JOIN BROADCAST PLAZA TODAY, DISCORD'S MEDIA DISCUSSION COMMUNITY — [ Ссылка ]
Full 40th anniversary special, commemorating 40 years of service from Texas' first television station, KXAS-TV (originally WBAP-TV) in Fort Worth, Texas (also serving Dallas and the rest of the Metroplex as its longtime NBC affiliate, and now O&O). Recorded on Wednesday, June 21, 1989. The station signed on in 1948, and I wouldn't have any idea why they waited until the following year to mark the occasion, but better late than never I suppose.
This hour-long special aired at 9pm on June 21st and was hosted by the station's main anchors at the time: Brad Wright and Alyce Caron. They were the team for most of the 80s. KXAS was, and still is now, mainly the second-rated station in the market. WFAA has long been the leader, with KDFW third, but that order basically flip-flopped, and KXAS spent most of the 2000s in third while KDFW began to claw its way to the top-rated spot, and the move from CBS to Fox really helped them in this market, while WFAA had an ownership change in the 2010s that has caused them to fall in to third, allowing KXAS to regain its traditional second-place spot (stability at KXAS and instability at WFAA certainly helped 5 and hurt 8).
The special goes into great detail about the station's beginnings up through where it stood at that point in time. Amon Carter, a prominent Fort Worth-based businessman and booster, was the station's original owner and remained so until he sold his empire (WBAP radio, TV, and the Star-Telegram newspaper) all to different owners in 1974. WBAP-TV went to LIN Broadcasting who changed the call letters to KXAS, as it was no longer under common ownership with WBAP radio (which still exists in the market today at 820 AM). LIN sold the station to NBC in 1997 as NBC desired to have an O&O in the rapidly growing North Texas market (NBC basically threatened LIN, who didn't really want to part with KXAS, to get the station, but that's a topic for another day).
At the time, the station was still broadcasting from its original facility on Broadcast Hill just east of downtown Fort Worth, the first facility in the country designed specifically for television broadcasting. This facility was vacated in 2013 when NBC built KXAS a new state of the art facility just south of the DFW airport, but still (barely) in Fort Worth, the specific location chosen for tax incentives as the city of Fort Worth did not want to lose Amon Carter's TV station, while the station long desired to be closer to Dallas and the market's population center (the out-of-state NBC ownership obviously didn't feel as passionate about staying in Fort Worth as Amon Carter did).
The station has had two notable legends over the years, both mentioned in the special: Harold Taft, the station's first chief meteorologist who served in the role from shortly after sign-on until his death in 1991, and Bobbie Wygant, a longtime entertainment reporter who started with the station two weeks before it signed-on. She's still officially on the staff now, but basically retired in the mid-2010s, only occasionally filing reports now (she was still doing regular reports and interviews until around 2013-14 though). The two, along with station founder Carter, are arguably the three people most associated with channel 5, to the point the three conference rooms in the station's current building were each named after Carter, Taft, and Wygant.
The opening and closing music was a cut of the station's then-theme package: Wall to Wall News, the first ever package from Dallas-based composer Stephen Arnold, a name that today is synonymous with news music, but KXAS was his first ever client station. The station switched to a series of different composers in 1992, but returned back to Arnold in 2011 and has stuck with him since.
Unfortunately, all but one of the ads (one for the now-defunct First Interstate Bank seen at 33:42) were cut from the recording. Normally, I would not be very happy about that, but given the fact I came across a near full-length version of this never-before-seen (from after the original airing until now) special, I do not mind at all and am grateful they even saved this.
Hosted by Brad Wright and Alyce Caron. Includes reports from Larry Estepa, Bill Kelley, Jane McGarry, Harold Taft, Scott Murray, Bobbie Wygant, Tim Smith, and Jack Helsel.
©1989 LIN Broadcasting (current owner: NBC Universal Media) and KXAS-TV, no copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We do not profit off of this video.
Copyrights for all ads remain under their original owners.
news open, open, news close, close, credits, retrospective, archives, anniversary
Ещё видео!