Walter Cronkite passes

[Kevin Vahey]

What was being said at the time (1968) was that Sam Phillips the GM
was courting CBS for a possible affiliate switch to CBS. Supposedly
the switch was being considered for the sake of one viewer who
summered in the Lakes Region north of Laconia who couldn't get CBS at
his retreat one William Paley. I guess CBS tried everything to get
either 5 or 13 to come in but the home was too isolated.

Phillips most likely told CBS that WMUR was state of the art because
he actually believed it. Maybe in 1954 but by the late 60's it was in
tough shape. I am sure Cronkite was amused that the AP ticker was in
the front lobby next to the Coke machine and usually nobody checked it
unless they were buying a Coke.

United Broadcasting and Cable was owned by Richard Eaton who signed
all the paychecks himself out of DC. What was frightening was WMUR was
the flagship as we used to send used equipment to WOOK-TV in DC and
Channel 9 in El Centro, CA to keep them running.

A couple of post-scripts to 1968 for WMUR

1.  In June the station was praised by the Boston Globe for being the
only area station to stay on the air all night when RFK was shot. The
truth was the xmtr engineer feel asleep and missed the anthem. Now we
would punch up black on the switcher and leave but at the mountain it
was setup that if the xmtr saw black for 60 seconds it would switch to
the network loop so WMUR became translator for WABC which did go back
to Los Angeles.

2.  For the conventions, program director Ray Harris came up with the
idea of running movies instead of ABC's nightly coverage and the
station received thank you mail from as far as Connecticut.

3.  On election night it was dead even between Nixon and Humphrey and
Sam Phillips was pacing because we were all on overtime. At 1 AM he
ordered the news director to declare Nixon the winner and we signed
off. We were 8 hours ahead of the networks. :)