David Carroll’s News And Notes

65 Years Of Chattanooga Television

Let’s go back to April 1954. Chattanooga has two daily newspapers and about a half-dozen radio stations. Our friends in other parts of the nation, mostly in bigger cities are talking about the next big thing: Television. In Chattanooga, stores are advertising new TV sets in the local paper. A few forward-thinking folks shell out around $200 for the bulky box, designed for glorious black-and-white viewing. Even as the downtown movie theaters show MGM musicals in Technicolor, that new TV is a great addition to the living room. There’s only one problem: the Chattanooga area doesn’t have any TV stations on the air.
TV came to Atlanta in 1948, and to Nashville in 1950. By 1954, Chattanoogans were coveting their TV signals. Newspapers would carry stories about TV sensations like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, and even Bob Hope who was gradually abandoning radio for TV. Putting it in today’s terms, how would you feel if Atlanta and Nashville had a personal device that the nation was buzzing about, and you were told that the Chattanooga area might get it by 2025? That’s six years away!
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Chattanooga’s top three radio stations, WDEF, WDOD and WAPO were among the hopeful investors locked in a long battle to secure the city’s first television station license. All applicants had to present a detailed proposal, promising the federal government that they would be the most responsible broadcaster. Each pledged several hours each week would be devoted to education and culture. They would bring us opera, interviews with elected officials, and classroom programs, so the kiddies could learn year-round.
After a few years of wrangling, the WDEF group emerged victorious. On Easter Sunday, April 25, 1954 at 2:00 p.m., a golden-toned announcer named Peyton Brien signed Channel 12 on the air. Most of the staff, including deep-voiced newsman Mort Lloyd, merely crossed the hall from WDEF radio, which was also located in the downtown Volunteer Building.
Luther Masingill, the dominant morning radio man, was mildly annoyed at having to host a late-afternoon TV show too, but the owners knew he would be a big draw. Since nobody in Chattanooga had ever put a TV station on the air, they brought in five guys from Nebraska who had successfully cranked up a station two years earlier.
Channel 12 could choose programs from all four TV networks (CBS, NBC, ABC and Dumont), until Channel 3 came along in 1956, and Channel 9 in 1958, establishing network affiliations that continue today. The networks offered little programming in the daytime hours, so stations filled the time with local shows. “Lunch ‘N Fun” entertained the ladies on Channel 12, the Willis Brothers, Jim Nabors and Barbara Molloy sang and danced on Channel 3, and Bob Brandy brought Popeye and prizes to the kids who watched Channel 9. Those days were best described by Harve Bradley, a funny radio guy-turned TV weatherman, who told me, “We didn’t know what we were doing, because none of us had ever done it before. We were just going by the seat of our pants.”
Early newscasts were brief, long before the days of teleprompters and instant video. With a staff of 2 or 3, occasionally a piece of film might make it on the air. Otherwise, it was basically a radio newscast with a camera aimed at a man’s face. And yes, I do mean a man’s face. By the late 1960s, some of the channels would train a pretty lady to stand in front of the weather board and read the forecast. Her title would be, “Weather Girl.” I am not kidding. (If you think that’s bad, in 1964, ABC News hired its first female news reader, who would do a daily five-minute news break between soap operas. Variety, the show business newspaper, described her as a “News Hen” in its headline. You can look it up.)
Here we are sixty-five years later. So many shows and people have come and gone. Harry Thornton’s Live Wrestling. Bob, Don and Darrell. Roy Morris. Debbie Baer and PM Magazine. The commercial pitchmen: John Swafford, J.M. Sanders and John Totten. Mull’s Singing Convention. Miss Marcia. MaryEllen Locher. Dr. Shock and Dingbat. Dialing For Dollars.
So many firsts: Channel 3 was first to do live remote broadcasts, via phone lines and later satellite. Channel 9 was the first to show local programs in color. Channel 12 was first to go high-definition.
Local viewers who were once thrilled to have three TV channels now have hundreds to choose from. There are channels devoted to golf, animals, food, decorating and jewelry. Appropriately enough, some of the most popular channels offer reruns of the shows we first brought you all those decades ago. Some things just don’t go out of style.
David Carroll, a Chattanooga news anchor, is the author of “Volunteer Bama Dawg,” a collection of his best stories. You may contact him at 900 Whitehall Road, Chattanooga, TN 37405 or [email protected].