[QuadList] RCA Quad and TCR-100 action at KTXL, 40, Sacramento in 1985

[Ted Langdell]

Happy Birthday, Fox 40!

KTXL celebrates 40 years on Channel 40 on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008.   
It's still in the same building that was largely an RCA plant  
(turnkey?) for many years.

Tape was TR-50's and 60's as I recall. There were several still in  
operation when I worked there shooting newsfilm in 1979.

Two TCR-100's were in use then, with the older machine used for news  
playback. Think I've related this story about the "engineer scramble"  
one night when one of the machines went down and both news cuts and  
spots played from a single deck.

They pulled it off, though.

Here's a 1985 KTXL, 40, Sacramento signoff in 1982... with RCA TR-600  
and TCR-100

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_J6ImIwFw4&feature=related

Under the Jack Matranga leadership, the station prided itself on  
picture quality and on-air "cleanliness."  16mm RCA TP-66's had  
PicClear units, which helped the station's movies—and later, newsfilm— 
look good. Movies and filmed syndication formed a large part of the  
station's pre-Fox programming.

The station had the first Type-C 1" A-B Roll edit suite in the  
Sacramento market using Ampex VPR-2's which you'll see in this  1985  
sign off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kz469Be8CQ&feature=related

The edit controller keyboard appears during the "and operates on a  
frequency of ___ to ___ MHz"  in this  Anyone recognize the editor?   
I want to say Paltex Vanguard?

Compare the two clips to see how the tape/telecine area changed in  
just three years with the addition of at least four 1" machines.

I have some 1" tape from the station (Ampex196-boxed) dating to 1986  
and later that is still in good shape. As satellite distribution  
became more common, the station's tape library grew while the film  
section shrank.

Original cameras were a pair of RCA TK-42's on RCA badged Houston  
Fearless electric pedestals. Succeeded by TK-44's and later three  
TK-47's which were donated to Chuck Pharris's collection.  You'll see  
the Fox 40 logo on the fourth camera from the left in the linked photo.

I remember watching the 10' O'clock news the night the blue tube  
(IIRC) failed in one of the cameras, and they couldn't re-arrange the  
newscast to do a two-camera shoot. It looked extremely odd to see  
anchors looking just fine in one shot and not in the next. The next  
night they did just a two camera shoot.

I visited CE Jack Davis a few days later.  They had just received  
Sony 3-chip studio cameras from Tribune sister station WPIX, and put  
those on the air soon after.

Forty years from now, do you imagine anyone will be talking about  
what kinds of servers, hard drives and encoders the station was using  
in 2008?

Ted

Ted Langdell
flashscan8.us
209 East 12th Street
Marysville, CA 95901
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