TFTP On This Day: "Action News" from WPIX/New York (May 8, 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'
Length - 32:18

It Was 38 Years Ago Today: Station WPIX has a history that goes back to the late-1940s, and until the mid-1990s it was one of New York City's independent TV stations. (In 1995 it became a WB affiliate and later an affiliate of The CW, which it remains today.) This late local newscast from WPIX is from May 8, 1980, 38 years ago today.

Featured news stories include reports on Cuban refugees, the aftermath of an aborted Iranian hostage rescue mission launched by President Carter, the funeral of Yugoslavian leader Tito, controversy surrounding New York City medical official Michael Baden, a local teen who interviewed former President Richard Nixon, and comedian Bob Hope's efforts to help with the Iran hostage crisis. In sports are reports on the NY Islanders in the NHL playoffs, baseball scores for the young 1980 season, basketball scores from the NBA playoffs, and local horse-racing results. Towards the end of the newscast is a report about the controversy surrounding the PBS program "Death of a Princess".

The newscast recording includes the commercial breaks and within the breaks are ads for Potamkin Cadillac (a local car dealership), two different Black & Decker products (garden hoses and step stools), Seven Seas salad dressing, Citizen and Corum watches, Oldsmobile Cutlass autos, Waterpik Shower Massage shower heads, Micom word processors, Exxon information systems, Kaufman - The Carpet Experts, Energizer batteries, and Gravely lawn and garden tractors.

TFTP's Monochrome March: "See It Now" w/ Edward R. Murrow on CBS (Mar. 9, 1954)

Posted to YouTube by user 'KD'
Length - 25:50

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

Edward R. Murrow is perhaps the most legendary newsman in radio and television history. And his attempt to report on and expose the malfeasance of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950s is one of the things that made him legendary. This 1954 episode of Murrow's "See It Now" is where he did most of his work in exposing McCarthy--with a huge assist from McCarthy himself.

The bulk of the episode consists of film and audio clips of McCarthy making various statements about the supposed threat of communism in America, often juxtaposed with other clips where he contradicts himself. Murrow introduces the clips and provides framing statements at the beginning and end of the program, but for the most part he lets McCarthy's own words do him in. Murrow's statement at the end of the program has become famous for blaming the state of American politics for the problem of McCarthy, quoting Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves."

In the following weeks, McCarthy asked for and got a chance for rebuttal to Murrow's presentation in this episode, to which Murrow provided a further response. Ultimately, McCarthy's downfall was the result of his censure in the U.S. Senate in December of 1954, a result that this episode of "See It Now" probably helped to hasten.

TFTP On This Day: "Today" from NBC (Feb. 22, 1982)

Posted to YouTube by user 'AmpexQuad'
Length - 3:21

It Was 36 Years Ago Today: This brief clip from the "Today" show--from 36 years ago today, on February 22, 1982--was from very early in Bryant Gumbel's tenure as "Today" host. He'd become Jane Pauley's co-host (replacing Tom Brokaw, who'd been promoted to "NBC Nightly News" anchor) only about a month-and-a-half earlier, on January 4, 1982. (Pauley was in her sixth year hosting, having started in 1976.)

Pauley recounts some information about how men's hair and whiskers grow faster in the spring, following up on a comment about how she'd had a sneak preview of spring on a trip south a few days before. Weatherman and sidekick Willard Scott participates as well, and he seems tickled by the fact that spring might make his toupee'd head grow hair faster. Taken from old Ampex quad video tape, the footage repeats twice, the second time without any sound.

TFTP On This Day: "ABC Evening News" from ABC (Jan. 25, 1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'efan2011'
Length - 18:08

It Was 50 Years Ago Today: This excerpt of "ABC Evening News", from fifty years ago today, January 25, 1968, focuses on reporting on the U.S.S. Pueblo incident in which North Korea captured the American ship the U.S.S. Pueblo. (The clip is from the mid-2000s ABC News program "Time Tunnel" that appeared on the ABC online service and digital subchannel called ABC News Now that existed from 2004 until 2009.)

Anchor Bob Young introduces the newscast by discussing President Lyndon Johnson's decision to call up military reservists in an attempt to counter North Korea's action. Correspondent Frank Reynolds (who would himself become the "ABC Evening News" anchor before the end of 1968) reports from the White House, followed by Jim Burns reporting on the reactions among reservists in Brooklyn and other reporters on reactions from other locations around the country.

The balance of the excerpt is filled out by Bill Downs discussing American military options in the event diplomacy failed in resolving the conflict; commentator Howard K. Smith on how average Americans were responding to the crisis; and anchor Young offering additional headlines (with graphics) related to the Vietnam War and other topics. Included also is a lengthy Purina Dog Chow commercial that features a tie-in with the contemporary movie "Dr. Doolittle".

TFTP News: News Opens from KSL/Salt Lake City (1970s/1980s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'TV News Capsule' (top), 'aussiebeachut0' (middle), 'cmsloan2002' (bottom)
Length - 0:17 (top), 0:24 (middle), 0:46 (bottom)

Above are three openings over about a 15 year period for local news at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah. KSL was at the time of these news opens (from 1975, 1983, and 1989) the area's CBS station--an affiliation it held from its inception in 1949 until switching to NBC in 1995. The clips are brief (all well under a minute in length) and constitute the opening images that would have been seen by viewers at the beginning of newscasts. As such, they are the type of thing that presents an image the station is trying to project for its viewers.

The 1975 version (top) features the signatures of the newscasters, as if they are personally vouching for the content they're about the present. In 1983 (middle), titles declaring "Medicine", "Crime", "Politics", etc., provide a brief summary, and maybe make a promise, as to the types of content viewers can expect to see. This second open also utilizes the slogan "the News Specialists", which carries over into the 1989 open. The 1989 open (bottom) has more dynamic imagery, some of it aerial, of the SLC area, as if to show that KSL has got it covered. All three opens, as would be expected from local news, highlight the newscasters about to appear in the program.

TFTP On This Day: "Camel News Caravan" from NBC (Sep. 19, 1952)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Ben Model'

It Was 65 Years Ago Today: "Camel News Caravan" was the first high-profile television news program. Before its Feburary 1949 debut (and in some respects for some time afterwards), TV news consisted largely of broadcasts of newsreels produced for movie theaters or very brief broadcasts (usually five-minutes long) of readings of headlines. There are some of those things in "Camel News Caravan", but it was nonetheless a pioneering news program for a few reasons--because of its longtime sponsorship by Camel cigarettes; because of its increasingly televisual presentational style; and because of its anchor, John Cameron Swayze, who became the first well-known TV newsman.

In this particular day's newscast, the lead news is the brouhaha related to then-Vice Presidential nominee Richard Nixon's allegedly improper use of campaign funds. This incident would result a few days afterwards (on Sep. 23) in the TV broadcast of Nixon's famous "Checkers speech". Other stories featured in this newscast include a new military base in Greenland, an earthquake on Wake Island in the Pacific, and the latest in women's fashions.

There's much here that looks somewhat odd to us now. Having a sponsored newscast is incredibly jarring now, especially with it being a cigarette brand like Camel. The presentational style seems a bit stilted, and it's clear that given the newsgathering practices at the time that the stories presented in this newscast aren't exactly breaking news.

TFTP News: "11 Alive Newsroom" from WXIA/Atlanta (Apr. 13 1980)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'

From Apr. 13, 1980, is the local newscast--titled "11 Alive Newsroom"--from WXIA-TV in Atlanta, which at this time was the Atlanta ABC affiliate but later in 1980 would switch its affiliation to NBC, which it retains (along with the "11 Alive" branding) to this day. Curious local news tidbit: the painted portraits of newsmakers that are utilized as graphics in several of the stories here.

Stories featured in this newscast: demonstrations related to racial strife in the town of Wrightsville, GA; Ted Kennedy wins the Arizona primary in the 1980 Democratic presidential race in his run against incumbent president Jimmy Carter; a local rodeo in the Atlanta area; final results from the 1980 Masters golf tournament; flooding in Louisiana; and details related to severe weather in the Atlanta and north Georgia region, including a recent tornado watch.

Most of the commercials and interstitial elements have been edited out here, with a few significant exceptions: there is a Cadillac ad at the very end, an ad for the regional Krystal fast food chain midway through, and at the very beginning there is a brief bumper promo for local syndicated airings of "Star Trek".

TFTP On This Day: "The Today Show" w/ coverage of shooting of George Wallace, from NBC (May 16, 1972)

Posted to YouTube by user 'NewsActive3'

It Was 44 Years Ago Today: On May 15, 1972, an assassination attempt was made on Alabama Governor and '72 presidential candidate George Wallace. This program is the following morning's episode of the "Today" show on NBC, from May 16, 1972--44 years ago today--most of which was given over to coverage of the event.

"Today" celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1972, having pioneered the early-morning news program with its premiere in January 1952. The program moved back and forth in these years from a harder news emphasis and a more varied mix of news and lighter fare; at this point in the early-1970s, "Today" was in one of its newsier phases, even discounting the extra emphasis on hard news in this episode due to the Wallace shooting.

In 1972, "Today" was co-hosted by Frank McGee, a longtime NBC newsman and one of the reasons the show was in a newsier phase at the time, and Barbara Walters, who was still on the upward trajectory of her legendary career but who had been with the "Today" show for about a decade by this point. (We see them in separate locations in this episode due to the ongoing events of the Wallace shooting and Walters' coverage of the '72 presidential primaries.) Frank Blair reads the news--a job he had had since nearly the beginning of "Today" in 1953. The "Today" we see here is vastly different than the "Today" of today. From the sets and the graphics, to the tone of the proceedings and the atmosphere of the program, this is a fascinating look at the "Today" show of 44 years ago today.

TFTP News: "58 After... News" (newsbreak) from KSCH/Stockton, CA (Oct. 20, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chuck's New Classic TV Clubhouse'

Here's a classic "newsbreak" of the kind that used to appear constantly in the afternoon and evening hours on local stations and networks alike. This mid-1980s example--from independent station KSCH (now KQCA) in Stockton, California--is an especially pedestrian one in that it doesn't even include any reported material or over-the-shoulder graphics (other than the station logo)--just the newsreader reading the news. Apparently, KSCH (channel 58) did such a newsbreak on a regular basis at 58 minutes after the hour (or 2 minutes before the top of the hour), thus the title "58 After... News".

This kind of newsbreak, while still used occasionally, is one of the features of television from the past that has been made obsolete by newer forms of learning about the news. Now, online headlines, Facebook feeds, and 24-hour cable news have taken the place of such TV news summaries. But in 1986 (and more so in the years prior to that) this was one of the only ways to get a quick update of what was happening locally, nationally, or internationally.

TFTP News: KGO News (San Francisco) (Feb. 8, 1965)

Here's a news clip from San Francisco's ABC affiliate KGO-TV from February 8, 1965. Black-and-white video (as opposed to film) clips from the '60s are always interesting because they give us a great glimpse of what TV actually looked like in terms of its visual texture in this period. Watch closely and you can see the switchovers between video sources as the image shifts between newscaster Bob Dunn in the studio and videotaped/filmed story segments (look for the horizontal rolling interference).

The content here is especially interesting, as it includes a lot of reporting and updates on the evolving situation in Vietnam, a conflict that was very much still escalating and still entering the American conscience and consciousness in early-1965. Other reports concern the space program and racial integration (the latter reported from Atlanta by a young Peter Jennings, later the longtime ABC Nightly News anchor). The local commercial for a car dealership that appears midway through is fascinating as well, as it shows the relative simplicity and primitiveness of local ad spots in this period. A straight-ahead pitch delivered by a salesman who is simply sitting at a desk in the studio, followed by a slide with the business name and address, the spot seems ridiculously simple-minded to us now (even for a local commercial).