Just uploaded to flickr: The Sept. 1953 24-page magazine about the brand new WKNA-TV.
WKNA radio (950 and 97.5) had published the monthly 950 News, but when WKNA-TV went on the air the publication was renamed TV and Radio Personality Parade.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47282338@N ... 382770926/
WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
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Jeff Miller
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genlock
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
As of a few years ago Gilbert (Gil) Books was still active as an announcer/host on
West Viginia Pblic Radio.
West Viginia Pblic Radio.
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CoolBreeze
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
Here's a couple more you might enjoy:
http://www.mywvhome.com/web/wknatv.pdf
http://www.mywvhome.com/web/tv2.pdf
http://www.mywvhome.com/web/wknatv.pdf
http://www.mywvhome.com/web/tv2.pdf
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DJSHOCKLEY
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
Here is an excellent companion piece to go along with your previously posted links about WKNA..
http://jeff560.tripod.com/wkna2.html
Back when I was still at Z Rock and I was doing some research on the fire that took place in the attic (Where the WKNA studios were located, and where charred beams can be seen to this day) I was attempting to get some info on the rumors that a fireman had perished in the fire.. Jeff used some of the articles I dug up for his excellent web site..
Obviously no one was hurt in the fire, but it still amazes me that so much time and energy went into putting a TV station on the air only to see it go dark in less than 2 years..
History of WKNA-TV, Charleston
Recollections by Ted McKay
In February of 1953, Gus Zaharis, the owner of WTIP, withdrew his application for a TV station on UHF channel 49 and cleared the way for the granting of a construction permit to WKNA as Charleston’s first commercial TV station.
When the construction permit was issued less than a month later, the first decision to be made concerned the location of the transmitter site. Al Ginkle, who was chief engineer of WJLS, Smith’s Beckley station, was placed in charge of site selection, and set up residence in the old Ruffner Hotel on Kanawha Boulevard, about a block east of the WKNA studios. Ted McKay remembers how he and Ginkle rented a Jeep and traveled up and down unpaved logging and mining roads surveying possible sites around Charleston.
Final selection for the offices, studio and transmitter was a spot atop Bownemont Hill, overlooking Charleston’s west side near the Patrick street bridge.
Smith named several key people at WKNA Radio to the TV staff, including George Gray as manager, Don Hays as program director, and Ted McKay as film and promotion director. Ed Miller and Dick Reid along with McKay were to serve as on-air talent.
It’s hard to believe that the FCC would duplicate a blunder it had made in the 1940’s when it changed the frequencies allotted to commercial FM stations after the sets were being built and broadcast stations were in service. The public became so confused about what FM really was that AM radio remained dominant well into the 1960’s.
The FCC repeated its mistake when it decided to allow UHF broadcasting to begin before there was any requirement in place to mandate the inclusion of the higher frequencies on all new sets that were being built and sold. (Something that didn't happen for several years.) Anyone interested in watching Charleston’s new station would have to buy a convertor and attach it to his present set, or pay considerably more for a new set with the UHF frequencies factory installed. TV dealers were actually telling prospective buyers "You don't need to spend the extra money for UHF because that station won't have anything you'll want to watch anyway." or: "...here’s the same set without UHF for $70 less." A survey by the station found that some dealers did not even stock "all channel sets" or even convertors.
A station promotional advertising campaign "DON'T BUY HALF A TV SET" had little effect, because not only was a VHF set less expensive than the same set in all-channel configuration, but installation was cheaper as well.
The WKNA-TV seemed doomed from the start. WCHS had acquired a permit for VHF channel 8, so the future of UHF in Charleston seemed bleak at best.
Management contributed to the failure when it was decided to go on the air with the basic RCA 1 kw UHF transmitter, and add amplifiers later. Considering Charleston’s terrain, this was a disaster, and when equipment tests began it was discovered that coverage was quite limited in all but the immediate downtown Charleston area, and reception over 5 miles from the tower was considered a fluke!
McKay, who lived in Nitro, about 10 or 12 air miles from the transmitter site, remembers using a 20 foot mast and stacked UHF yagis cut for channel 49 to finally get a snowy picture in November of 1953, only to see that picture vanish when the leaves came out in the spring of 1954!
The station was affiliated with the ABC and DuMont networks, but so was WSAZ-TV in Huntington. Most national advertisers opted for WSAZ’s VHF signal and assured viewership and excluded WKNA. The programs that were aired (Motorola TV Playhouse, Captain Video and several others) were broadcast two weeks late on kinescopes while WSAZ with its private microwave link from Columbus, Ohio to Huntington aired the best of all four networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont) on a live basis.
WKNA-TV’s national spot advertising was almost non existent, and local advertising was next to impossible to sell at any price. Imagine trying to sell a spot to someone who couldn't watch the ad in his own home in St. Albans or Kanawha City!
Appalachian Electric Power provided the station with a home economist from its staff to do the daily cooking show ("What’s Cookin'") in the full kitchen that had been installed by Charleston Electric Supply. The young lady, Sara Harshbarger, was quite talented, and was soon bitten by the TV bug! Sara came to work for the station on a full time basis, and with co-host Dick Reid (himself an accomplished gourmet cook), the show developed a faithful, albeit small, following.
Sara, Dick Reid and Ted McKay hosted an afternoon TV Juke Box program that used the then popular pantomime format, and even though their resources were limited, it too became a popular feature.
Dick Reid had developed a children’s show "The 49'ers Club" which aired in late afternoon. The program proved so popular with children and parents alike that WCHS lured Dick away even before they went on the air in mid 1954. With Dick gone, Ted McKay found himself filling still another pair of shoes!
In an attempt to stimulate interest in the station, several syndicated film programs ("Liberace" and "Drew Pearson Reports") that were not broadcast on WSAZ-TV were purchased by the station but failed to have the desired result.
Bill Barrett, who had been news director at WJLS in Beckley for some time, was transferred to Charleston in an effort to shore up the news coverage. Barrett, a long-time Smith employee, was well known in West Virginia news circles, and had been editor of The 560 News, Beckley’s counterpart to WKNA’s 950 News. (Both magazines had ceased publication in the late summer of 1953 because of Smith’s cash flow problems.) With hardly any budget and no news film available, Barrett’s newscast was little more than a TV camera aimed at a news announcer!
There was a weather map for the weatherman, however. It could be wiped down each night an used again the next day!
Limited resources meant there was only one live camera, so 2 camera shots, fades and dissolves (except to slide or black) were impossible.
Early in the morning of February 4, 1954 fire struck the building. McKay remembers that one of the engineers, who lived in a trailer behind the building, had to be restrained when he tried to stop the fireman from dousing the fire with water. Although some electrical damage did occur, the station was off the air for only a few hours, and resumed operation on film that evening. Live programming continued the next day.
When the microwave link was finally installed late in the summer of 1954 and the station could finally carry ABC programming live, it was too late. WCHS-TV had gone on the air with full power on VHF channel 8, an ideal tower location and the CBS network.
By mid 1954 most of the original staff had departed for greener (and more secure) pastures. Dick Reid and photographer Nilo Olin joined WCHS-TV, along with a young cameraman Reid had nicknamed "Mumps" after he came down with a case of mumps a few weeks after he started at the station. "Mumps" and Dick had developed the kind of relationship that was quite common in the early days of TV, when the cameraman was more important than the director. Together the pair created the illusion of a multiple camera setup with a single camera! Dick felt Mumps was so vital to his future success that he convinced WCHS to hire them as a team!
Art director Boone Boggs (who had originated the WJLS 560 News while promotion director at that station in the late 1940’s) decided to return to Roanoke, Virginia and the same TV station he had left to join WKNA-TV a few months earlier. Ed Miller went to the announce staff at WLWT in Cincinnati and George Gray moved to WLWD in Dayton, Ohio. Will Jackson was moved to Charleston from WJLS in Beckley as manager of TV and radio. In October of 1954 Ted McKay returned to his hometown of Cincinnati as a member of the radio news staff at Taft Broadcasting’s WKRC. This left Don Hays as the one remaining staff member who had been at WKNA-TV from the time the CP was granted a little more than a year and a half prior.
Hays left Charleston within a couple of years and formed "Radio Reps" a company that specialized in placing spot advertising on radio stations in smaller cities and towns in the Midwest.
The station finally went dark on Feb. 12, 1955. As you read WKNA-TV’s original application later in this piece you might ponder how Charleston’s television history would have been altered had the grand plans outlined by Smith in his original FCC filing been brought to fruition.
http://jeff560.tripod.com/wkna2.html
Back when I was still at Z Rock and I was doing some research on the fire that took place in the attic (Where the WKNA studios were located, and where charred beams can be seen to this day) I was attempting to get some info on the rumors that a fireman had perished in the fire.. Jeff used some of the articles I dug up for his excellent web site..
Obviously no one was hurt in the fire, but it still amazes me that so much time and energy went into putting a TV station on the air only to see it go dark in less than 2 years..
History of WKNA-TV, Charleston
Recollections by Ted McKay
In February of 1953, Gus Zaharis, the owner of WTIP, withdrew his application for a TV station on UHF channel 49 and cleared the way for the granting of a construction permit to WKNA as Charleston’s first commercial TV station.
When the construction permit was issued less than a month later, the first decision to be made concerned the location of the transmitter site. Al Ginkle, who was chief engineer of WJLS, Smith’s Beckley station, was placed in charge of site selection, and set up residence in the old Ruffner Hotel on Kanawha Boulevard, about a block east of the WKNA studios. Ted McKay remembers how he and Ginkle rented a Jeep and traveled up and down unpaved logging and mining roads surveying possible sites around Charleston.
Final selection for the offices, studio and transmitter was a spot atop Bownemont Hill, overlooking Charleston’s west side near the Patrick street bridge.
Smith named several key people at WKNA Radio to the TV staff, including George Gray as manager, Don Hays as program director, and Ted McKay as film and promotion director. Ed Miller and Dick Reid along with McKay were to serve as on-air talent.
It’s hard to believe that the FCC would duplicate a blunder it had made in the 1940’s when it changed the frequencies allotted to commercial FM stations after the sets were being built and broadcast stations were in service. The public became so confused about what FM really was that AM radio remained dominant well into the 1960’s.
The FCC repeated its mistake when it decided to allow UHF broadcasting to begin before there was any requirement in place to mandate the inclusion of the higher frequencies on all new sets that were being built and sold. (Something that didn't happen for several years.) Anyone interested in watching Charleston’s new station would have to buy a convertor and attach it to his present set, or pay considerably more for a new set with the UHF frequencies factory installed. TV dealers were actually telling prospective buyers "You don't need to spend the extra money for UHF because that station won't have anything you'll want to watch anyway." or: "...here’s the same set without UHF for $70 less." A survey by the station found that some dealers did not even stock "all channel sets" or even convertors.
A station promotional advertising campaign "DON'T BUY HALF A TV SET" had little effect, because not only was a VHF set less expensive than the same set in all-channel configuration, but installation was cheaper as well.
The WKNA-TV seemed doomed from the start. WCHS had acquired a permit for VHF channel 8, so the future of UHF in Charleston seemed bleak at best.
Management contributed to the failure when it was decided to go on the air with the basic RCA 1 kw UHF transmitter, and add amplifiers later. Considering Charleston’s terrain, this was a disaster, and when equipment tests began it was discovered that coverage was quite limited in all but the immediate downtown Charleston area, and reception over 5 miles from the tower was considered a fluke!
McKay, who lived in Nitro, about 10 or 12 air miles from the transmitter site, remembers using a 20 foot mast and stacked UHF yagis cut for channel 49 to finally get a snowy picture in November of 1953, only to see that picture vanish when the leaves came out in the spring of 1954!
The station was affiliated with the ABC and DuMont networks, but so was WSAZ-TV in Huntington. Most national advertisers opted for WSAZ’s VHF signal and assured viewership and excluded WKNA. The programs that were aired (Motorola TV Playhouse, Captain Video and several others) were broadcast two weeks late on kinescopes while WSAZ with its private microwave link from Columbus, Ohio to Huntington aired the best of all four networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont) on a live basis.
WKNA-TV’s national spot advertising was almost non existent, and local advertising was next to impossible to sell at any price. Imagine trying to sell a spot to someone who couldn't watch the ad in his own home in St. Albans or Kanawha City!
Appalachian Electric Power provided the station with a home economist from its staff to do the daily cooking show ("What’s Cookin'") in the full kitchen that had been installed by Charleston Electric Supply. The young lady, Sara Harshbarger, was quite talented, and was soon bitten by the TV bug! Sara came to work for the station on a full time basis, and with co-host Dick Reid (himself an accomplished gourmet cook), the show developed a faithful, albeit small, following.
Sara, Dick Reid and Ted McKay hosted an afternoon TV Juke Box program that used the then popular pantomime format, and even though their resources were limited, it too became a popular feature.
Dick Reid had developed a children’s show "The 49'ers Club" which aired in late afternoon. The program proved so popular with children and parents alike that WCHS lured Dick away even before they went on the air in mid 1954. With Dick gone, Ted McKay found himself filling still another pair of shoes!
In an attempt to stimulate interest in the station, several syndicated film programs ("Liberace" and "Drew Pearson Reports") that were not broadcast on WSAZ-TV were purchased by the station but failed to have the desired result.
Bill Barrett, who had been news director at WJLS in Beckley for some time, was transferred to Charleston in an effort to shore up the news coverage. Barrett, a long-time Smith employee, was well known in West Virginia news circles, and had been editor of The 560 News, Beckley’s counterpart to WKNA’s 950 News. (Both magazines had ceased publication in the late summer of 1953 because of Smith’s cash flow problems.) With hardly any budget and no news film available, Barrett’s newscast was little more than a TV camera aimed at a news announcer!
There was a weather map for the weatherman, however. It could be wiped down each night an used again the next day!
Limited resources meant there was only one live camera, so 2 camera shots, fades and dissolves (except to slide or black) were impossible.
Early in the morning of February 4, 1954 fire struck the building. McKay remembers that one of the engineers, who lived in a trailer behind the building, had to be restrained when he tried to stop the fireman from dousing the fire with water. Although some electrical damage did occur, the station was off the air for only a few hours, and resumed operation on film that evening. Live programming continued the next day.
When the microwave link was finally installed late in the summer of 1954 and the station could finally carry ABC programming live, it was too late. WCHS-TV had gone on the air with full power on VHF channel 8, an ideal tower location and the CBS network.
By mid 1954 most of the original staff had departed for greener (and more secure) pastures. Dick Reid and photographer Nilo Olin joined WCHS-TV, along with a young cameraman Reid had nicknamed "Mumps" after he came down with a case of mumps a few weeks after he started at the station. "Mumps" and Dick had developed the kind of relationship that was quite common in the early days of TV, when the cameraman was more important than the director. Together the pair created the illusion of a multiple camera setup with a single camera! Dick felt Mumps was so vital to his future success that he convinced WCHS to hire them as a team!
Art director Boone Boggs (who had originated the WJLS 560 News while promotion director at that station in the late 1940’s) decided to return to Roanoke, Virginia and the same TV station he had left to join WKNA-TV a few months earlier. Ed Miller went to the announce staff at WLWT in Cincinnati and George Gray moved to WLWD in Dayton, Ohio. Will Jackson was moved to Charleston from WJLS in Beckley as manager of TV and radio. In October of 1954 Ted McKay returned to his hometown of Cincinnati as a member of the radio news staff at Taft Broadcasting’s WKRC. This left Don Hays as the one remaining staff member who had been at WKNA-TV from the time the CP was granted a little more than a year and a half prior.
Hays left Charleston within a couple of years and formed "Radio Reps" a company that specialized in placing spot advertising on radio stations in smaller cities and towns in the Midwest.
The station finally went dark on Feb. 12, 1955. As you read WKNA-TV’s original application later in this piece you might ponder how Charleston’s television history would have been altered had the grand plans outlined by Smith in his original FCC filing been brought to fruition.
Who killed the radio star??
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Lester
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!DJSHOCKLEY wrote:I was attempting to get some info on the rumors that a fireman had perished in the fire..
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CoolBreeze
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
No one was seriously injured in the fire, and they were on the air the next day. They thought the fire started in a speaker monitor.
"I know I've got a lot against me: I'm White, I'm Protestant, I'm hard working. Don't you have an Amendment to protect me"? Archie Bunker
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DJSHOCKLEY
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
CoolBreeze wrote:No one was seriously injured in the fire, and they were on the air the next day. They thought the fire started in a speaker monitor.
Yeah, but what about the guy, I was told that he worked at the TV station, that hung himself up there??
Who killed the radio star??
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genlock
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
DJSHOCKLEY wrote:CoolBreeze wrote:No one was seriously injured in the fire, and they were on the air the next day. They thought the fire started in a speaker monitor.
Yeah, but what about the guy, I was told that he worked at the TV station, that hung himself up there??
Apparently he was a clairvoyant that could see the future of broadcasting, or maybe an investor.
"Everyone Should be aware that you're just a screen grab away from infamy."
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DJSHOCKLEY
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
genlock wrote:DJSHOCKLEY wrote:CoolBreeze wrote:No one was seriously injured in the fire, and they were on the air the next day. They thought the fire started in a speaker monitor.
Yeah, but what about the guy, I was told that he worked at the TV station, that hung himself up there??
Apparently he was a clairvoyant that could see the future of broadcasting, or maybe an investor.
Well, I suppose that hanging yourself from the rafters is a form of a Pyramid scheme!!
Who killed the radio star??
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oldtvman2
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Re: WKNA-TV Charleston, Channel 49
John Hamer who worked at WHTN-TV hung himself. I don't remember if he worked there at the time or after he left. the station might have been WOWK-TV at the time of his death. He was an announcer and did a kiddie show with a Monkey. He was quiet but did a great job and got along with the kids. They had a live audience at that time. I believe he was related to the owners of Hamer Lumber in Kenova.
REV. ED