A Remembrance of the Early Days of TV in Houston

Long-time Houston columnist (the Post and the Chronicle) Leon Hale published this account of his early experiences with television several years ago. 

It was like this for many of us who saw television in the early days -- you stared at the test pattern a lot.  I first saw a television set in late 1949 or early 1950, when Channel 2 was still KLEE-TV.  At an uncle's house in the Heights we sat and watched; nothing was scheduled for hours but he kept getting up to adjust the set when the test pattern appeared to flicker or move.  My family didn't have a set for at least a year after that.

Features from the Rice History Corner

From the Rice archives...

a feature on KTRU with some pictures and lots of comments.  Take a look at that archives link.  How many stations do you know that have an archive of broadcasts like that?

A feature on James L. 'Jimmie' Autry, Rice student and early radio enthusiast, who was mentioned in the Pre-Broadcast era post on this blog, including pictures of his equipment.  The archivist asks for some help in understanding the equipment.  Perhaps readers of this blog can help.

And, television at Rice in 1934!.  Houston had 3 AM radio stations, no FM stations, and the first TV station was 15 years in the future, but they were watching TV at Rice!

Rewriting History

As I got into researching the history of KFLX, Galveston, I discovered several stories published in the Galveston Daily News in November and December, 1924, purportedly about KFLX that actually were about the brand new station KFUL.  It took the News several weeks to straighten out the call letters.

This new information has necessitated a rewrite of the first part of the KFUL station history, moving the first air date back by several weeks.

Features on Baytown and Galveston Radio

Here are a couple of radio related features from Galveston-born writer Bill Cherry.

The first is about Baytown's DJ of the 1950s, Bill 'Rascal' McKaskill.  This article answers a question posed in a comment here on this blog several years ago about the use of 'Night Train' as a theme, an answer I should have had since I had corresponded with Rascal.

And a story about how George Roy Clough of KLUF invented call-in radio.  There are some problems with the dates in this story - the Moody's station (he's referring to KFUL) was off the air long before 1938 and Clough had also changed calls long before then.  There may be other issues but that's two I noticed.