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A or K: And You in Hampton Roads (or, why "complete" NMSA listings can be wrong too)


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I know this is completely irrelevant to 99% of the 5% who post in this area regularly, but this is something that's really got my eye twitching, and I do know that I'm not the only person here with ties to Hampton Roads. Prepare for an infodump.

 

Those of us who "specialize" in news music know how much of a wreck the Joplin market is, even with all the work by Raymie and others to clean up the mess. There's a whole lot of conjecture and relatively little proof to be found in the Four States' NMSA page. But sometimes even listings that have open audio, start/stop years and fit neatly into a chronology can be suspect...

 

This morning I randomly turned on the Telesound promo reel that surfaced a few years back, and noticed a few oddities that have me convinced of a horrible fact:

 

Something is wrong on the NMSA, in my home market - more specifically, the dating for WTKR using And You.

 

At first glance, everything looks pretty reasonable. And You certainly had a burst of popularity around 1982 - we know that much. But take the promo that appears immediately after the opening logo in the reel.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=RPggiDHk7hE;t=7

 

Why would any station still be promoting a color radar in 1982, especially in a market as large as Tidewater? And why would they have an ending shot of one of their vans driving over a bridge that had just been replaced in 1982? The dating fails to add up.

 

But the thing that has me most convinced is this little gem that's tucked in towards the end:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=RPggiDHk7hE;m=8;s=53

 

WTAR changed calls to WTKR on March 4th, 1981. They probably wouldn't have gone to Telesound to make an ID highlighting this if they were using Hello at the time, would they?

 

I can't say exactly when And You would have first appeared on 3 - going by the touting of color radar, perhaps they were even among the initial clients in 1978, alongside the likes of WCVB and WRGB. But I can definitely say that I'm 100% certain it appeared in the WTAR days, probably being replaced by Hello in 1982...followed by Discover the Land of the 3...et cetera.

 

In summary, I've wasted a half hour of my time writing this, and a few minutes of your time reading it, to make a simple point: even "complete" listings on the NMSA aren't always the gospel truth like they seem.

 

Ironically, I'm waffling on whether or not to submit this case - on the one hand, a fair amount of my evidence is circumstantial logic, or is backed up by little more than "I was born there, I know this stuff". But on the other hand, that ID is awfully hard to discount...

 

Either way, it's a lesson: even if it's a fact, put it under the lens anyway.

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I would submit it to NMSA but I would comb YouTube and see if you can find any video from the late 70s-early 80s just to make sure. That Telesound 1982 Demo Reel has material from varying years. WIIC (now WPXI) Pittsburgh is a good example. They abandoned the 11 Alive branding sometime between February and October 1979 as my proof is seeing a video on YouTube of the Steelers playing in Super Bowl XIII and the station ID during the winning postgame has the 11 Alive logo and then I saw footage of the Pirates winning the National League Championship Series in October and the 11 WIIC (New Spirit of Pittsburgh era) logo was in use by then and Take A Look became the news theme. WIIC changed their call letters to WPXI in Spring 1981.

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There's barely anything from WTAR/WTKR before 1985 on Youtube, except for what's in the Telesound demo reel. I think you have a case - to at least make some entries incomplete. Sandra Kelly appears in that promo and she joined the station in 1980.

 

Originally, the entry had WTKR using And You from 1984 until 1988 and WWL News beginning in 1988 (which would now be impossible because "Eyewitness the '90s" didn't exist until a year later)

 

I haven't seen any hard evidence of WTKR using "Hello". Evidently, a Hello Tidewater campaign exists somewhere, but I haven't heard/seen it. It would make sense since WAVY had "You're Covered" and WVEC had "Turn To" (they also had another image campaign before that; I heard it some years ago but haven't since).

 

The WTKR "digital 3" logo appeared alongside the more traditional-looking 3 around 1984 but it didn't last long. I have a clip of them using the Network Music production track "Electric Rain" from September 1985, but I'm not sure it was used in the newscasts.

 

 

The HRVA market has seen its share of incomplete entries. When I first discovered the NMSA in 2004, it had WAVY using Wall to Wall News from 1991-1995, WVEC using USA News from 1993-1995 & Stravinsky beginning in 1995, and WTKR switching from Millennium 3 to Ignitor in 1999 (I found a tape from 1998 that prompted this correction).

 

I also believe WAVY started using their "1982 theme" in 1981 coinciding with the switch to The Daily News.

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I would submit it to NMSA but I would comb YouTube and see if you can find any video from the late 70s-early 80s just to make sure. That Telesound 1982 Demo Reel has material from varying years. [sNIP]

 

To be fair, it does - but the vast majority of the material is 1979-1981 or thereabouts (the WNBC NewsCenter 4 promos, the WIS Newspeople promo, New Spirit of Pittsburgh, etc.).

 

There's barely anything from WTAR/WTKR before 1985 on Youtube, except for what's in the Telesound demo reel. I think you have a case - to at least make some entries incomplete. Sandra Kelly appears in that promo and she joined the station in 1980.

 

Originally, the entry had WTKR using And You from 1984 until 1988 and WWL News beginning in 1988 (which would now be impossible because "Eyewitness the '90s" didn't exist until a year later)

 

As far as I recall, the 1984 start date was only changed when this reel surfaced...that would be very late indeed for the overall aesthetic.

 

I haven't seen any hard evidence of WTKR using "Hello". Evidently, a Hello Tidewater campaign exists somewhere, but I haven't heard/seen it. It would make sense since WAVY had "You're Covered" and WVEC had "Turn To" (they also had another image campaign before that; I heard it some years ago but haven't since).

 

The WTKR "digital 3" logo appeared alongside the more traditional-looking 3 around 1984 but it didn't last long. I have a clip of them using the Network Music production track "Electric Rain" from September 1985, but I'm not sure it was used in the newscasts.

 

 

Yeah, the only reference I've ever seen to Hello Tidewater is the NMSA's list. Unfortunately it seems the Daily Press and Virginian-Pilot archives aren't on the likes of Google News - and since I don't live in Hampton Roads anymore, I can't just run down to the library and start combing the microfilm.

 

As for Electric Rain, I'm almost certain it wouldn't have been used outside of newsbreaks. If I recall correctly, that's where the listing for them using Communique came from too...

 

The HRVA market has seen its share of incomplete entries. When I first discovered the NMSA in 2004, it had WAVY using Wall to Wall News from 1991-1995, WVEC using USA News from 1993-1995 & Stravinsky beginning in 1995, and WTKR switching from Millennium 3 to Ignitor in 1999 (I found a tape from 1998 that prompted this correction).

 

I also believe WAVY started using their "1982 theme" in 1981 coinciding with the switch to The Daily News.

 

Yeah, it's kind of crazy how much we've already learned. The 1982 theme did indeed appear in 1981 - in fact, the audio sample on the NMSA is from this:

 

 

I'm 100% certain it's part of Tuesday2, given the instrumentation (and Tuesday2 appearing in literally every other bump, tease and close), but that's yet another example of circumstantial logic without hard proof.

 

But as for WTKR, I think I'll submit it over the weekend...at least I have more evidence in that case.

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  • 2 weeks later...

i mean, i live within the hrva market, but idk how to find those tv clips yet.

 

still the market is a complete utter mess, and I still wish I can find any news opens at all from the 1950s all the way up to the 1970s. plus, maybe some more WVEC from the early 80s and 2000s.

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i mean, i live within the hrva market, but idk how to find those tv clips yet.

 

still the market is a complete utter mess, and I still wish I can find any news opens at all from the 1950s all the way up to the 1970s. plus, maybe some more WVEC from the early 80s and 2000s.

 

I wouldn't call HRVA's NMSA history a "complete and utter mess"... WVEC's listings are accurate to the best of my knowledge.

 

As for the 1950s-70s, It's difficult to find clips of local TV from ANY market prior to the videotape age, especially because most stations did not maintain archives very well back then.

 

I would love to see more of WVEC in the early 80s... I've seen snippets of the simple Corinthian-era opens, but they've always been partial or had speaking over them so they couldn't be submitted to the NMSA.

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