WMUR hall of shame

[KEVIN VAHEY <fenway@zip1.ziplink.net>]

Well every station has had their share of bloopers but here are my 
favorite ones from WMUR

1. 1968 NH PRIMARY............Now Channel 9 had a very good GM (snake oil
salesman) by the name of Sam Phillips......he somehow was able to rent out
Studio B (it was our garage) to CBS so Uncle Walter and crew could inform
the nation......and Studio A had Bill Lawrence and Howard K. Smith....ok
both networks send up remote trucks (CBS with their brand new Norelco
cameras and ABC with their "older" RCA TK-41's. We were not supposed to
touch ANYTHING!!!!  

  Can only imagine the words being said when Howard K Smith showed up on
CBS and Uncle Walter on ABC..........and to make things worse an ad for
Pizza by Charles showed up on CBS...........what a shame that 3/4 inch was
still 2 years away.


2. SUMMER OF 1968    Channel 9 was given credit for being the only station
that was on the air when Robert Kennedy was shot in LA in the wee hours of
the morning Eastern time......

   The truth was the xmtr engineer fell asleep and after the national
anthem, master control simply fed ABC up to the mountain. Some 5 or 10
minutes later ABC started feeding the RFK story and 9 was on. 

3. SUMMER OF 1968 (again)  Same xmtr engineer wakes up and hears the
national anthem........happily shuts off plates at last note..and drives
down the mountain. Only problem......the anthem was being played for an
American gold medal winner at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City....

4. OOPS.... Newsman tapes 11 PM news at 7:30........(he had to be
somewhere).....old trusty AMPEX 1000 wouldn't lock up.....newscast
consisted of color slide of talent over audio....... 

5. LIVE EYE 9  Same newsman (who used to host a movie on WKBG when it
first started) has a brainstorm......there was a tragic roof collapse of a
hockey rink in Berlin, NH (some 100 miles to the north). Well, we wheeled
a camera out of the studio and lit up the sidewalk on Elm Street and told
people that we were in Berlin.....well we almost pulled that one off,
until at the end of the "live" feed a Manchester city bus pulled up and
dropped off a passenger (and you could read the words NORTH ELM clear as
day)

6. TV 9 SPORTS........

   Somehow we got the rights to Manchester Yankees baseball games one year
(old Eastern League team).....the first telecast was a beaut....we were
going to microwave the remote to the xmtr and insert breaks when
needed.....it NEVER dawned on any of us that the microwave unit at the
remote was on the same frequency as the STL.........

 Then for another game our GM looks out the window and says it is going to
rain, don't bother going, they will never play........(never rained a
drop)


Lest you think that Channel 9 was a complete ding dong school, it was
anything but. The people who came out of there were some of the best techs
that New England ever produced, simply because we had NOTHING to work
with.

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