THE WAY IT WAS
At the Thumb's First T.V. Station
by Al Eicher

Many of you probably remember the first time you saw a picture or program on a television set. If you lived in the Thumb area, it was 57 years ago when the long distance signal from WWJ-Channel 4 Detroit was viewable in the Thumb area. To view this often snowy picture, you needed a 50-foot tower and a directional antenna. My first view of television was a boxing match featuring Joe Louis, on a round picture tube at a hardware store in Pigeon. The store owner, Mr. Paul, let the village residents know he was going to be selling TV sets and if you wanted to see one work come to the store on the night of the Joe Louis fight. That evening folding chairs were set up in the aisles of the hardware store. I sat in the aisle with the nuts and bolts. The round tube receiver was probably 19 inches in diameter, which was the biggest size at the time. The TV set was elevated about seven feet high on a platform so everyone could see it. The store was full of people, as this was the only TV to watch. Even though the picture would often get very snowy no one left the store until the fight was over...Joe Louis won the fight!

I was fascinated with television as were most of the people in the hardware store. Soon I had a job of putting up television antennas and towers, sometimes three a day. One day while on the roof of a house, putting up a 20 foot section of pipe for an antenna mount, I went through the wood shingled roof. That was not the last time I made holes in the roof of someone's house. Naturally, we had to make repairs to the roof as a temporary measure. People always complained about the reception and soon there were three signals coming from Detroit. WJBK Channel 2 and WXYZ Channel 7 also gave us a snowy picture because of the 120-mile distance.

The Thumb area residents needed a local area station. James Gerity of Adrian, Michigan, applied for the Channel 5 license and affiliated with the NBC Television Network. The year was 1954. The station installed a 500-foot antenna tower and was on the air for only limited hours. Mr. Gerity operated with a small staff while the sales base was being established. In the spring of 1957, I was the sixth F.C.C. licensed engineer to be hired at WNEM Channel 5. Six months earlier, when I first met with the Chief Engineer at the Indian Town studio and transmitter site near Saginaw, construction of the studio was near completion. The station was then on the air only 11 or 12 hours a day. Two weeks after I was hired, six more engineers were hired, plus additional "On Air" talent for news, weather and sports joined the production team. You may remember Ray Lane, sportscaster, Virg O'Dell, Capt. Muddy Waters, Tom Eynon, Dick Bing, Frank Benesh, John Boles, Jim Harrington and Lou Miller. There were also several studio directors to manage the productions and call the camera shots: Hal Stone, Jerry Burke, Cecil Ruffin and Randy Hippler.

As engineers, we not only tended the transmitter and repaired or installed new equipment, we were also the studio cameramen. In the early days we didn't have videotape so everything was done "live" on camera. We pushed cameras for three news, weather and sports shows everyday. In the studio we also televised exercise shows, high school quiz shows, local politicians, the farm report and cooking shows. We didn't have videotape until an Ampex two-inch tape recorder and playback device came in 1960. All TV commercials were done live in the studio unless they were shot on 35mm slides or on 16mm film.

We had a lot of fun creating the 60-second spots, especially beer commercials. Many times the Blatz beer spots called for a "live pour" from the bottle...we didn't have beer cans then! Occasionally, someone would shake up the bottle before the cap was removed. Consequently, when Ray Lane, the Blatz Beer spokesperson opened the bottle, beer flew all over the place. The beer distributor wanted to see a good "head of beer" in the glass and that was the reason for pouring at the last minute. Actually, the Blatz Beer distributor didn't mind the bungled commercial because people called him and said "Did you see that Blatz Beer commercial on WNEM?" We didn't shake the beer too often!

Ice Cream TV commercials were always a problem. The early television cameras needed bright lights, which generated lots of heat on the studio set. The ice cream had to be dipped just moments before showing on camera. If you dipped too early it looked like a bowl of potato soup. Many times the ice cream company forgot to deliver the ice cream to the studio, so we had to go to the little store at Indian Town to get whatever ice cream was in their freezer. The studio crew always had lots of food to eat, especially when we televised "Lee Murray's Cooking Show", she made the best lobster Newburg.

WNEM-TV had a news department with 16mm film photographers to cover news events as far away as Detroit. Pete Jonas was one of the first film photographers. Television cameras were not portable or battery operated. In fact, they weighed 100 pounds or more and had to be placed on a heavy duty tripod or pedestal on wheels.

One of the first big productions at the studio was done at Christmas time called "Dicken's Christmas Carol." A truckload of Dow foam flakes were delivered to the studio and placed in large bags above the carolers in the street scene. When they sang, the "make believe" snow fell and stuck to everyone clothes. Very soon there was, at least, a four to five inch buildup of snow on their shoulders and hats. This looked very strange plus the carolers had a hard time strolling through a foot of styrofoam on the floor.

During my third year at WNEM the station participated in a "March of Dimes" telethon. By this time the station had studios in Flint at the Bishop Airport and at Indian Town. The 48-hour telethon featured, Leslie Uggams, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody, Shena Queen of the Jungle, Virginia Graham and Eddie Bracken. We had entertainers at both locations where I had my first chance at directing the camera shots. I found a new area of interest.

One of my engineer friends was Clarence K. He was a qualified "crop duster pilot" and he kept an airplane in a barn near the Indian Town studio. When he and I were assigned to work at the Bishop Airport Studio we jumped in his plane, flying into Bishop airport.

One of the jobs at the Flint Studio called for us to televise the arrival of President Nixon's visit to the Flint area. Since the presidential plane was coming in at Bishop Airport all we had to do was pull the television camera outside on the observation deck. This way we could capture the moment the side door of the president's plane opened and see President Nixon go down the stairway. We had a telephone connection to the control tower and the airport manager standing beside me to make sure we had the right airplane. There was always an escort plane with the president's plane. I followed the plane as it taxied up to the gate area. The red carpet was rolled out and the door opened. Much to my surprise, 30 to 40 Air Force personnel in uniform quickly came out of the plane. President Nixon was not in this plane...He was in the other plane and was already down the stairway when I got the camera on him. The director, at the Indian Town studio kept yelling "Where is the President?"

During the pheasant hunting season, WNEM had its benefits! We were able to go pheasant hunting in the fields around the television towers. At this time we had two towers, one was 500 feet high and the other a little over 1000 feet. On our noon hour lunch breaks, eight or nine of us would walk the fields and shoot lots of birds. The hunting was very good back then!

One fall day, a light went out on the 500-foot antenna, my friend Clarence and I volunteered to go up to the 400-foot level to see if it had been hit by lightning. At ground level there was not much wind but when we got to the 400-foot level we had winds up to 40 miles an hour. We had to hang on with a great deal of effort. What a great view we had of the Saginaw River and the freighters going to Bay City.

The NBC network, in the late 1950s and early 1960s had some wonderful shows. In the morning "The Dave Garroway Today Show" with J. Fred Muggs, Diana Shore, Perry Como, Steve Allen, George Goebel and the Tonight Show with Jack Parr to name only a few of the great variety shows.

In 1959, on Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m. the NBC Wide Wide World show was on the air with live coverage of events around the USA. On one of these weekends we originated a feed to the NBC Network from the main street of Flint and also in the performance going on in the I.M.A. auditorium. We had at least seven or eight camera locations and had a great time televising the folk dancers at Flint. The station would later on do another show for "Wide Wide World" from the Ice Fishing Village on the lake near Bay City.

Thanks to some of the old timers of the station, now retired, like Lou Furlin and Pete Jonas. They have made it possible to get together for reunions and share our stories of the early days of television...And That's The Way It Was.

Al and Dave Eicher provide television production services to corporations, ad agencies and nonprofit organizations. They also create Michigan town histories and offer lecture services on a variety of Michigan History Events. You may contact them at 248-333-2010; E-mail: info@program-source.com; Web site: www.program-source.com; Address: PSI, P.O. Box 444, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303.