October 4, 2017

The news, and nothing but the news

Back a couple of years ago, I shared video of a full-length broadcast of The Scene Tonight, the 10:00 p.m. news program on Minneapolis-St. Paul's WCCO, Channel 4. The broadcast was from January 1968, and was a very early example of a unified news program - that is, news, weather and sports taking place on one set, offering opportunities interaction between the on-air personalities. It was innovations like this that made "happy news" possible, but for the most part The Scene Tonight offered hard news, with the byplay between Dave Moore and Bud Kraehling, for example, informal but not forced. Ah, for those days...

Anyway, here's an example of the opposite - a broadcast where the news, weather, and sports are three separate programs, each with their own sponsors, with each segment separated by commercials. Since the principals never appear on-camera together, there's no chatter, nothing but the news. It's from WCCO's archrival: KSTP, Channel 5, the NBC affiliate. Featured are John MacDougall with the news, Johnny Morris and the weather, and Al Tighe on sports. I realize you might see this as something of primarily local interest, but I think the broadcast offers more than that, even if you aren't from the Twin Cities. It's a time capsule in more ways than one - not only do we see the stories that were making news back then, we get a chance to see how the local newscast has evolved.

This video, as well as that of the WCCO newscast, comes to us from the YouTube channel for TC Media Now, a tremendous repository of clips from Twin Cities radio and television. The broadcast is from late 1968, when the Christmas season is starting - as you'll be able to tell from one of the stories. Though the copy we have is in black-and-white, the original would have been in color - befitting KSTP, "The Northwest's Total Color Television Station." Happily, the commercials are included!

1 comment:

  1. Since I've started writing for dissertation writing company, I forgot how it was to work as a journalist and be a part of a news team. Thanks for the post, it brought a lot of memories.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for writing! Drive safely!