Radio stations got out of them when they figured out they were ticking off half their audience for no real benefit. Ditto local TV news. National newscasts? Editorials haven't vanished...they've become entire networks on cable...what are Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews except program-length editorials?
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KNX/Los Angeles Celebrates 50 Years of Service
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
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Radio stations got out of them when they figured out they were ticking off half their audience for no real benefit. Ditto local TV news. National newscasts? Editorials haven't vanished...they've become entire networks on cable...what are Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews except program-length editorials?
Seems to me they also changed when the FCC rules changed.
Ha! My parents were KNX listeners my entire childhood. Bob Crane was part of my morning during breakfast in the early 60s before school, then my parents stuck with KNX when it went to mostly news programming. They were old lefty liberals, and George Nickolaw's editorials were often the subject of complaining in my house.
No doubt. My comment, however, referred to the airwaves.
Okay, what are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity (again), Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann except program-length editorials?
Biased talk programs certainly antedate the ones you cite, and they aired on stations that broadcast discrete editorials.
Sinclair Broadcasting does editorials all the time on their TV stations.
They don't run any audience alienation risk as they are already preaching to the choir.
TV stations also used to do editorials - especially independent station. In the 70s, before FCC rules changed, Viacom Cable would include Sacramento stations in the line-up here in the Bay Area. I remember being amused by the editorials on TV40 - now a Fox station, I believe. The General Manager doing the editorials was always very serious, and had a great deep stentorian voice - I remember wondering if he had ever worked on-air other than to do the opinion pieces. The best part was his name - Cal Bolwinkel.
By "all the time," do you mean that Sinclair's news programming is entirely editorial? To me, Sinclair newscasts represent a sort of broadcast edition of Bill Loeb's Manchester Union Leader, a paper whose editorials routinely appeared on the front page.
No, not at all. In the middle of their local newscast, which is done in a traditional way, they all are required to run a brief national editorial, hosted by a company spokesman Mark Hyman.
Was the executive producer's name some variant of Ponsonby Britt?
Ha! good memory. Or perhaps Peter 'Wrongway' Peachfuzz, which was a dig on a Jay Ward collaborator, producer Peter Piech (Tennessee Tuxedo, etc.).
Poor Mr. Bolwinkel couldn't help his name, but every time he pompously intoned some super serious editorial and ended with, "For TV 40, I'm Cal Bolwinkel"...it was hard not to laugh.
While I've never seen Mr. Bolwinkel, the mental imagery is most amusing!
Thanks for the morning chuckle, Llew.
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When I was probably too young to remember, Cal Bolwinkel worked at WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana using the name "Cal Stewart". I have heard that he took a bit of on-air ribbing about his real name there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmXN0z6NIZc
Here is an interesting ad from the 1990's. This was when KNX was then competing against KFWB for All News in Los Angeles and this was before the CBS Westinghouse merger came into play and get KFWB and KNX under the same owner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMYeb0KKbxU
And here is KNX promo from 1987.
Here is an interesting ad from the 1990's. This was when KNX was then competing against KFWB for All News in Los Angeles and this was before the CBS Westinghouse merger came into play and get KFWB and KNX under the same owner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMYeb0KKbxU
And here is KNX promo from 1987.
Wow. Bill Keane. There's a bit of LA media history. In the 60s, when the most popular LA TV news broadcasts were The Big News and the 11 O'Clock Report on KNXT Channel 2, Bill Keane was the weather guy, along with Jerry Dunphy (anchor), Gil Stratton sports, Ralph Story, and many more.
If memory serves, KNXT lost the ratings race to KNBC in the early 70s when Tom Snyder, Tom Brokaw, and Jess Marlow were brought in, so KNXT reacted at some point by cleaning house - I recall that Dunphy ended up at KABC, so I guess Keane defaulted to the radio job at KNX.
They used Andrew West because he was the closest reporter with a tape recorder to what was happening. KNX had no one there with a recorder, although their reporter was there and gave a very emotional description on air only moments later.
Don't know if this is true, but my understanding is the West tape didn't surface until a day later?
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