A collection of 1978 WABC commercials, sign off/on, station ID, and news with Bob Lape and Ed Jordan

[@bwc1976]

Anyone know what Ed Jordan was laughing about?

[@Narbized]

There's Ted Koppel in the video doing morning news announcements. Just before he would host ABC News' Nightline.

[@SamuelGriffin-u8d]

New York City was very real with WABC-TV CHANNEL 7 with classic daytime soap operas game shows The Four Thirty Movie segments and of course Eyewitness News with Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel

[@wmbrown6]

Judging from the tint of the green, looks like this WABC pattern dates to 1970. I like it, though, and it has long answered a nagging question I've had. I also vividly remember the layout.

[@mikesmemoriesfromthepast89]

The WABC-TV sign off announcer was Ed Williams and the sign-on announcer was Ed Jordan.

[@super9911]

With the national Anthem wabc-tv

[@wiedep]

Aside from commercials and station announcing, Jordan was on-screen as a bagman aka 'Bruno' for loan shark Kalish in 'The Seven Ups' film.

[@nedwart]

Love it when booth announcers act aloof

[@VPR2B]

The live booth announcing during that era really helped to personalize stations. Loved it.

[@NEPatriot]

@@VPR2B It's a lost art form thanks to mp3 downloads, though the announcers have been top level like Jim Cutler and Charlie Van Dyke. But to hear Ed Jordan for example pull double duty for channel 7 AND the ABC network for their Saturday morning kids line-up for 7/1/1978...classic. And apropos because ABC7, pardon me, CHANNEL 7, is 75 years old this year. And I have wanted to see 7's sign-off with the Seal of Good Practice, meaning that all three network stations (including WCBS-TV and WNBC-TV) at one time displayed the Television Code.

[@VPR2B]

@@NEPatriot I once had the pleasure of visiting the ABC broadcast center in Hollywood in the early '80s, as the guest of one of booth announcers. It was amazing to see a toggle switch in the booth where he could select where his voice was to be routed -- either to KABC, or the full network. He would do the voice-over for the "Happy Days" credits, then a minute later flip the switch to KABC to do a live tag for a spot airing on KABC. I was mesmerized!

[@NEPatriot]

@@VPR2B Which of the announcers? From seeing the KABC sign-offs on YT, I'm thinking Len Beardsley, Dean Webber...?

[@VPR2B]

@@NEPatriotA fellow by the name of Mike Laurence.

[@radiogeekau3356]

The music in the second commercial was also used by the Ten Network in Australia for its News intros back in the mid 1970s. I wonder if anyone knows the title of that music?

[@VPR2B]

Second commercial? The one for “Deathtrap?”

[@radiogeekau3356]

@@VPR2B Yes, the deathtrap commercial.

[@VPR2B]

@@radiogeekau3356 Interesting. That piece of music doesn't seem particularly suited to a newscast -- would love to have heard that.

[@wmbrown6]

@@VPR2B - I suppose the one with a beat. Sounded similar to a piece of music WPIX used as the theme for their newscasts as of 1973, on a demo reel from Computer Image Corp. elsewhere on YT, as on: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qna3iZWGqpxmkMUm28s

[@DanZero77]

As a WABC fan I'm SO glad I somehow stumbled upon this! From the great WABC color test slide to the news time "glitch" to the BK voice over with the "Come Along" slide mistake. I guess that was the show coming on next.

[@wmbrown6]

Also . . . does anyone have any idea when "megahertz" began being used on sign-ons and sign-offs as opposed to the prior "megacycles"? I know the newer terminology was used on a 1972 WOR-TV sign-on delivered by Russ Dunbar, but can anyone say for sure when the earliest of that term came to use?

[@VPR2B]

I’d be interested to know that was well.

[@NEPatriot]

4-20--the long-lost old school ABC7 test pattern.

[@VPR2B]

I was hoping someone would enjoy that.

[@wmbrown6]

@@VPR2B - This, I think, was the sixth test pattern (and the first in color) over WABC-TV's long history. I.I.N.M., this dates to about 1970 or so. Looks to me like this remained in use to about 1979 or '80. This also confirms my memory of their using News Gothic Bold for this. In addition, the ABC Television Center at 7 West 66th Street, in those days, had mostly RCA TK-27 film chains, with a few new TK-28's being broken in.

[@VPR2B]

@@wmbrown6 Love your institutional knowledge. I had hands-on both TK-27 and TK-28 film chains during my many years in local TV. Oh the memories …

[@wmbrown6]

@@VPR2B- Did you have any experience with General Electric PE-24 or PE-240 color film chains? I know CBS Broadcast Center (encompassing both CBS network and WCBS-TV local) used the former (in service since 1965), albeit with rounded edges on the camera head. But NYC was basically, at that point, an RCA town in terms of film chains.

[@VPR2B]

@@wmbrown6 The station I worked for only had RCA gear -- the film chains, the VTRs (TR-22, TR-50, TR-60, TCR-100), the studio cameras (TK-44, TK-47), and pretty much all the early terminal equipment.

[@NEPatriot]

Observation and question. For as long as I can remember about ABC7's sign-off, they always after the anthem went to a test pattern or later, color bars and not cut the carrier like their sister stations KABC-TV and WLS-TV did according to the signoffs I have seen on KZbin. Also, when did WABC change the name of their studios from 7 West 66th to 7 Lincoln Square?

[@wmbrown6]

They didn't change the studio name, they moved starting in the summer of 1979 (7 Lincoln Square is at the corner of 67th and Columbus; it was because of this move that, for a few months from summer to fall 1979, "Eyewitness News" emanated from their newsroom). I'm wondering at what point they moved their transmitter from "the top of the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan" (where they'd been since 1951) to "the top of the World Trade Center in Manhattan." I seem to remember they cut the carrier after the sign-off until about the late 1970's / early '80's. At what point would the Television Code language (again, in their sign-on and sign-off scripts in one way or another since the 1950's) have been stricken from such scripts? Also, does anyone know for how long this test pattern in particular was used, and when the later one (seen at the end of a tape with a sign-off as dated Dec. 31, 1984 as elsewhere on here) first took effect? Speaking of this test pattern, it appears it was from a 8 x 10 slide with vertically-mounted fluorescent lights in the background, and a TV camera pointed at it. There were such machines, made by Tele-Measurements and called "Tele-Pat," on which various test and resolution charts were put up to align cameras. This particular TP (a circa 1970 variant from Tele-Measurements) was also used, in varying layouts, by WLS in Chicago and KGO in San Francisco. (KABC used a B&W pattern dating to the 1960's.) Does anyone know during this period whether then-ABC O&O WXYZ in Detroit used this type of test pattern, or were they strictly color bars by this point?

[@VectraQS]

How exactly did one tap into the AT&T landline feed (or were you working for one of the West Coast ABC stations at the time)?

[@VPR2B]

I was working at an independent station, and for reasons unknown, late at night, AT&T would pipe miscellaneous things down the line. I'd always keep an eye on it, and was usually ready to hit "record" if I saw something interesting. This was around the time that AT&T starting sending audio on an FM carrier, as opposed to the horrible 5kHz audio lines that had been standard since the dawn of network TV.

[@wmbrown6]

@@VPR2B - I think this was a few months after AT&T discontinued the old 5kHz telco and started diplexing signals so that the rest of the country got the same high quality 15kHz sound that, say, New York and Los Angeles got. Now, I'd like to see what test patterns were used at the time by WOR-TV, WPIX, WNET, WNYC-TV, WNJU-TV and WXTV.

[@VPR2B]

@@wmbrown6 You are correct. The diplex system rolled out in early 1978, and soon after that, I started seeing various things like this being routed to our station, even though we were not an ABC affiliate. To this day, I have no idea why they were sending it down the line.

[@blackmeme2050]

when did they move their transmitter to the world trade center twin towers

[@wmbrown6]

About 1980 or '81. WABC was already in place at WTC by the time a sign-off by Tedd Lawrence (albeit sans NAB TV Code language) was put to tape in 1982.

[@hf6150]

Sandy Hill co-hosting GMA. 😍

[@luisreyes1963]

The days of when TV had test patterns & the Good Practice seal. 📺

[@julianpulido1]

I think the Moog Star Spangled Banner was played that time.

[@wmbrown6]

It did, but for obvious reasons it would've been edited out. The year before this, Ed Jordan was among those who handled the sign-off shift. But as you could see, by this time he was moved to the sign-on shift, and was heard for years afterwards on Saturday mornings. I should also note that while WABC's 7 West 66th Street studios had banks of TK-27's (ten in all; plus four TK-28's that probably got into service around this time), ABC network had an outpost in Union City, NJ that ran film-related stuff in order to circumvent a NYC film tax that had been in place since around the late 1940's. (For the same reason, NBC had a similar setup in Englewood Cliffs, NJ; and even WNEW-TV, after parent Metromedia moved their corporate HQ to Secaucus, NJ some time in the late '70's, had run films there.) That NJ branch - which microwaved their signal back to New York - for years used General Electric PE-24's.

[@RosieHWeinstein-vl1nm]

The year I was born