it became instantly popular. There is an old story about there was a / higher percentage of homes had televisions than had telephones. They could not wait to get a television set and watch the news."

Nat sound & Music

"The news room...With Ernie Schultz"

Clayton

11:42:01     S-103

"Most of the people that were in it at that time came out of radio."

George Miller

10:01.13    S-200

"Originally I started out in broadcasting as an engineer, but due to the war effort and draft laws the manager came in one day and auditioned everybody on the staff, and that very afternoon I did a news cast at 6 o'clock."

Jacques DeLier

13:38:28      S-203

"The early television news was mostly read and it looked more like radio news than it did television."

****

Jacques DeLier

13:38:38      S-203

"It wasn't until video tape came into prominence that the pictures on the news overwhelmed the anchors."

****

Ernie Schultz

14:58.52      S-107

"My first job in television news was in 1954 and I knew nothing about television, and was fortunate enough to be hired by the channel 5 affiliate in Oklahoma at that time which was in Enid. We had a tiny staff, three or four people and did two news casts a day and we learned as we did it, and that was very fortunate because there was nothing to compare it to."

Clayton Vaughn

11:50:04     S-103

"What kind of a gig is that? You get to decide what is that's important for your community. And that was this remarkable thing that television news was for a number of years."

Clayton Vaughn News Standup

"The Tulsa Board of Education late today issued a joint report of progress on integration in Tulsa schools. It runs to nine pages and apparently is a summery of the work that was done at a special school board meeting earlier this week..."

Ernie Schultz

15:06.02     S-107

"At that time in television news at channel 4 you were a photographer and a reporter in addition too; I was assignment editor, and I produced my own show."

News rooms in Lawton, Ada and Enid worked with the same conditions as bigger stations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

Ernie Schultz

15:32.59        S-107

"On a Sunday I remember one of our photographers the film processor broke down and the take up reel wouldn't work. So he ran next door to the dressing room where there were wrestlers getting ready to video tape a wrestling show.  He said, "I need you guys!" He grabbed the front of that film and said "go down that hall!" As it came out of the film processor he gave it to another wrestler and he went down the hall. After it was all out then he had to bring them all back in / and that's how he got the film through the film processor...using a half dozen professional wrestlers."

Before Teleprompters anchors relied on written scripts and their personal knowledge of the story.

George Miller

10:08.17    S-200

"The first couple of years that we were on the air I virtually memorized my news cast. I had copy in front of me and I always looked at it occasionally so that people would not think that I was just making this stuff up."

George Miller

10:08.47    S-200

"This Oklahoma City guy that covered the news up here for us. Would send us film on a bus, and the bus would arrive about / four fifteen in the afternoon. We have to pick it up run out to the station process the film...try to get it edited and scripted. And get it on the air by six o'clock. A bus would come in about eight o'clock same process. Hope the bus would be on time grab the film, run to the station process it real fast and try to get it edited and on the air by ten o'clock. So it was a hassle. That's the reason I got an Ulcer."

Ernie Schultz

15:14:47       S-107

"You can talk about the benefits and contributions of television news, and they are considerable, but I would say the contributions of television weather are even greater because we are talking about human lives. Many, many human lives have been saved by television weather warnings."

George Miller field interview

"Now where were you last night when this thing hit? Well, I was up in the Baptist church basement. As I recall the Baptist church is pretty well gone this morning. Well it is, it's just about destroyed..."

Jim Williams

10:14:03       S-407

"In the very beginning there was a fellow named Wally Keenan."

***

Jim Williams

10:16:06       S-407

"The weather service says you're not to use the word tornado in any forecast...it said it will alarm the people and they'll panic...well, that's ridiculous."

***

Jim Williams

10:15:10       S-407

"Well in 1950, after this research had been going on and he was working with it, he thought that there was definite possibility of tornado development that day so he issued a tornado forecast. And then a few hours later he issued a tornado warning. The first ever issued anywhere in the world...by Wally Keenan at channel four."

***

Jim Williams

10:16:38       S-407

"The letters that the station got, there were thousands of letters and they sent them all...copied them all to Washington, D.C. and they changed the rules."

***

Compared to the computer models and Doppler radar of today, conditions in the weather department were primitive.

Don Woods

12:34:30     S-103

"I had to drive clear to the airport get all the weather information, drive back to the TV station put everything together and then get up and draw the weather map on the board."

Tom Charles

9:16:24      S-200

"As you were talking to the guy at the weather service office he would describe the map for you. If he'd say you have a low pressure area over Illinois you'd make an "L" on your little chalk board. You make yourself a little map as he described it."

Lola Hall

13:04:09    S-103

"The map that I worked with, I worked behind a glass map and so everybody thought I was writing backwards and of course there was just really one map."

Lola Hall

13:09:25     S-103

"They had some kind of an electronic deal where they kind of switch it and I didn't have to write backwards. It looked like I was writing backwards for the audience, but I wasn't really."

Tom Charles

9:17:10      S-200

"The standard deal we had four sided cube that you spun around with a map on each side. And then you had a larger map that was stationary on the wall."

Don Woods

12:32:56     S-103

"It was about as low tech as you can get a black board and a piece of chalk."

Tom Charles

9:17:38     S-200

"We would use a plastic Elmer's glue bottle; we of course removed the glue, fill that up with water colored white paint stick a rag in the end of it, and that was your brush that you went on the air with. / On occasion you squeeze the bottle too hard and blow the white paint all over the place."

For the first time Oklahomans could be alerted to severe weather.

Don Woods

12:34:45      S-103

"We were the first station with radar. Our radar was off of a World War II B-25 Bomber in Dallas. Jimmy Lake who owned the station had them take the radar out of the bomber. Had them convert it so it would pick up precipitation, and then we started showing it on the air...people went crazy."

Tom Charles

9:28:56      S-200

"You couldn't tell much about it, but you knew that something was going on out there."

Don Woods

12:35:06      S-103

"People went crazy. It was just a little round thing with a little green thing that went round and round, and here's a green blip where there was a rain shower. They thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread."

WKY Announcer

"From the WKY weather station here's Jim Williams with the noonday report on weather conditions."

Viewers came to trust meteorologists like Jim Williams and Harry Volkmann.

Lola Hall

13:05:43     S-103

"Harry Volkmann was the weatherman, and he was here for many years and there are many people who still remember him."

KWTV weather report

"...And our temperature 56-dgrees here, 51 at the airport at 10:40. Well that's all the weather, thanks for watching, good night. Harry Volkmann, KOMA-KWTV's weatherman has been brought to you by..."

Tulsa viewers tuned in to KOTV for King Lionel...and Lee Woodward to give the forecast.  And over at KTUL, the station manager told Don Woods that if he wanted to do the weather he'd have to draw a cartoon.

Don Woods

12:38:23     S-103

"Gusty would react to the forecast. If the forecast was for rain I would have gusty with an umbrella. If there was a sever weather situation I would have him diving into the fradie hole, which is a hole in the ground that he dove into to get away from the tornado."

Gusty was such a hit he was hung in the Smithsonian and became the official state cartoon.

Don Woods

12:30:26     S-103

"We started getting the letters and everywhere I went I drew Gusty for people. So it just went on and on and got bigger and better."

And now a word from our sponsor.

( Mathis Brothers song )

"..Don't miss our July clearance sale at Mathis Brothers Furniture...Wheeeow!"

Ida B

11:09.03       S-200

"I couldn't even read a cue card because I am near sighted and I wouldn't wear glasses. So I had to ad lib all my commercials."

Lola Hall

12:59:23     S-103

"There were no Teleprompters, there was nothing. You memorized everything or you just winged it. And I would do during the news six live commercials."

Gaylon Stacy

8:39.54       S-301

"One of those commercials was for me to pour an orange drink and drink it on camera and do the commercials. Well I did I took a drink but It went down the wrong pipe. I really got choked on camera. I almost died on camera."

Don Woods

12:33:12     S-103

"They are always trying to break me up. / I was supposed to sell some chocolate covered cherries. So what they did; they took the one on top opened it up and put hot pepper inside closed it. Then I popped that in my mouth and tears would come down my cheeks."

In 1952 Danny Williams thought his TV career was over.

Danny Williams

14:15:32    S-202

"I'm getting ready to go back to San Antonio and Hoyt Andres who was the Program Director at WKY TV said "No, you're not going to leave here, said we're going to put you on a Monday morning, Monday afternoon...you're going to be Dan-D-Dynamo from outer space, you're going to have a Sincro-Retroverter, and you're going to be able to go back and forth in time." I said "Are you crazy?"

Danny Williams

14:16:28    S-202

"I go on the air the next Monday; I've got a TV set, a smock and 32 minutes to fill. And I invented all sorts of characters, / and the baby boomers were coming along...the show just took off, it got so big it was unbelievable."

( 3-D Danny Intro )

"Here we go into the future to visit 3-D Danny.

"Alright Ork, standby and secure on the planet Earth...Hey Unicorpman how are you today? My name is Dan D Dynamo, Superintendent of the Space Science Center and Supreme Galaxy Chief of the Universe Science Corps...I salute you. And today's meeting is now in session."

With a set made of Jell-O molds and plastic spoons the show was like Star Wars...but with out a budget.

Danny Williams

14:18:33    S-202

"What I did was every night, or maybe four or five days before I would make an outline...like, you know, today we've heard from the planet "Artus" and the Duke of Mukton is up there and he's trying to take over and we've got to send a space ship up there."

3-D Danny Scene

"As I told you we have tuned in boys & girls from Earth right now, and they are watching though a veil a thing called television on the planet Earth..."

Danny Williams

14:52:23    S-202

"John Ferguson worked with me, he played Ubic and the Duke of Mukton and all kids of characters, and got in Bazark.

John Ferguson

10:21:27    S-407

"I went and created a villain called, Danny later named it, called 'The Duke of Mukton." But I created it; I went back and thought about "Ming" and being the villain of Buck Rogers's days."

****

John Ferguson

10:23:03    S-407

"He was mean, he was a threat to Danny, and he was from a completely different planet / he was so bad that he might really do something...he was a real threat to 3-D Danny. Because he was a different type, in other words he was evil he was diabolical, he was scheming and he was whatever. And it was just always a point that he was going to outsmart Danny, but never could out-smart, to the final...at the very last (King!) the hero still came through."

****

John Ferguson

10:22:12    S-407

"It was a live kid's space adventure soap opera."

****

Every station had a children's show. Those that sat transfixed in front of the tube still light up at the mention of names like Uncle Hiram, Big Bill and Oom-A-Zog.

Don Woods

12:41:18     S-103

"We had Mr. Zing and Tuffy where the kids would come up and they just went wild. They had Tuffy the tiger, and they had all these little skits that they put on."

"You know if you're mean to people then people be mean to you. And we try our very best to make sure that no one is ever mean to anyone else on this program. (Boing!) Well...maybe occasionally..."

Don Woods

12:42.07     S-103

"They had a pet chicken.  It was just strictly to entertain children. The children loved it."

( Music & Miss Fran in Story Land open )

Down the turnpike, children loved "Miss Fran."

"Hello...I'm Miss Fran from Story Land and this is my friend Foxy...Hi. We'll see you every..."

Fran Morris

13:37:11   S-103

"We had a set that was big tree stump, and I sat in front of the hollow tree. The puppets came out of the holes in the trees. And I sat on the stump."

Fran Morris

13:42:12      S-103

"We had...one day a week we had children's pet day and kids could write in and tell us what their unusual pets were / people would bring their skunks, their snakes, their tarantulas. Miss Fran had to always hold the things in her hand to prove to the children not to be afraid. One time we had a raccoon and a tarantula on at the same time and the raccoon ate the tarantula. (Laughs) and the tarantula was somebody's pet. But it was live and so...so be it, there's nothing you could do about it."

( Ho-Ho's Music )

Bill Howard

7:13:41     S-103

"One of our directors was doing The Pokey Show. He went to California. They said, "Bill would you like to be the puppet?" I said, "no, not really." They offered ten bucks a week. I went "Ten bucks a week?... well maybe."

After starting at KTEN in Ada, Bill Thrash moved to KOCO. One of the shows he directed starred a clown and a sock.

Pokey & Ho Ho

"You look just like a Christmas tree. Do I? Why do I look like a Christmas tree? Well, you do...you got that big red ball up there on your nose...look like a tree to me, you got that big corn ball, looks like a big hunk of popcorn..."

Bill Thrash

11:54:50     S-107

"Ho-Ho was a special guy, Ed Birchell. / He was very serious about being Ho Ho the clown. / And it was more than the Tv show / and the kids loved him, But more important than that he loved the kids."

Bill Thrash

1:14.41     S-107

"Ho Ho's puppet, Pokey the Puppet played by Bill Howard who was stage manager at channel 5 in those days."

****

Bill Howard

7:18:38     S-103

"So this is Pokey and I have had probably twenty of these. They wear out and get dirty. So this is like number twenty-five."

Pokey & Ho Ho

"Good Morning Ho Ho!  For you kids that are watching, for you big kids that are watching..." (Laughing)

Bill Thrash

11:22:40     S-107

"There was a lot of adlibbing and of course Bill was the master of that. Being a genuine wit and graded adlibbing and sometimes would make Ho Ho nervous."

Bill Howard

0:34.35      S-103

"It just worked. Ho-Ho and I just had chemistry it worked."

***

Bill Thrash

11:59:38     S-107

"We did adventures which was a take off on the Lone Ranger. We called it the Lone Bungler."

"Pronto, we're surrounded from the north and the south...from the east and from the west. This looks like it could be the end of us. What do you mean US...white man?"

Bill Howard

7:34:30      S-103

"The bulldog got used to it so she would, Jennie, ignore me. If Ho-ho was reading a little children's book and she was asleep, because the hot lights put her out. She is lying there asleep by him and he's reading his little book. If that little segment was not doing real well I would reach over and pull on her leg, well she didn't like that. She would snap at it. Well Ho-Ho would say, "Jean!" "She tried to kill me Ho-Ho." But the audience saw that I was pulling her leg."

****

At channel 8 in Tulsa Creek artist A-C Blue Eagle hosted live a 90-minute children's show every weekday afternoon. And it was at channel 6 that Steve Powell said his first "Howdy" to the kids.

****

Foreman Scotty became a part of every young visitor to the Circle 4 Ranch. Whether they sat in the bleachers or on Woody the Birthday Horse...it was an afternoon of making faces for the magic lasso and dreams of winning the golden horseshoe.

****

Danny Williams

14:27:03      S-202

"They thought I was going to leave WKY, so they hired Steve Powell out of Tulsa who had a show called "Foreman Scotty."

Channel 6 50^th Anniversary Show

Foreman Scotty

"We're having a pretty good time and we hope you cowhands at home are having a good time too."

Once in Oklahoma City, Foreman Scotty traveled in time and space along side 3-D Danny.

Danny Williams

14:19:06    S-202

"I wrote a movie one time which was shot downtown, which was kind of amazing about Dan-D-Dynamo, but it really became a big thing."

Danny Williams

14:24:27    S-202

"Shot it downtown on Robinson right across from that theater that used to be, what was it? The Criterion? Or something like that, I mean we stopped traffic all day long. I mean it was unbelievable."

Danny Williams

14:27:03      S-202

"We put Foreman Scotty on 3-D, I started putting him up front so I could play characters and all that stuff. Then we changed the show to "Giant Kids Matinee," then when I went to radio and quit that show, then it became "The Foreman Scotty Show."

(Nat Sound from show)

Bill Thrash

1:26.25   S-107

"Every day 20 to 30 kids would be on the set in the studio and would visit and celebrate birthdays and all the stuff that went with the foreman Scotty Show. That ran from the mid 50s till '71."

Ernie Schultz

0:38.48      S-107

"The thing that they remember about television was being on Foreman Scotty Show and getting the golden horseshoe. There are hundreds of golden horseshoes throughout Oklahoma that are a very prized possession of the person who has that golden horseshoe."

John Ferguson

10:53:15       S-407

"Danny went to the radio and...Foreman Scotty and I'm still on the show, and I became his assistant like Ubic was to Danny, I became "White Cloud" the assistant to Powell and friend of Foreman Scotty. I was White Cloud the Indian...educated out of Yale, whatever like that, but just one of those things."

Danny Williams

14:31:21      S-202

"Foreman Scotty we used fake fights. We'd put our hand up here like this...and the other guys body would be toward the camera, and they would slap the hand, you know, like this. And I can not tell you how many times Foreman Scotty knocked the hell out of me... (Laughs) / ...but he was a great guy. Steve Powell, God bless you Steve."

In 1971 new FCC regulations brought an end to most local children's shows.

Bill Thrash

16:07.27      S-107

"They came up with rules that didn't allow the children's host to indorse product or to say. " O-K kids go out and buy this or go tell your mother to go to the store and buy this product, because this is what Ho-Ho wants, or this is what Foreman Scotty or 3-D Danny wants you to do, or Miss Fran." Just think of that I just mentioned four children's live host's that were in Oklahoma City, and there were excellent children's programs in the Tulsa market. Every TV station in that era had a local kids show."

Danny Williams

14:28:00      S-202

"Foreman Scotty is much more popular I think among Oklahomans that 3-D was for one reason. When 3-D was on in the early 1950's there weren't that many TV sets. And then when Foreman Scotty...about 59' and on to 60' I think color came in and TV really took off."

Ernie Schultz

0:46.34      S-103

"The studio had to be completely redone. Huge color cameras purchased.  Lights, the candle power just went up enormously." 

Jim Williams

09:58:39

"And that's big bucks...you know these cameras, back in the 50's.../ when we went to color television we had these great big gigantic RCA or GE or what brand they were, color cameras...those things were, my yearly salary four or five times..." (Laughs)

Jacques Delier

13:38:28    S-203

"The early television news was mostly read and it looked more like radio news than it did television."

Jacques DeLier

13:38:38    S-203

"It wasn't until video tape came into prominence that the pictures on the news overwhelmed the anchors."

Clayton Vaughn

12:14:38     S-203

"It made some stories better looking, I don't know whether it made the anchors better looking or not."

Fran Morris

13:50:01      S-103

"Joe Jergans who was the program director then called me and said / did I want to do that and I said I didn't think so because I now have a new life. And he said "Well we've got color cameras out here now and we've got video tape so if you'll come out and do and audition for "Sunday School" you'll get to see what you look like in color." And I thought, "Hummm..." So I came out and did an audition and I liked what I looked like in color."

Bill Thrash

12:20.57      S-107

Well in those days the first order was more lighting, and paying more attention to make up and what colors your clothes were, and the set dressing."

Ronnie Kaye

0:04.46

"Fortunately I was working with the company at channel four that had very good technicians, good lighting, good color cameras. They just pioneered color for the local stations in this country. / And those would come in and say, "Wow we don't see this in New York."

And as color arrived, the music changed...kids lined up to dance on TV.

Ronnie Kaye

0:13.58       S-301

"All of this started in sixty-six for me on "The Scene."

Ronnie Kaye

0:0.23        S-301

"Actually on a hunch I went in to the program director and I said, "You know I'd like to do a dance show." And he said, "You know we just had a sponsor come in and say they want to do a dance show." So talk about being in the right place at the right time. That's where I was."

In Tulsa it was "Dance Party," in Oklahoma City it was "The Scene."

Ronnie Kaye

0:01.16     S-301

"Dick Clark told me once he said, "I'm just a traffic cop. I say you go here you go here. Here comes the artist here comes the song." So really that's what a host of a show like that was. You introduce the song let the kids be the stars."

Ronnie Kaye

0:08.51     S-301

"Originally we got a nucleus of kids that wanted to be on the show.  We set strict parameters, nobody under sixteen. You had to dress up to be on the show. We didn't just do kind of a cattle call thing every week saying hey if you want to show up next week come on out. We didn't do it that way. We got a hold of these kids we became friends with them. We recruited them."

Ronnie Kaye

0:09.04      S-301

"I selected the music for the show. We had two cameras. Not a three camera shoot but a two camera shoot. Which is hard to shoot a hundred kids doing all the things you want to see on television."

Long before M-TV big acts and major stars would play the local shows.

Ronnie Kaye

0:01.59    S-301

"So if a Ray Charles would come to town or a Tina Turner would come to town I'd head to the civic center and say, "Mr. Charles I'll pick you up in the morning at nine o'clock, would you come out to the station?" And Ray said, "You know I think I will." Here I am with a genius of the business and I'm riding in the front seat with him coming out to channel four and his manager leans over from the back seat and says, "How much are we getting paid for this?" and I said, "Oh my gosh we don't have a budget you know people just appear for the promotional value." He said, "Well we just turned down five thousand dollars to appear on the Ed Sullivan show." And my heart sank and I said, "Sir I'll have to turn you around and take you back to the hotel." He said, "I'll tell you what, just because we are members of the union if you will give us three dollars we will do it." I said, "Ok!" I gave him three bucks and we did the show."

Ronnie Kaye

0:15.11       S-301

"The Show was sold for thirteen weeks to Dr. Pepper. The show lasted for eight years."

After color, the next great change to television was video tape.

Tom Charles

0:13.52       S-200

"You would shoot the film and you would take it back to the station run it through a processor and really didn't know what you had until that point when you could physically see the film."

Jacques DeLier

13:48:37     S-203

"The first tape, it was three inches wide. So it was rather cumbersome and the cameras were very heavy. You almost needed a caddie to carry the camera around with you...you needed good strong camera men."

****

Clayton Vaughn

12:16:20    S-103

"The big advantage of tape over film is was time...the production time."

Video Tape allowed programs and commercials to be recorded in advance. It eliminated the need for several staff announcers, and for some ended the spontaneity...the spark of live television.

Fran Morris

13:40:20    S-103

"The cameras were different, the idea. We would come in like we used to in live days and start...and ends up somebody's say "O-K stop, we're going to start over, something went wrong with camera so and so..." and was just different, you couldn't have the same spontaneous fun on-going. Hi and I kept saying "Just keep it going, keep it going"..."No, No, we'll stop and start over again." And he and I would look at each other and roll our eyes you know."

Over in the sports department, the switch to tape made everyone's life easier.

Bob Berry

11:00.46      S-102

"We had those old Bell and Howe wind up cameras. You would be shooting a high school football game and the guys at the 20, 15, 10, and the 5 and then the film runs out. The guy crosses the goal line and you don't have it. So what do you do? Well you get another great play and shoot the crowd cheering. And then splice it in there to make it look like they are cheering on the touchdown which you didn't get because the camera ran out of film."

George Miller

1:06:00       S-200

"We used to cover the OU games but we always used to do it with film. / We would interview the coaches who were there scouting the game for next week. So we would get a little preview of next week's game."

Bob Berry

10:58.14      S-102

"I had learned how to shoot film and edit it and splice it. One of the most difficult thing if not the most difficult things I have ever had to do on television. In those days the OU playback show was on Sunday afternoon. / People had to stay up all night after the game on Saturday splicing the film. Now think how many plays there are in a football game there are about 250 glued splices in that film so what's going to happen to you at least once every Sunday, films going to break because of all those splices. That is horrifying!"

Bob Berry

11:00.46      S-102

"Now off course you don't have that problem because it is all battery operated, and uses tape. But the film days were...Boy that was tough!

Bob Barry

10:53:15     S-102

"As far as my training for television I had zero training. / My first time on the air my wife of course was watching and here is what I did; of course there wasn't Teleprompters in those days. She said here is what you are doing you are going and then looking at the copy and of course just making all kinds of mistakes. So that is how I began, I am surprised I still had a job because I was pretty bad there in those early days."

(Bud Wilkinson Show Open)

Bob Berry

11:11.39     S-102

"Well the bud Wilkinson Show was the first Coaches show in the nation. So everything they did was new. "

Bob Berry

10:51.09      S-407

"Bud Wilkinson was so charismatic it is hard to even describe."

Wilkinson was a master of taking complex plays and concepts and making them easy for viewers to understand.

Ned Hockman

14:45.13     S-203

"We found out that as long as we had Bud in one position with Howard Newman and then moving them over into how a play developed by using little men on a table or by moving over and showing the use of equipment that football players wore like pads, helmets. We found that we maintained our audience."

Bob Berry

11:14.39   S-102

"He had the little men. I am sure you have heard of the little men.  / Well Bud Explained all the plays that he would run from the split T.  It was just so educational, and Bud was a beautiful talker he could explain things very well."

Ned Hockman

14:44.46     S-203

"Well we had a sequence where Bud wanted to show, to compare the padding of today with the padding of the old days. / So he gives this to Howard and tells him to put it on. Then he takes a baseball bat and he hits the pad and says now Howard is barely feeling this. We have the picture which I think would be fun to use. The last hit of the bat went down too low and hit Howard really low on the.... It hit bone. It hurt Howard quite a bit because he gradually scoots out of the picture. Bud continues to talk and if you play that over again you can see how Bud actually missed the spot where the pad was."

Bob Berry

11:11.50      S-102

"I think everybody in the State was watching Bud's show. It was just a smash hit because it was the first one in the nation. It was ground breaking from every standpoint."

Wallace Wildlife

Another ground breaker was Don Wallace.  The "Wallace Wildlife Show" was a big hit with sportsmen. And for 40 years he reeled them in. It was through his show that Oklahomans became familiar with Texoma stripers, Lake Guerrero in Mexico and the wonderful fishing in Canada.

For other tastes there were other programs. Local bookseller Lewis Meyer reviewed books on KOTV with an infectious enthusiasm that kept Tulsans tuning in for over 40 years. Beginning in 1952, Meyer's reviews were an unscripted mix of humor and optimism, with a little literature thrown in.

KOTV 50^th Anniversary Show

Lewis Meyer Bookshelf

"...Mark Twain cut his baked potato, buttered it and took one big bite. Imagine the shock of those fancy people when he spit that potato out on the plate in front of him and said "Some damn fool would have swallowed that."

It was the longest running book show in the country.

"The more books you read, the taller you become..."

Danny Williams

14:22:37      S-202

"Then in 1967 Tom Paxton who had had a mid morning program on WKY TV went to Dallas and they started a show called "Danny's Day."

Bill Thrash

1:43.37       S-107

"So we had a talk variety show around the noon hour. It was very high rated. If anybody came to town, and celebrities, they did Danny's Day."

Danny Williams

14:32:06     S-202

"That was great man, I got to go everywhere in the country, I got to interview everybody you ever heard of..."

Bill Thrash

1:45.37      S-107

"It was talk, variety, music, and something different every day. Five days a week."

Bill Thrash

1:43.37       S-107

"Three different co-hosts; Linda Scott, Mary Hart who is now on "Entertainment Tonight"...of course, and Carry Robertson. "

Danny Williams

14:32:23       S-202

"Mary Hart was so popular, and Karrie Robertson was so talented, and Linda Scott was so pretty."

Soundtrak, Gibson's and Mistletoe Commercials

(Nat Sound from Show)

As the broadcast day stretched into night a camera operator at KOTV stepped in front of the lens and developed a cult following. Gailard Sartain's clowning around the channel 6 set led to the creation of a show called "Doctor Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting."

Viewers that stayed up looking for a thrill found KVOO's "Fantastic Theater" with Josef Peter Hardt, in Lawton it was Doctor Digby and Igor with "Shock Theater #2"...while in Oklahoma City John Ferguson was about to get a thrill of his own.

John Ferguson

11:01:25    S-407

"We want to talk to you, could you create a character for a show?" have my own show...I said "What?" I couldn't believe it."

John Ferguson

11:02:06    S-407

"We searched around I think it was the Colonial Costume Shop, which was up there on 6^th street, and we found...they made the cape which I still have, and it's the original cape. But I think they made that cape and we found a little cut away coat. And I did the makeup and we checked it out and all of a sudden Saturday night at 11:30 following Danny Williams and live wrestling we went to "Shock Theater." The music came up and I said "Good evening, I'm Count Gregore and this is Shock Theater, we do hope that you'll be with us tonight."

John Ferguson

11:13:57    S-407

"So it's kind of a...a character with a little tongue in cheek, or just surprise. And people used to come out and say "You know we see these movies over and over...we watch but we never knew what you were going to do." And I said "Well guess what."

John Ferguson

11:30:54    S-407

"Now remember I've got my characters with me, Doctor Digby and Mr. Ape and they're always plotting-planning, they don't do anything. Mr. Ape really can't talk, he guttural and all that. Doctor Digby can interpret, and I never know how it's going to happen."

John Ferguson

11:19:22    S-407

"People always kinda hesitate and say "I grew up with you." Because they'd be rude saying how old I am, that's O-K I know how old I am, it's O-k. But I grew up with you, that was what I got, mainly. / How can you comprehend people would say "I grew up with you" over a 50 year span, and what an honor that is...how blessed and how flattered that is."

In the end it was the budget axe that killed local programs.

Bill Thrash

1:50.22    S-107

"Also the emphasis of stations in those days was that their local efforts should be in news so we should not have so many of these local independent products. We should put those energies in doing the news morning noon and night, and that's what has really happened in the commercial business, and you can see that now."

All that remains of that time are a few brief clips of video, and the memories of those who helped shape a new industry.

Fran Morris

13:41:45     S-103

"I still run into people in the grocery store / they say "You know, we don't...we really miss children's programs. We don't have anyplace where children can go out and you know, like they did on Foreman Scotty's show they could go out and visit and sit there be a part of the audience."

Ida B

10:54.18

"Just today at Luby's some women stopped me. She said she makes my meatloaf recipe at least two times a month and that she thinks of me every time she makes it."

Lola Hall

13:00:17     S-103

"It was an open, free, creative, wonderful time..."

Lola Hall

13:02:50     S-103

"Everyone was just kind of making it up as you go along."

Lola Hall

13:03:10     S-103

"...I mean all those things; we were there in the beginning."

Jim Williams

10:05:46     S-407

"I tell you what, I loved my job...I really did."