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Chicago
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A VIDEO VETERAN SPOTLITE |
THE VIDEO VETERAN |
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 The
second event that changed the demographic face of television was when
Eddy approached his friend, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom with an offer to
develop a children's program. It was Eddy who suggested Fran
Allison who Tillstrom had worked with before. Beulah Zachery,
after whom Beulah Witch is named was the producer and Lew Gomavitz was
the director. "Kukla, Fran, & Ollie" appealed
to children and adults alike. In fact it was believed early on
that its audience was primarily adults. Now there was television
programming that could appeal to the whole family. A much better
reason to fork out the big bucks for a set. WBKB
would continue to develop programming to appeal to a wider audience.
They would hire Lincoln Park Zoo director Marlin Perkins (later to star
for years on "Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom") to host
a show called "Zoo Parade." Years later a similar
program would appear as a segment of "Ray Rayner &
Friends" on WGN-TV with Dr. Lester Fisher of the
Lincoln Park Zoo. It would all begin at WBKB.
In 1948, Goldenson was giving the responsibility of splitting Paramount into two separate corporations. He would also get to run the new one. Two years later, United Paramount Theaters Inc. was formed. As per the consent decree, Paramount kept KTLA. WBKB went to UPT. Goldenson had every intention to go into television. He found his opportunity in the struggling American Broadcasting Company. ABC, run by the eccentric Edward Noble, was finding it difficult to maintain its radio and television networks. ABC needed money and Goldenson and United Paramount Theaters had it.
Not many remember a station on channel 4 in Chicago. The names Capt. Bill Eddy, Arch Brolly, Bill Kusack and the others at WBKB are well respected among their industry peers but virtually unknown to the public. Yet we have these men to thank for being there and the pioneering efforts despite overwhelming odds.
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The channels they're changin' again. See which Chicago station is running a digital channel in Chicago Digital Television. Minutemen is The Video Veteran nod to those familiar and beloved faces and voices of local commercials including a brief history of advertising on early Chicago television. Take a trip back in time with a review of the choices available on Chicago television in 1950...and then fast forward ten years to the date and compare the changes in What's On? Turn out the lights, throw a bag of corn in the RadarRange and recall the nights of watching Mad Marvin, Svengoolie (and even his son) on Chicago's Famous Horror Hosts. THE VIDEO VETERAN SPOTLITE INTERVIEWS
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Remote
broadcasts were a first at WBKB. Again, cameras had to
be homemade. At first during the experimental days, remotes were
simply a camera out by the lakeshore aimed out toward the neighborhoods.
Later on, they would air live football games from Notre Dame in South Bend
using a microwave relay system that Eddy, Kusack, and Brolly had
fashioned.
News
became an important part of WBKB. Using a
revolutionary bit of technology developed by the WBKB
engineers, channel 4 used the Multiscope process of keeping viewers
abreast of the latest news, weather, and sports by way of a on screen
alpha-numeric ticker. A fore-runner to the alpha-numeric display
that WSNS-channel 44 would broadcast years later in 1970. Multiscope
service was provided 24 hours by The Chicago Sun-Times and the Acme Photo
Service. For international news, WBKB employed the
services of United Press International and for the correct time it looked
to Western Union.
But
all of this was expensive and Paramount, who had by now spent millions of
dollars on WBKB (as well as its sister station in Los
Angeles KTLA) was growing tired of television. Unlike
his brother John, Barney Balaban did not believe in pouring money into
television. This philosophy was made made even more clear by the
stormy relationship between Paramount and The Allen B. 
But
a merger would not come easily and when it finally did, it was definitely
not a marriage made in heaven. Early evidence that the merger would
not go smoothly was the fact that Noble agreed to sell William Paley and
CBS WBKB for only six million dollars! The merged
companies would have to sell off one of their stations- ABC had WENR-TV
on channel 7, and the weaker of the two. Goldenson and UPT were
outraged by Noble's audacious move. WBKB was worth
more than that. It was showing a profit. WENR-TV was
not. Noble's reasoning was he wanted all of ABC's stations on
channel 7 and he promised Bill Paley. When all the smoke cleared, WBKB
channel 4 had become CBS owned and operated WBBM-TV.
The newly formed American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters Inc.
dropped the WENR-TV calls on channel 7 and became WBKB.
WBBM-TV would soon move to channel 2 in response to the
FCC's action to clean up the VHF assignment mess. Channel 4 would be
reallocated to Milwaukee Wisconsin and WTMJ-TV.
Channel 2 in Chicago, long held by Zenith and the experimental W9XZV,
the city's first electronic television station (beating out W9XBK
by a year) and (as KS2XBS), the station that broadcast 