Ah, the Joys of Going Digital

Okay, we’ve had a few “bumps” along the road to converting to a totally new broadcast technology. It’s frustrating and embarrassing, but the problem is exacerbated by viewers and government officials that don’t really understand what all is involved. It’s not like you run down to the Digital TV Station store and pick-up a few spare parts. You see, there are no spare parts, yet. When something breaks, it takes time to fix it: parts need to be ordered, installation takes time. It’s funny, I keep finding myself reverting back to that old announcement TV stations would make: “We are temporarily experiencing technical problems. Please stand by. The problem is NOT in your set.” You know what, if TV hasn’t always had to deal with a “ghost in the machinery”, we wouldn’t have ever had to make that announcement.

Still, the changeover has come with a bittersweet edge to it. For those of us who have been doing this a long time (33 years for me), moving from analog to digital marked a whole new chapter in our station’s story and a chance to look back fondly on the way it use to be. So, in this age of 24/7 television, let me share with you the way it was “once upon a time”.

In the beginning, there was “the moratorium”. The idea for television had been around since the 1880s – that’s a fact. The great battle that occurred though was how to make it actually happen. It works on the same principle as animation: a series of pictures flash before your eyes, each one changing slightly, creating the appearance of motion. The battle was over whether that would happen mechanically (like it does on film) or electronically (as it eventually did with television). You see, your TV picture (at least in the analog days) was constantly changing, but it happened so far that your eye couldn’t adjust to it. If you’ve ever tried to take a picture of a TV screen, you can see the change. Usually a black bar is running across the picture – that’s the new image coming across your screen.

Anyway, television as a medium had its big debut at the 1939 World’s Fair, but guess what happened? World War II came along and all the attention (and raw materials) went to the war effort. It wasn’t until 1945 that the TV industry really ramped up. In fact, so many TV stations were going on the air that it was creating a problem as their signals overlapped. I’m told that it looked kind of like trying to watch TV through Venetian blinds.

So, the FCC stopped issuing licenses, putting a moratorium in place until it could get things sorted out. By 1953, that had happened. Abilene was assigned two frequencies: Channel 9 on VHF (Very High Frequency) and Channel 33 on UHF (Ultra High Frequency). Since most TV’s were equipped to carry VHF, getting Channel 9 was important.

For the record, it was the Abilene Reporter News that secured the first TV license for Abilene. The call letters, KRBC, stand for “Reporter Broadcasting Company”. But in a move I still don’t quite understand, the newspaper’s owners decided they didn’t want to get into TV and sold the license to a young car salesman named Dale Ackers. KRBC stayed in the Ackers family for years (until after Dale’s death, when his sons sold it off).

It would take volumes to tell the KRBC TV story, but trust me – it’s a good one. I love some of the old stories best. Like the one about the antenna coming to town. It was brought in on a train car and then paraded through town for all to see. A parade! It was taken out to the transmitter site at Cedar Gap and all the broadcasting was done from there. But to get there, you usually had to meet someone in town and be escorted out because getting to the location meant having to drive up some steep and rough terrain. I’ve been to the transmitter site twice in my career. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s one reason the station was moved to South 14th (although back then, we were sitting on the edge of town – almost out of town, actually).

Back in those days, you had to sign on your transmitter early and since the broadcast day didn’t start until 5:30 in the afternoon, the only thing to see was that stupid “Indian chief” test pattern. The only sound was that one-thousand cycle tone that ran incessantly. People would sit for hours watching it, fascinated by the technology and what it would eventually bring into their home.

First kids show on KRBC? Crusader Rabbit – Five minutes long.

Typical broadcast day? Five in the afternoon to 10:15 at night. That all changed when KRBC became an NBC affiliate months later.

The one commercial you’d NEVER see on KRBC? A beer ad. For close to 30 years, KRBC upheld it community commitment by refusing to run beer advertising on TV. They’d just preempt it and run another commercial over it. You could do that, back then.

May favorite memories? You know, I have always loved two things about TV – sign on and sign off. Sign on happens when they finally through the switch, turning off the tone and test pattern and actually start broadcasting programming. It usually began with just a picture of the TV station and this golden-throated announcer saying, “KRBC Television now begins its broadcast day.” That would be followed by a lot of technical information you really didn’t understand. It was just the excitement of watching the sleeping giant come to life. You know what the first thing that giant did? Played the National Anthem. The Star-Spangled Banner was also the last thing you’d see at sign-off. That same announcers voice would come on and say, “KRBC Television now concludes its broadcast day.” The same technical stuff would be read – you know, stuff like “KRBC broadcasts on Channel 9 in Abilene, Texas with an effective radiated power of eight-trillion gigawatts …” Since the station was now on the air until just after midnight, the announcer would always close by saying, “From the entire staff and management of KRBC, Good night and good morning. And now, our National Anthem.”

You know, I miss that reminder that I live in perhaps the greatest country in the world at perhaps the greatest time in history and I have just been put to rest by perhaps my closest friend: my favorite TV channel.

Somewhere out in space those great old tv signals are still bouncing around somewhere, perhaps having the same effect on a boy far different from me, but maybe, not that different at all.



Downing Bolls