Ladies and gentlemen, today we present to you the very first newsletter of WRAL-TV, March 1958.
(Click on TeleNews image for a larger pdf)
The latest trip out to the transmitter storage buildings yielded another mother-lode of golden goodies from CBC’s history. The cover story shows the broadcast building still in the construction phase. It is interesting to note how they planned to use 3600 square feet of studio space. “It can accommodate fashion shows, automobile shows, furniture shows, and circus acts.” Looking back, the studio did accommodate everything on that list, and more!
The internal pages featured a weekly programming schedule full of shows from NBC. Daytime shows included “The Price is Right,” “Tic Tac Dough,” “Queen for a Day,” to name a few. A sampling of primetime programs featured “Steve Allen,” “This is Your Life,” “Dragnet,” “Groucho Marx” and of course the “Jack Paar Show.” Local programming was geared to children in the afternoon with “Cap’n Five,” “Sky King,” “Popeye,” and “Annie Oakley.” The newscast,“Stateline,” aired at 6:00PM
The back cover reveals some interesting tidbits. Keep in mind, this is March, 1958.
COLOR-TV
Reprinted from Printers Ink-November 1957
For years now the television industry has been waiting for the big color-TV break through that never came. The real color bulges are beginning to show where no one has been looking…the Radio Corporation of America, biggest color-TV promoter, took its promotion money to smaller cities where it could make an impact….TV color set sales in the Ohio Valley shot up 800 per cent in one four-week period after WLW in Cincinnati started color programming. By early October, one in every two RCA TV receivers sold in Cincinnati and Dayton was a color set.
RCA regional representatives James Harter says that the color interest in Omaha, Nebraska has already pushed that city up to seventh place in color set sales in the country.
Editor’s note – Judging from requests for monthly color schedules, interest in Color-television in Channel Five’s coverage area is on the increase. If you have a color set, let us know, and we’ll mail you a schedule each month.
RADIO REVEALS REEVE’S RAPIDITY
A prominent North Carolina sportswriter made glowing reference to Channel Five’s Sports Director Ray Reeve recently in his column in a leading daily newspaper. Ray does a play-by-play broadcast of sports events over a large network of radio stations in addition to his television duties. The sportswriter reported on the result of a test he made during the broadcast of a basketball game. He discovered, in switching from sportscaster to sportscaster by using the push button system, that Rapid Ray was seconds ahead of the others on every play. REEVE WITH SPORTS may be seen each weekday at 6:25PM on Channel Five.
PAY-TV EXPERIENCE
Reprinted from TIME Magazine, February 24, 1958
Pay-TV test is fizzling in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in major experiment. With subscribers to shows via co-axial cable down from December’s 580 to 300, sponsoring Video Independent Theaters will drop prices from $9.50 to $4.95 a month.
GEORGE HALL DAY IN RALEIGH
Program Director George Hall was honored recently at the Raleigh Little Theater when three of his one-act plays were produced by Little Theater members. Several Channel Five-ites, including Liz Dixon and Alec Dantre were included in the staff and production crew. The reviews were most complimentary.
Thanks to Corp’s Pam Allen for this capcom story. Pam Parris Allen is a former WRAL newscast producer/director who now works as a researcher and producer on the CBC History Project.
