[BC] Feeding the network

[schleutker@schleutker.net]

Ron,

It's been awhile and some of this I was told to me, AND I am suffering from 'sometimers'   (sometimes I remember and sometimes not)
Sooooo..........

In the mid-70's I worked for a suburban Detroit station.  (WPON)    At the time the station was 75% owned by H. Allen (Alan?) Campbell.     Mr. Campbell was the GM for about the first month that I worked at WPON.  (He retired and moved to Florida)     Mr. Campbell had been the national sales manager for "The Lone Ranger"    He and George Trendle bought a station in Flint (WTAC - Trendle and Campbell??) after WXYZ was sold to ABC.    Trendle Had been part owner of WXYZ.      Trendle and Campbell sold WTAC and purchased WPON which was licensed to Pontiac, MI.    By the time I arrived at WPON Trendle had passed away and I only met Campbell a couple of times.     Our new GM (former Sales Mgr.) had worked with T & C at both WPON and  WXYZ.    He (Bill Morgan) had many stories and I listened.

OK that's the history of where I learned the following:

At WPON we had a Mutual line (remember when the network came on a 5kC line?)  We were NOT the Mutual affiliate and the line was paid for by Mutual.    When I asked how we were able to pull that off I was told it was because Trendle and Campbell we founders of the network and Mutual  provided the free service as a courtesy.   WPON covered a good part of Detroit during the day and there was a Mutual affiliate in Detroit so we could not clear much of the Mutual programming.    But any time the affiliate did not want something we had first right of clearance --gratis.     The affiliate never wanted Notre Dame football and we always carried it.

I believe Mutual was called something else in it's early days, I think it was "The Quality Network"  ???  And yes it was a small group of stations that agreed to share their live programs to reduce the production burden.    I believe it did start with 5 stations. 

OK one more bit of trivia.     When WPON was in the process of being sold the GM asked me to go down to the basement storeroom and crate up 4 oil paintings for shipment to Mr. Campbell in Florida.     Turns out these were the "concept" paintings that hung on the wall in the writers room for "The Lone Ranger"    The writers could look up and see a painting of what the Lone Ranger 'looked' like.   Silver had a black blaze on his forehead and The Ranger wore a plaid shirt.    :-))

Douglas E. Schleutker
Vista, CA
doug at schleutker.net      

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/6/2005 at 7:43 PM RON DOT'O SR. wrote:

>I remember reading an article on WXYZ in either the Smithsonian or
>American History magazine on how the owner started MBS to carry the
>programs produced there.  I don't remember all the fine details but it was
>like 5 stations in the Great Lakes area and grew from there.  BTW, he
>picked the call WXYZ to be "The Last Word in Broadcasting"
>
>Ron Dot'o,  Salem, OR