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Marshal j and cap’n ken: The lost history of live local television in fifties america

2008; Routledge; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680802230902

1465-3451

Phillip J. Hutchison, Richard V. Birley,

Media Studies and Communication

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 Cary J. Hahn, Correspondence with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2003–2005). 2 Tim Hollis, Hi There, Boys and Girls! America's Local Children's TV Programs (Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2001). 3 Helene Whitson, Correspondence with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2003–2004). 4 Neil Hickey, Skipper Chuck and Buckskin Bill Are Not Feeling Very Jolly, TV Guide, June 2, 1973. F. Earle Barcus, Children's Television: an analysis of programming and advertising (New York, Praeger, 1977). 5 Tom Hanks, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Remarks: The Dave Clark Five (Speech presented at the Twenty-third Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, New York, March 10, 2008). Hanks, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, refers to Alexander's tenure on KGO-TV in San Francisco from 1964 to 1967. 6 John S. Armstrong, Constructing television communities: the FCC, signals, and cities, 1948–1957, Journal of Broadcasting, 51(1) (2007). 7 Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: television and the family ideal in postwar America (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1992); Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: popular media and postwar suburbs, console-ing passions (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2001); Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: the visual culture of everyday life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994). 8 Spigel, Make Room for TV, 59. 9 Ibid., 139. 10 George Lipsitz, Time Passages: collective memory and American popular culture (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 20. 11 James W. Carey, A cultural approach to communication, Communication, 2 (1975), 8. 12 James W. Carey, The problem of journalism history, Journalism History, 1(1) (1974), 1–15. 13 Ted Okuda and Jack Mulqueen, The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television (Chicago, IL, Lake Claremont Press, 2004), 43–51. Elena M. Watson, Television Horror Movie Hosts—68 vampires, mad scientists and other denizens of the late-night airwaves examined and interviewed (Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2000), 1–18. 14 John A. Jackson, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the making of a rock ‘n’ roll empire (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997). 15 Lynn Spigel, Our television heritage: television, the archive, and the reasons for preservation, in Janet Wasko (ed.) A Companion to Television (London, Blackwell, 2005), 67–99. 16 Hollis, 305. 17 Spigel, Our television heritage. 18 Ibid., 70 19 Spigel, Make Room for TV, 135. 20 Kate Yoemans, Interviews with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2004–2006). These key biographical details emerged from military records as part of this research. Yoemans, who is Alexander's daughter, did not know of this incident, however, her brother vaguely knew of the issue based on comments from their late mother. 21 Ralph Garry, For the Young Viewer; television programming for children, at the local level (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1962), 100. 22 Multiple sources chronicle how the kinescope recording process was vital for west-coast broadcasters to accommodate their programming for the three-hour time zone difference across the coasts. Larger markets on the east coast occasionally kinescoped live programming to allow for programming flexibility in their comparatively competitive markets. Smaller markets in the center of the nation merely relied on the timing of live network feeds and supplemented the gaps with locally purchased syndication packages and local programming. 23 Russ Wingo, Interview with Richard Birley, edited by Richard V. Birley (Moline, IL, 2007). Wingo was a WOC-TV engineer who operated the station's film equipment and worked closely with Wagner. 24 Jeff Martin, The dawn of tape: transmission device as preservation medium, The Moving Image, 5(1) Spring (2005). 25 Jay Alexander, KPIX-TV Marshal J Show Promo, The Jay Alexander Papers, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2008). The poor-quality kinescope recording depicts Alexander and his Dalmatian on his tack room set. In this all-too-brief clip, Alexander parodies a then-prevalent television commercial (i.e. four out of five doctors surveyed …) and provides a valuable example of his wry topical humor during that period. 26 Ken Wagner, The Ken Wagner Kinescopes, edited by Richard V. Birley (Moline, IL, 2008). 27 Jay Alexander, A Cowboy's Christmas Story/Home on the Range, The Jay Alexander Papers, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2008). A former fan provided a near-mint copy of this thought-to-be lost recording. 28 For the record, our inquiry also examined programming in which the host or key performers still are alive. These represent less of a challenge to reconstruct. 29 Given the number of people who watched such programming, information gains a degree of certainty and completeness when answers or recollections become repetitive. 30 Alexander's children represent a case in point: although his son opted not to support this project, his daughter participated enthusiastically. In the cases of other figures from this era, some of the performers’ offspring provided unreliable information, and others represented undesirable personal qualities including criminal records. 31 Kathy Warden, Correspondence with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2005). 32 Gary Fissel, Interview with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2004). Fissel was a member of Alexander's KPIX floor crew. 33 This phenomenon was not limited to Wagner; we also encountered it with accounts of other programs with interchangeable hosts (e.g. Romper Room). It attests to both the nature of collective memory and the fact that human sources are not always reliable. 34 Jan Harold Brunvand, Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-CLIO, 2001). 35 Of the many popular-culture manifestations of this motif, few were more visible than the hard-drinking Krusty the Clown on the Simpsons. 36 William Hufford, Correspondence with the author, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2003–2006). Hufford, whose well-remembered air name was ‘Ford Roberts,’ was present during two of Alexander's most widely cited incidents. Urban legend accounts of these incidents include dramatic, but fictitious, details involving Alexander falling off his horse or falling off an elevated weather set. 37 Multiple sources, both family friends and former KPIX colleagues, verified the nature of this altercation. 38 The most common of the fictitious legend takes the form of a Marshal J version of the age-old, and thoroughly discredited, ‘That oughta hold the little bastards’ myth. In many tellings, this fictitious miscue led to his equally fictitious firing at WMT. California respondents occasionally cite the latter fallacious legend; they also cite various exaggerated accounts of the 1964 restaurant incident. 39 Malcolm O. Sillars, Messages, Meanings, and Culture: approaches to communication criticism, The Rhetoric and Society Series (New York, Harper Collins, 1991), 169–171. 40 Commensurate with multiple accounts of former fans, who used the words ‘idol’ or ‘hero’ to describe Alexander, several of Alexander's former colleagues used the word ‘worshiped’ to describe children's reaction to Marshal J. 41 Hufford provided several letters and an internal station memorandum, all of which mentioned Alexander. 42 A Half Million Families with 2.5 Billions to Spend Annually, The Ken Wagner Papers, edited by Richard V. Birley (Moline, IL, 2008). 43 Several sources emphasize that because newspapers and local television stations viewed each other as competitors, newspapers rarely covered issues related to local television stations. 44 Most notably, as Alexander developed his public persona over time, the St. Louis-native crafted fanciful stories of his fictitious cowboy upbringing in Del Rio, Texas. By the time he moved to California, these stories became so integral to his persona that he treated them as truth when addressing the public or news media. 45 Jay Alexander, Marshal's Code, The Jay Alexander Papers, edited by Phillip J. Hutchison (Lexington, KY, 2008). 46 As we discovered, it was not uncommon for fans of other programs, to include other locally hosted genres, to save promotional material for decades. The most detailed artifact we uncovered involved eight hours of audio recordings of a 1971 area creature feature. 47 1946–1964 Boomer Baby Memories (accessed December 28, 2007); available from http://www.octanecreative.com/boomerbaby/tvradio.html 48 Old, New Favorites Set for WMT-TV in Fall, WMT 600: Radio News from the Voice of Iowa, August 1955. 49 Alexander's college yearbooks appeared on eBay. Each contained several pictures of the future broadcaster.