"Looking Back"

Tid-Bits/reflections/Recollections/true stories and almost true stories.

Please send your stories to me so we can share them with others. bob.dfw@tx.rr.com

May 1, 2009   Bill Deiz, a biography and more about the SLA shootout. See  BIOGRAPHIES

June 11, 2007

And then there was TASCON (Television Automatic Switching Control)

TASCON- click here to see a short film clip produced by Dean Moore.  

For those of you that worked at KNXT in the late 50s no explanation is necessary. For the others, TASCON was manufactured by Thompson Ramo Wooldridge (TRW) and installed in the Central Control at KNXT on Sunset Blvd. TASCON was the first computer installed in a TV station for the purpose of operating video and audio devices. I received a DVD from Tony Henkins and after considerable editing by Paul Stevens I am able to place the film clip on these pages. The voice of TASCON is that of Mr. John Condon, CBS-KNXT announcer. I have heard, but have not confirmed, that TASCON is among items in the "Library of Devices" in the Smithsonian.  

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Email from Dan Gingold

I found the following about Dunphy as related to me by Joe Sands
who got it direct from Leon Drew.

Leon Drew recalls:
Our relationship began in Milwaukee where Ed Bunker, Ted Shaker, By Colvig and I were assigned the task of getting the company's (CBS Stations Division) first UHF station on the air. Jerry and his family came through on a vacation trip in late summer of 1955. He was unaware that I had just released our new anchor when I suggested that, so long as he was there, he go through an informal camera check. He was then with a station in Wichita Falls. Hearing him read some copy, and looking at him on camera, I phoned Ed Bunker asking him to come back to the control room, adding that I believed we had just discovered our new anchorman. Ed agreed and to Jerry's surprise, he was on the air in Milwaukee two weeks later.

When the company determined to phase out the Milwaukee operation, Ed was sent to Washington DC, Ted to New York, By Colvig to L.A., and I went to St. Louis to work on acquisition of KMOX-TV. Jerry, seeing the indicators, elected to accept an announcer's position at WBBM-TV, Chicago.

Some three years later, when Bob Wood brought me to KNXT (as program director) he had just fired Bill Stout and told me my first assignment was to find the proper anchorman for The Big News, then in the planning stage. He wasn't at all happy when I told him about Jerry Dunphy but he did agree to let me bring him out for an audition. That was in February, 1960, when we were still sharing the Vine Street space with KHJ-TV. If my memory is correct, I wrote on a cocktail napkin at the Grapevine that his starting salary was either $21K or 24K. Hard to believe, isn't it?

Thirteen years later, one of the many station managers to roll through KNXT, Russ Barry, I believe, let Jerry go. The next morning I had a call from John Severino, whom I had known in Chicago, who was now the manager of KABC-TV, saying, "You'll never guess what I just did," to which I replied, "that's easy. You just hired Jerry Dunphy."

Editor's note: Shortly after, Barry called Severino to cry foul, that he (Severino) had assured Russ that he had no interest in hiring Jerry if Barry were to fire him. Said John to Russ, "I lied."

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A story or two from Hal Uplinger:

We were going to televise the Sahara Golf Tournament, and I went to Las Vegas for the survey.   So I did not attend the weekly staff meeting.  It was decided at this meeting that the station needed a new computerized set to cover elections.  The $200,000 cost was put against my production department.  A month later, I saw in the monthly report that I was going to be about $100,000 over budget for the year!  This I could not understand as I always had been quite successful in being under budget. 

I went to see Berte Hackett to understand how this could have happened, and what was the $200,000 charge.  She told me that we needed a new set and it had been charged against my department.  She said Bob (Wood) knew about it and it was all right.  I told her it was not all right with me.

 I immediately went to Wood’s office and probably said in a louder voice than usual, “I want to see Bob!”  From the other side of the door came a loud voice, “I don’t want to see him!  I don’t want to see him!” 

Where can you work where you are going to be $100,000 over budget and the boss doesn’t want to talk to you about it? 

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Perhaps the greatest enjoyment of working at KNXT was the association between all of us. It was a joy to come to the office each day.  And everyone worked in a complete spirit of cooperation.  An example:

The production office, on the first floor, was underneath the engineering office located on the third floor.  We put in a squawk box linking the secretaries’ desks.  At any moment, I could find out the engineering crews’ schedules and know when we could offer production facilities to sales, at no cost to the station, within certain shift.

If we were not taping between a weekday live news shows, the crews were then free for several hours. So, we told Ray Beindorf (Sales Manager) that if he could sell commercial spots for KNXT, we could produce simple commercials at no cost to us.  He sold spots for the station that way – and Ray would even charge them a little for the production. 

Sometimes, word would come down that Bob Wood wanted to do an editorial ASAP.  Being taught by Berte and Bob that one dollar saved by a department is like saving three dollars corporately, I would go to Bob and ask him if he couldn’t wait for a more convenient time so that we would not have to hold the crews on overtime...  He would say it was an important matter and that he wished I would let him do this.  Of course, he would tape his editorial without delay, after all he was the Vice President and General Manager;  but to this day I marvel at the fact that I never felt hindered in anyway when addressing him – or any other executive at KNXT for that matter. 

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Another Wood story.  After we did the Super Bowl in Houston (years ago), Wood (then President) met us outside the truck.  He was delighted as we had a good show.  He congratulated Summerall ('great call')....Verna ('great direction')...."Uppie - the production was probably so-so'.  Then, of course, I got a big hug.

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From  Dan Gingold

"Uppy's" feelings about the "golden" days at KNXT are shared by many of us.

It WAS very much like a family, (especially with Berte Hackett as a watchful mother figure ..."Danny, don't you think it's time you got a haircut?")

I don't think anyone would dispute that Bob Wood was the best GM ever at KNXT. My first encounter with Bob was shortly after I joined KTSL on Vine St. in '51. This friendly and energetic young salesman introduced himself to me and very soon began referring to me as "Ging-er," an affectionate nickname he continued to greet me with through all the years I had the good fortune to work with and for him. After he became GM (and later, CBS Prez), whenever and wherever we would run into each other, he would invariably ask, in that gregarious "Trojan-Booster" style of his, "How's it goin', Ging-er?" And I would invariably reply, "Great, Bob!" No matter how stressful things might be, my answer was always the same. One day, however, he confided that he could always tell when things were rough but he appreciated my not burdening him with my trivial problems. But on more than one occasion, when  really important issues were at stake, he backed me to the hilt, no questions asked. Like the time I
went eyeball to eyeball with HOWARD HUGHES and his minions...but that's another story!

That was Bob Wood's style. To let his people do their jobs and support them at every turn.
                   
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Dan Gingold continues:

I don't know how well Ray Beindorf performed as a GM but I do know he was a visionary. I have a clear recollection of an afternoon in his office, where he introduced me to a Japanese gentleman who had a very small, almost toy-like video camera in his hands. This was long before camcorders and when studio cameras were in the 600 lb. range. The image the tiny camera produced was shadowy black & white. As executive producer for news, Ray wanted my opinion about the future of such portable video cameras for news coverage. Though I was unimpressed, he was very excited and forecast that one day we would deploy these toys  all over the city, feeding back LIVE coverage of breaking news wherever it
occurred. Sure, I thought to myself, when pigs fly! Just don't throw away those film cameras. But Ray's enthusiasm eventually convinced the CBS stations division to underwrite an experiment with the "minicam." The model chosen was larger and had higher resolution than the one we saw in Ray's office. But it had plenty of flaws and transmission problems and was committed only to weather and freeway shots, after taking several hours to set up and zero in a signal. The pig was far from flying.

But then came that fateful day in 1974 when SLA fugitives were thought to be hiding out in a house in south L.A. We had been duped by such rumors in the past but decided to dispatch our fledgling minicam, along with our fledgling reporter, Bill Deiz, to the scene while all the other stations had film
crews covering. After several hours of impatient waiting while the LAPD surrounded the house, history was about to be made. Deiz suddenly screamed into the telephone that shots were being fired. Sure enough, the minicam was feeding us live pictures of what came to be known as "The SLA Shootout." KNXT had the only LIVE coverage of the battle and the minicam crew, with reporters Deiz and Bob Simmons, delivered the story as it was unfolding to the entire country. It was Ray Beindorf's vision come true and the dawning of a new chapter in TV news, the ENG era. I'm not certain, but I could swear I saw a flying pig that day.

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John Condon's E-Mail to Dan Gingold

I remember Carson's Corner as a five minute segment at 8:55, right after Panorama Pacific, which, you might say, was CBS's first morning show, though it was only West Coast. Just thinking the other day about Helen Parrish. Who else? George Wolf, Grant and Red Rowe. You must have worked a number of them. 

John recalls that the producer of Panorama Pacific was Chuck Bateman.

Dan Gingold to John Condon:

Strange as it may sound, I never worked on Panorama Pacific. I do remember Red, of course, and Grant who later became news director. Also, I remember Chet Brower, who was the assoc producer on Panorama, I think. But who was the producer?

And why do I think Carson's Corner was a late afternoon show following the movie? That slot was later filled by Vance Colvig as "Buck Sureshot" and then by Dal McKennon as "Capt. Jet."

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Original Message-------
Sent: 09/05/03 09:48 AM

John Condon to Dan Gingold:

Subject: Early News

Remembering the early years of KNXT News: It was 15 minutes long once a day.
The first anchor was Lee Wood. Local news was delivered by Dan Lundberg--years later he became the expert of record on gasoline supplies and prices. Gordon Weir did weather followed by Harry Geiss. Later in the 50s, the prototypical newsman Clete Roberts anchored The 10:30 Channel Two News Political and local events were covered by Bill Stout, sports by "call 'em as we see 'em" Gil Stratton and weather with Austin Green. Weekend news by 1960 consisted of 15 minutes delivered by staff announcer Jim Haskins at 6:45 on Saturday night. When it was discovered that the rating for that newscast was surpassingly high, a bona fide newsman, Maury Green, was tapped for the job.

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Dan Gingold to John Condon:

Good John, but not entirely accurate, I think. 
The first 15-minute show (on KTSL) was indeed anchored by Lee Wood, but also included Tom Harmon doing sports and Bill Kenneally with commentary. That was my very first (unofficial) directing job, covering for a delinquent Elbert Walker. Actually, I was still his "gofer." 

Later, there was a brief but disastrous attempt on the part of GM Jim Aubrey to challenge L.A.'s reigning news personality George Putnam (KTTV) by hiring a B-Western actor named Bill Kennedy and counting on his rugged good looks to win viewers away from Putnam. As a newly commissioned director, I was assigned the task of making this ranch hand into a believable newsman. But in short order, it became painfully clear that Kennedy hadn't the vaguest idea what news was all about and his performance was more like a bad joke. An embarrassed Jim Aubrey actually fired ME for failing to properly direct the cowboy into acting like a newsman. Fortunately for me, he quickly reconsidered and I my career was saved. As for The Cowboy, he went thataway. 

Next came the "Alka Seltzer Newspaper of the Air, anchored by  Jack Gardner, with Tom Harmon doing sports and Austin Green with weather. Grant Holcomb was a reporter. (see photo) That show was actually produced by the Alka Seltzer ad agency in concert with KNXT news director Frank LaTourette. I was the staff director. 

The 10:30 News had several incarnations, with various anchors: Ed Lyons, Ed Fleming and Clete Roberts. Tom Harmon and Bill Symes preceded Stratton with sports and Lundberg did consumer reporting. Stout was the "cityside" reporter. Other regulars were Ruth Ashton (Taylor), Austin Green doing weather (he followed Geis.) and Army Archerd with showbiz news. The 10:30 News eventually became the prototype for the Big News with announcer John Galbraith doing the opening live on camera each night in the control room. (See photo).

So much more to tell...

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From Bob Lawson:

I don't remember the date, it was a number of years ago. The fall network season was beginning. ABC had a spectacular new program which they had been ballyhooing for weeks. Came the day of broadcast  they realized all they had was the master, 35mm, film. They needed a backup. KNXT was the only station in town that still had a 35mm projector and 2 inch tape. The powers to be at ABC sent their only film to us to make a backup on tape. The telecine operator that afternoon was a good man but he had the habit of sleeping on the job and waking for moments at a time to accomplish whatever task was at hand. He loaded the 35mm film and after having vtr roll the tape he started the film and sat down to take a little nap. About 10 minutes into the transfer the film broke and started spewing out onto the floor. Our now half awake operator kept the film in a neat pile on the floor. After the transfer was finished he scooped up the film which had now broken several times and he spliced it all back together, some of the frames were missing. That night the premier show aired, missing frames and all. It really upset the operator, he couldn't get back to sleep for an hour.

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John Milland to Dan Gingold

I am not against signing up but frankly I can't think of anything that is either unique or particularly interesting. Yea, with you, we did the first freeze frame (Tell Me Not in Mournful Numbers) and thanks to you I guess that I was the first engineer to ever receive editing credit at CBS and that  crude system was used to edit most of the clips for the big news for some time after. We showed Eddie Miller that the  RCA color chains (telecine) could not use target voltage in place of iris controls and we showed that the Marconi color cameras were so over designed that they would never track, but then after Eddie died and the maintenance guy Norman Cobb replaced him, thought that they were wonderful. 

Anyway I guess that my point is that I don't have the slightest idea of what if anything that I could contribute.  Besides that, though Bob included a couple of pix of me he never bothered to include people like Bob Shultz  who did the morning show for years, and of course the Sat afternoon races at Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and sometimes at Del Mar, with you as director.  That again was the Shultz Crew where I was one of the VO's.  And though it wasn't KNXT, later on the  Shultz crew did the first daily remote  with a video truck and VTR machines,( where I was again the VO)  called "On the Go with Jack Linkletter. Guys like Ken Kaylor, Dick Scovel, much  less myself, feel that perhaps we have been rather quickly forgotten because we departed KNXT well before 1970. If I write any of this as a bio it sounds close to boredom and bragging. So if I haven't responded please understand I just don't know what the hell to say.

As Ever,
Milland

From Dan Gingold to John Miland

Milland, you're much too modest.

Your reference to the "first videotape freezeframe" is accurate but incomplete. When I suggested I'd like to end each act of "Tell Me Not in Mournful Numbers," (a live-on-tape docu-drama) with a freeze frame of the concluding scene, something never before done on 2-inch videotape, you took the challenge and came up with a brilliant idea. You rigged a 35mm still camera facing the machine's playback monitor and when the scene rolled by you clicked off as many shots of the last few seconds as you could. Then, we transferred the developed film back to tape, selected the 35mm still shot we wanted and butt-edited it (with scissors and mylar tape) to the
matching live action shot. I don't recall how long this process took but it must have been many hours to complete the 5 or 6 acts in the hour-long show. The "freeze" worked, even though the edit was somewhat "glitchy", thanks to your creative thinking and exceptional technical skills. It's the kind of collaborative experience that made our jobs fun, one I will always treasure. (The show went on to win an EMMY for writer Maury Green.)
 
And, speaking of "firsts," Uplinger will remember that we created the first "isolated" camera for our coverage of the Feature Race telecasts at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar. The iso was a camera, fed to a dedicated tape machine, that followed in closeup a single horse in the race. Often the favorite or maybe a long-shot that might surprise at the finish,
we would then play the tape back while Stratton, Harry Henson and others would analyze just how the horse performed (see photo). This technique later was adopted by the networks for their own race shows and is now standard for all sports replays. Of course, no one ever credited KNXT
for the many original creative techniques we developed over the years. But we remember, don't we Hal?  And kudos to our technical guys for making them work!

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Additional rememberances from John Milland

Thanks Dan for the kind comments,
Your comments jogged my memory reminding me that we did another thing with "Tell Me Not in Mournful Numbers".  It was maybe the first video tape "edited" show that was done with  A-B type editing. As you will recall, in those days airing a "second generation" tape was only done  when catastrophic failure had occurred (except of course for the News Clips, which were all 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation anyway and showed their genealogy!) but you and Edie Miller gave your blessings to intentionally airing "Tell me not" as a second generation, gambling on the promise that with extra care and preparation of those Ampex 1000s that a copy could pass well enough that everybody would think that it was an original copy.   ( I wonder if anybody has the class to make those kind of decision today)  I have never heard a complaint that the show looked like a second
generation, have you?

So how did we do the A-B editing? Well, by that time the Ampex had become quite advanced. We not only had something that resembled a foot counter on the machines but ampex had added a "cue track" with a push button that we could put a tone on that cue track to help us in the act of re-cueing. Boy, was that a godsend. Anyway, to continue, we rigged up a little device that listened to the cue tone from VTR-1 and when it heard it (if the switches were in their proper places) it would start VTR-2 and we had another little device that did the same thing from VTR-2 to VTR-1. Anyway, we took the original  two copies of "Tell Me" and cut them into "A"and "B" type sections with cue tones to start the tape at
the exact time to pick up the next section.
The great day arrived to have all this come together. I  think that Jerry
DeHaan was the TD and of course you were the director and I am sorry, but I don't
remember the audio man, and I ashamed  for that lapse for he had a most
critical part in what to take place. for this was the time that all the credits,
the music any voice overs and any other effects were to be added. 
Well it worked out better than anybody (I least me) expected. We made one
pass for a rehearsal and then did it for real (I can't resist saying "for reel" ) 
and we had a finished product. ( And that is when you surprised with the
editing credits)

And that is the way the show aired a little while later

There was an extra bonus to the Auto Start system for the VTRs. From that
point on I don't think that I ever cut up any more tape for the News Clips. I
just quickly set them for the A-B system as the writers wanted, rolled taped and used the router above the tape machine to cut from the A to the B and so forth.
It sure saved a hell of lot of time and how many thousands of dollars of tape
I could only guess at, In the style of the times, I named the device "TIAS" and put a label to that effect on the panel I had attached it to in the rack. Tias stood for "Tone Initiated Automatic Start" I thought that it was rather pompous and therefore a quiet kind of joke. Miller got it, but Norm Cobb complaint was that the control switches were wired in the English fashion with off being up, not down. That was his only comment.  About a week later I rewired the switches.

A final note. About a month or so later TV City must of heard about this
"state of the art device" and demanded a schematic of this wondrous thing which consisted of a couple of transistors and a $1.99 relay plus a  couple of
toggle switches. I sent them a schematic but never heard from them, I think is was too simple to be taken seriously.

Take care Dan, those were fun days. I was proud to be a part of it.
Incidentally, what ever happened to that photo they took in Columbia Square where they had everybody involved with the BIG NEWS. The people filled the entire square but I have never seen the photos. Did they forget to put film in the camera?

(Note to John from ed.: The picture you refer to is on the photo page. CBS_BigNews_PhotoArchive.htm)

Milland

P.S. Do you remember when we had to do a tape delay for the basketball games with the delays being whatever time the game went over, which could be anywhere from 2 minutes to thirty minutes and the mess that that made?  We will reminisce about that some other time.

Some interesting reflections from Tony Henkins.

For me, it all started in August of 1969. I was attending classes in the San Fernando valley and had the good fortune of being introduced to Jack Fox who in turn introduced me to Betty Penny. I started as a “film runner” and worked on the  assignment desk and was supervised by a wonderful man named Bob Moyse. Bob was actually a sound man and following a heart attack, was moved inside at the bequest of Jack and became the Operations Manager. The assignment desk was then manned by Erik Shuleman (a balding gent who always wore a vest and placed his glasses on his forehead, Frank Elmquest who usually began his early morning duties with a little “eye-opener/pick-me up”. Also complimenting the desk were Dick Wilburn, Steve Leoper, Dick Gaither, Bob Long,  Georges Fisher and Jeff Wald. The film runner staff was: Bob Burgess, Guy Johnson (Director Jim Johnson’s son), Dee Derazio, Paul Fromm, Bob Konisky, Vance Scott, and  Steve Cain ( who was arrested in the 1970 Cal State Northridge riots after being mistaken as an activist). On my first week, I was sent to pickup footage shot at the Sharon Tate murder scene. The reporter assigned to cover that story, Carl George (aka. Carl Crime) was a great guy with a warm personality and wonderful sense of humor.

 
Around that same time I was sent to a golf course somewhere around LAX to pickup film (Lennon sisters father murder) from either Chuck Stokes or Bill Wilde and got terribly lost returning to the station. We didn’t have radios in the cars back then (unless you could call the 20 pound ‘portable’ which most times didn’t work) and when I returned, found out the camera crew (who had to strike their equipment and walk a considerable distance) had beat me back to the station! No one yelled and my error in judgment was quickly brushed under the carpet and away from view. It was notable back then, that during the “hippy days” lots of people were smoking grass and it wasn’t an unusual day to  smell that heady cannabis aroma wafting from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building, most notable from the processing lab downstairs. Ken Ponnessa, Wayne Murphy and Warren Smith were our unsung heroes ‘down below’. I remember working with Sahl Halpert, Jim Brown, Ruth Taylor, Howard and Dan Gingold, Bob Dunn and the beautiful weekend anchor (who I had a most obvious
crush on) Sussane Childs. Another memorable encounter was with the always unpredictable Bill Stout. I had walked into the restroom one day and while minding my own business,  Bill waltzes up to the next urinal, looks over and said “ya know Henkins, we’re the only  two f***ers in this building who know what the hell their doing”! That got me laughing so hard it was difficult to think of
anything else for the rest of the day. I thought of those words many times in the following three decades with Channel Two.

One of the more memorable assignments was the 1970 riots in Isle Vista. I was hold-up with the camera crew for I believe 2-3 days and watched as the students took complete control of that little Santa Barbara university town. I was standing next to the student who threw the flare into the Bank of  America, experienced the effects of tear gas and marched with the students as they spent the day sitting on the airport runway protesting the war. The other most memorable event was the SLA shootout. I was with Bill Diez for two days, running him from place to place, looking for Patty Hurst when we screamed into the intersection at 53th and Compton, one block from gunfire and pandemonium. Rich Brito and Bill Conroy had started laying camera cable and amid the tear gas and stray bullets managed to get Diez and eventually Bob Simmons on the air. Remember the shotgun shell police chief Davis presented to all of us as keepsakes of the event?

Other impressions.....
Film runner, Leland Jessop, accidentally running a gray KNXT Dodge Dart into the nose wheel of a parked Boeing 727 at LAX. The wonderful days of picking up Jerry Dumphy’s blue Rolls Royce and taking it to the car wash.... the long way. Sam Greenwald’s glowing personality and his comment regarding being teamed up with Herb Tice... “I hate working with old people”!. Great times.........