From Videoholic (Ray Glasser) Audio from the early days of WKBF Channel 61..Some promos, including Leonard Nimoy plugging Star Trek reruns..
This is the only known recording of anything off the old WKBF-61..
WKBF Schedule-Wednesday, April 22, 1970
TV Guide Cleveland Edition
10:30 Applied Management Sciences
11AM Jack LaLanne-COLOR
11:30 Dennis The Menace-Jay North
Noon Cartoons-COLOR
1PM Movie-Tangier-1946
3PM Huckleberry Hound-COLOR
3:30 Alvin Show-COLOR
4PM Rocket Robin Hood-COLOR
4:30 Flintstones-COLOR
5PM Little Rascals
5:30 Addams Family
6PM I Love Lucy
6:30 McHale's Navy
7PM Dick Van Dyke
7:30 Avengers
8:30 Candid Camera
9PM Perry Mason
10PM News-John Herrington
10:30 Honeymooners
11PM Alfred Hitchcock
11:30 Movie-China Gate-1957
Call me strange, but THAT is quite a line-up of shows. Starting with Dennis the Menace at 11:30 AM, I could very easily have left my TV on WKBF-61 until the 11:30 PM movie came on.
ReplyDeleteAs Archie and Edith Bunker used to sing, "Those were the days!"
I remember my dad buying a UHF converter at the local Radio Shack in Alliance so we could watch channels 61 & 43.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I missed a Ghoul show or McHale's Navy episode in 1973...
Could it possible that any WKBF video could be found in the archives over at WUAB? After all, the stations did merge and shut down Channel 61 in 1975.
ReplyDeleteI loved hearing this. You wouldn't know it from the schedule listed here, but WKBF had a lot of local programming, some of which was seen on the other Kaiser stations around the country. Two talk shows I remember in particular were those done by Alan Douglas and the great Cleveland Press columnist Don Robertson. These shows actually had live, albeit small, studio audiences. This link shows one of the few photographs I've seen from the Channel 61 days. It's not identified as such, but all good Clevelanders know its from the Alan Douglas program. http://www.alanabel.com/photos4.php
ReplyDeleteFirebird:
ReplyDeleteI wouldnt be at all surprised if WUAB just pitched everything having to do with WKBF..Otherwise there might be some of it showing up on YouTube..Sad really..I just wonder how much WUAB saved of its own programming over the years..
Question for "G", or anyone else who remembers -- how did the old UHF converters work? Did they take otherwise unviewable UHF signals and convert them into one particular VHF channel, much like today's DTV converter boxes?
ReplyDeleteLiving near Dayton as I grew up, we had only one UHF station in the early 1960s, but my parents never bothered with a converter box. After we got our first color TV -- a "deluxe" Quasar! -- we started receiving UHF, which meant WKEF-22.
Years later, when I was in college near Toledo, our cable TV carried Detroit's Kaiser/Field station, WKBD. I vividly recall watching "The Lou Gordon Show", a really fascinating talk show. Was this cleared in Cleveland at WKBF too?
r_emery:
ReplyDeleteI can say for a fact that Lou Gordon was cleared on WKBF and all the Kaiser Stations. Here , in case you havent seen it, is a article I did on WKBF in September 2007.
http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/2007/09/wkbf-tv-channel-61-rip-1968-75.html
Not really in depth, but its hard to find much on WKBF these days..
Thanks, Tim -- I enjoyed that old post you listed.
ReplyDeleteLou Gordon was definitely provocative, kind of a cross between Phil Donahue and Mike Wallace, who was willing to tackle difficult and controversial topics. If memory serves, he had a bad heart which kept him off the air for extended periods, and eventually killed him. I think his wife subbed for him on occasion.
Another bit of triva on WKBD-50: When NBC's Saturday Night Live premiered in 1975, their Detroit affiliate refused to clear the show, and it moved to WKBD instead. I recall visiting my college dorm's common room to watch SNL on that channel each weekend. (If my fuzzy memory is correct, Toledo's NBC station also refused to air SNL at first, so WKBD was the show's refuge for all of northwest Ohio and Detroit at that time!)
Emery_r:
ReplyDeleteUHF converters were made for older TV's that had a VHF tuner only.
For example you would turn to channel 2 and turn on the converter to view UHF channels.
Here's a link to a pic:
http://www.geocities.com/k8zhd/uhf/RS15-1126.jpg
Had WKBF hung on just one more year or two it would probably have benefitted from a trend where independent stations started seeing higher revenues due to a big rise in ad rates on the big three networks. When 61 first went on the air we already had a TV with UHF, in fact it was the second one my parents bought like that. According to my dad they wanted UHF on their first TV back in the mid-1950s but somehow wound up without it. Right after all TVs wre required to have UHF my parents traded in that set for an all-channel set, only to trade that one in 2 or 3 years later on a color set. One jingle I remember from good old WKBF is: "Something's happening great to see on Channel 61. Watch it and see." They also used to like to call themselves " Channel sixtywonderful."
ReplyDelete