On January 1, 1949, KLEE-TV went on the air with the first commercial television station broadcast in Houston history. KLEE-TV, which would later become KPRC-TV in 1950 and remain so to this day, was not without its start-up problems, however. Houston Radio History did a great job of explaining what happened back there at the start in a column written on June 30, 2007:
http://houstonradiohistory.blogspot.com/2007/06/klee-tv.html
So, the television era came upon us, not as “Houston, the eagle has landed,” nor even as :Houston, we have a problem.” The KLEE-TV first Houston station apparently came on the air some three plus hours late on that first day with “There’s been trouble…plenty of trouble.” And it all emanated from an earlier water leak in the day from an equipment cooling agent, causing an electrical short and a late start for the Houston Television Era. And so it all began with what now sounds like a befuddled apology from the new station’s manager.
My interest here is in the program schedule for that first Houston day of telecasting:
As reported back on June 30, 2007 by Houston Radio History, the “schedule for the first night, after some opening remarks (was as follows):”
We didn’t have a television set at my house for this first day and I don’t even recall now, that, at age 11, I was even aware it was happening. As I’ve written earlier, my first discovery of television would come a few days later, when my neighborhood pal, Billy Sanders, would invite me in to see the new phenomenon for the first time.
Here’s what I do recall of this earliest programming:
test pattern
6pm – Test Pattern: Back in the day, TV sets came with vertical and horizontal adjustment knobs in the back. We had to adjust our own sets by using the test pattern as our guide to a perfect circle. Too much knob-moving up and down, or left and right, and you made the picture too tall or too spread out. Do it way too much and you created everything from picture flicker, roll, or that little tormenting blank space on either the sides or top and bottom of the screen.
Anytime the picture failed, we just assumed from our normal states of neurotic guilt that it was our fault and started twisting all those knobs in the back of our sets. In recognition of same, stations constantly came on the air to apprise us of all the times the problem was coming from them: “We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. The problem does not lie with your set. Please do not make any adjustments. We expect to have the problem corrected shortly.”
6:15pm – Allen Dale Show – a musical variety show set in a record shop. Not much to it. There were a lot of fifteen minute shows at the start of the TV era. In this one, people just happened in to the record shop to either sing or hear host Allen Dale sing ballads of the day.
6:30pm – Lucky Pup (CBS) – children’s puppet show about a little dog who inherited $5M and what he did with it. I remember Lucky Pup quite well. I was a little old for this show in 1949, but we weren’t quite as sophisticated back then. We would watch just about anything that moved and talked.
6:45pm – Make Mine Music – Tony Mottola Trio – musical variety show; ‘as most video shows are, it is held together with a plot and action.’ I don’t remember the plot they describe, but I liked the jazz quality of the music.
7pm – Newsreel. These were like movie newsreels that had been pulled over to TV. Most were several days old or even more dated. Nothing was really current, but so what? They had no competition from any faster media out there.
7:10pm – film short – music. These were the late 1940s versions of today’s MTV. Hundreds of three-minute musical performances had been made for use in visual jute box players around the country and now these performances were showing up as time-filler programming on local TV stations. Very important to me, these films introduced me to performers like George Shearing and Oscar Peterson – and setting in motion a lifetime of love for jazz.
7:15pm – Places Please (CBS) – a Barry Wood show which takes place behind the scenes of a Broadway theatre; different guest stars appear on the program. Barry Wood came to us on kinescope in the days prior to our live cable connection to New York. Kinescope was basically a film copy of what the live camera saw. Prior to the cable connection which made live national telecasts possible, the networks worked mainly from New York, performing live there, and then mailing out kinescope copies of these shows to the rest of the country for re-airing in two to three days.
7:30pm – To a Queen’s Taste (CBS) – A French chef takes over to cook a special dish. Mrs. Dione Lucas, employee of the Cordon Bleu, gives out the recipe and shows how it’s done. It takes her 30 minutes to demonstrate. This lady cooked stuff that my Pecan Park East End of Houston Mom was never going to prepare, but that’s OK. I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway.
8pm – Winner Take All (CBS) – the audience gets to see the fantastic prizes given away on the Bud Collyer quiz program. Smilin’ Bud Collyer was the man with the million dollar smile and the $64.00 grand prize. I don’t recall the exact amount of the big winner pot, but it wasn’t much. Just as he did later on “Beat The Clock,” Collyer charmed his audiences into making a big deal out of nothing. He would have been a great host today for something like “The Price Is Right” or “Wheel of Fortune.” He could probably make “Wipeout” seem less demeaning and stupid than it actually is.
8:30pm – Fashions on Parade – New York and Paris fashions will be shown. A plot and entertainment make this more than a style show. I buzzed out on this one. No way this male kid from the East End was going to get caught up in watching a fashion show. A couple of years later, however, I did get caught up in stealth viewing of Houston’s Joy Mladenka and her “Fashions in Motion” show. By this time, I was into puberty and really appreciative of the lady models who did such a good job of bringing me up to speed on what women would be wearing in the new season to come.
9pm – Kobb’s Korner (CBS) – Spike Jones has competition when the Korn Kobblers make music from balloons, rubber tubes, auto horns, cowbells and washboards. Crazy stuff. Watchable, but never as good as Spike Jones, whom I was getting to know from the film short series.
9:30pm – Doorway to Fame – Danton Walker has a professional talent show. Little known performers get a chance to be on a television show. This program was the early version, along with Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, of today’s “America’s Got Talent” and “American Idol.” There really is nothing new under the sun.
10pm – Swing into Sports – a sports lesson, currently golf; Dick Altman, KLEE-TV Sports Director. I barely remember Dick Altman. He wasn’t long for the Houston public eye. And sure didn’t stay with it long enough to have become the icon that could have gone to the first tv sports talking head in Houston. What happened, Dick? Couldn’t you handle the lack of competition?
10:30pm – Morey Amsterdam Show (CBS) – a variety comic show. We thought Morey Amsterdam was the funniest guy under the sun, but rarely were we able to negotiate staying up late enough to watch him, unless there was no school the following day. Our bedtime was 9:30 PM – and that’s another reason I barely recall sports broadcaster Dick Altman.
11pm – sign off. Think about it. Today we have 24/7 telecasting over a gazillion stations and some people never turn their sets off. They just wake up and go to sleep with TVs playing in the background to their other involvements over the Internet and MP3 and cell phone texting distractions.
Hmmm. – Maybe that four to five hours of TV per day was enough in the first place.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 