You're on the Air! The Early Years of Connecticut Television; Interviews with Ken Jordan and George Thompson

We could find every old regular that we could find that was on and I had Mike Warren who took over for Jim in the studio and then I found Jim gallon out in California which is where I got your number. I got the number from and we interviewed him on the telephone we had just a terrific time. There were a couple of erosion of the earlier regulars a little bit older. And then you know after he left they kind of stayed for maybe two years three years and they move on go you know graduate go to college or whatever and then some other people came in so somewhere more I had more affinity you know from Mike to Warren somehow and more for Jim gallant So we kind of didn't say I was really kind of nice and gentle Galahad back to New Haven since the day he left. So it was like the first time he was back in 30 years. Guest first this is the same way one else that it was on TV was on every afternoon at 3:30 and when he got out of school. That's what you did you went home and turned on the TV and watched the Connecticut dance on the Connecticut Bandstand was by far and away the biggest show probably on local TV. You know in those days there were a lot

of TV stations around and I would guess they probably had a 50 percent share of the market or even better than that. What made a big was that you could see your friends on TV people you knew local people and it was very interesting to see your own friends as TV stars. How did you first. While our school high school was a junior high school I actually was invited to go on with a bunch of a bunch of students and that's what we did we went on and it was just the most terrific experience. You know when you see this on TV it's one thing but then to go there and actually be in the studio. And of course on TV everything looks bigger than it is in person so it's considerably smaller when you got there but it there was an electricity and magnetism. It was really very exciting to have a live group singing that day. Well I actually didn't sing in those days they played the records and they moved their blips and they called it lip sinking and they won signed autographs afterwards it was really a very exciting experience.

You know there was a group of kids who turned out to be what were known as regulars and they turned out to be personalities they would do dances and record hops with Jim gallant. They would go to Long Island around the Connecticut area they'd sign autographs they dance and they themselves became personalities. Yeah there was a lot of there were some merchandising not as much as you see today. There were Connecticut Bandstand cufflinks which turned out to be very collectible and very very rare and I guess collectors items these days. And of course the set was very simple he just really stood at a podium with a round record said Connecticut bandstand on it and they had some forty fives I guess hanging from strings from the ceiling. So it was really very simple I think they used two or three cameras and it was in black and white. Then it was broadcast the locally it was. It was very simple. I think sometimes we put a little more magic and mystique into what we think went on then then we go back and look we find that it really wasn't

as mystique and there wasn't this big aura around it as we think it was really pretty simple. It was. You had Jim gallant of course was a star of Connecticut Bandstand the payola scandal broke in New York and they were really after Alan Freed at that point payola being dissed jockeys taking money for playing certain records. There was an article in the paper I guess the payola scandal broke on a week day and the next day Gallup was gone. Like I guess the experience is one that can never ever be recaptured it could never happen again for a number of reasons I think probably one of the main reasons is because of the popular mass popularity of the show and at this day and age there are so many TV stations so many radio stations that there aren't

that vast majority of people all watching a certain thing so the impact isn't quite as large today as it was then I guess you could never go back and recapture that feeling that aura that sense of excitement then and accomplishment and of a real happening going on somebody. Yeah I think what happened was they all realize that once because I think within six or eight months there were no Bandstand shows left now there was a national American Bandstand show that went on and live. You know many many years after. But in every market just about every market had their own local Bandstand show and all those shows disappeared within probably year of one another. Oh.

Boss just ever so slightly. That's what. They're. That's the cough that everybody has it's about the tail end of it I hope. Yeah you know can you turn your wrist more toward your self or just your wrist and not to go that's right. Okay I guess I don't like that. Right.

OK we were pioneering in the early morning TV there was no such thing as a live early morning TV. When we introduced a show called breakfast time and I was pointed out to do it it was a two hour show every morning from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and which we'd play cartoons the cartoons we'd already been playing with now they introduced a live MC which was something different. So and we give birthdays and kids would send in the drawings and show them on TV and I I'd play with toys have guests community service type guests and this was done for two hours every morning. And the precise date I can't tell you but it was around 1960 you know a little earlier perhaps. And then they invented videotape. And I think in my mind TV was destroyed when videotape came on the scene because now you do it over and over again the the the live commercials are no more. Thanks you more time to do it.

We used to love to run into a live commercial and get out and that was it for the commercial. That videotape came along that took 12 hours to do a commercial. Anyway what's this got to do with breakfast time. Well they're always looking for ways to save money as you know even today. So some bright shining star up in the business office so hey we have a crew sitting around here between the late the early news and the late news doing nothing in the evening maybe a little maintenance. Why can't we do this to our show on tape every evening and just play it in the morning. Can you believe that anybody would buy that what they did. They bought it. And so we started doing the show at night. You couldn't talk about anything that was pertinent to the morning shift or the morning weather or anything. I was not to our show I was doing the news on the weather and everything else when I started taping the show I was in there in the

morning so the booth man would read the news over a slide and cut in on the breakfast time show. It went it went great for about three nights. Meaning three mornings and then the tape didn't work. The tape broke down so they didn't have that tape to put on the air in the morning. This was the beginning of the end. I got the call at 3:00 in the morning. Hey you have to get in here. And the crew will have to come in too because we don't have a tape to put on the air. We can play the cartoons but we don't have any tape to with your interviews or anything else. So get in here. Well I had just done a two hour show in the evening and I had to do a two hour show in the morning. And then we went along for a couple of days and everything was fine. And then as the tape broke down again same procedure. Well I think we tried it for six months and we said hey this isn't working. Come on give me a break. So we went back to

live TV in the morning and forgot the videotape but that's that's video tape is right here in my throat whenever I think about it. And I'm sure it is in my wife's as well because she had to get up with me so I hope the story isn't too long but that's that's my experience with videotape in the early days. Yes I'll agree with that. Yeah I mean that story was played. I worked at a local radio station WEAA live for 12 years mainly as there were morning and noontime news anchor and they called me over to channel 6 to do some commercials. And you know this was just a rehearsal. I was involved in

the real stuff. I said boy this is fun. I love doing this. So I approached them for a job. And that's how I got a job up top till I got a taste of it I did it really wasn't that interested in it. TV didn't seem that glamorous because we didn't have the fun and games we have today with the satellite feeds the cell phones. We had no communication with the news crew in those days. They had to stop at a payphone and call in and tell us what they were doing because we just weren't connected to them in any way shape or form for many years yet. Now it's a cinch pick up a cell phone and call. So it was very crude crude like what we didn't know it. We thought we were doing the best thing possible with a with a great medium but it didn't turn out to be the great medium that we thought it would be because there's a lot of stuff on the air that there really shouldn't be on the air but

that's what it's gotten to be and I'm not going to point out what but. How did you get involved. Well I had been well I had been in and use Eli. That was my forte and I went over there. They hired me for a news show to be a news anchor after I had been hired someone on their staff said hey I've been here awhile and I like and he was I should have that job. So he got the job for a while. And I went into the booth as an announcer and then. Breakfast time came along and I got back into and he was after a while I ski explained to them that really news is the thing that I want to do. So eventually I got back into it and you know that I did a lot of new shows over the years maybe 15 years at the noon show the way I can get back to videotape believe it or not. Somebody

decided we would tape the late news. There here was such a thing. How do you catch up on the news if you don't have that story in the news that you're taped. So for a while I was taping the late news because it saved money and allowed the crew to go home early. Oh no wait a minute then it didn't last that long. You know as soon as they discover that the news is breaking after a week but after we make this tape and we have no way of putting it on the air except to have the guy break in with a bullet in the news so it didn't work but it when they tried it. However much more different today early. Yeah. OK. We did have a news ticker like a newspaper would have and that's where we got. Much of our news but we only had three people in the

news department. When was writing the stuff. Another was doing news in early in the day. And the third was doing news late gathering there was no such thing as gathering the the local newspaper was our greatest source of news. And you know we weren't really on top of things when he was he was that and was. I use the word crude and I will use it again. It was crude but we didn't know it. We we thought we were doing a great service great service with hired I guess the great 1955 flood. Right. Well I guess that's when the subject of newsgathering came up as far as I'm concerned because they had this flood on their hands and know where to turn. That's when

I got back into the news business and TV. We need somebody to cover this flood and I was one of those there were more of course. So that's how I got back in the news and stayed in news from then on. But you know it was just an incredible thing the of the 55 floods the devastation you've seen the pictures you did a special on it as a matter of fact. The Naugatuck Valley was absolutely devastated ripped apart from Winstead on down. And that's the main street of Winsted disappeared and a lot of other towns Waterbury in Torrington got hit all the way down the line literally literally from Winstead all the way down to the coast destroyed along the river. So yeah. And we had one when me and one camera man to cover the story. My pal JACK Youngs there were plenty of other people whom we

covered a lot of the news with still photographs. Today we use video tape exclusively. But there were photographers out there is shooting still pictures for newspapers of big events. They sell the pictures to us and we will use them as part of our new show by putting them on an easel. You talk about being crude and putting these stills on an easel and moving a camera in to take a picture of it still. And back to the newscaster in between that's how we showed much of the news with these still pictures. People today I'm sure can't even conceive of covering the news that way but that's one way we did it. Well you have to start somewhere right. I would suspect your moment I guess going to Israel. Oh yes yes. That was my one overseas assignment in my 40 years of local deal hoose.

Somehow it came about that they wanted to do after the seven day war. They wanted to show Israel as it was and the people of Israel and how they faced their situation so they thought would be a good idea to send a couple of guys over there for maybe two weeks and cover different aspects of their life in Israel and they got the cooperation of local Jewish organizations of course. And. So. I think the thing that really struck me most was the emotion involved in walking down the the path that Jesus took. And according to the Bible carrying his cross and just to feel that you're if you're walking in the same direction walking the same path. Even now when I talk about it I can feel it's just an incredible experience but then all of Israel is an incredible experience because it's so full

of historic sites and stories. I'm not pushing Israel but you are with we. We said so again it was it was filmed. No videotape yet. We had to rush back to the airport in Tel Aviv every night no matter where we were in Israel. Get the film on the plane so send it back so that they could then have to be processed when I got back home and somebody had to edit it according to instructions that I included in the film package. So for two weeks they put a story on every night about some aspect of life in Israel. Even the Arab side as well as the Jewish side because there we ran into a lot of wonderful people of both Arab and Jew and they helped us out quite a bit but it was like right now. I don't think it's possible for it to go in the direction I'd like to see it go.

But I suppose it can't be helped but there's an awful lot of trivia on TV. I would like to see it on a loftier plane but it isn't going to happen. Just OK. Well in that aspect to most of the stations are doing a good job and community service. It isn't the kind of television that a lot of people want to see but so we're fighting here between what I might feel should be on the air and what the people want to see and they won't watch the lot of stuff that we want to see. So again we play we pander we play to the what the public wants. And we have to give them what they want because they're keeping us on the air. But I look at what can be learned from the program. Yeah. Do With.

That's the wrong direction. But we managed to do so much with so little. I would like to see more coverage of things like Israel without necessarily going to Israel to take one aspect of life in a community and really expose it and tell the stories of the people in a neighborhood for example but this has been done and could be done over and over again we've got a lot of neighborhoods we could cover and let me say this there is I think too much violence on commercial TV. And I think unfortunately that a lot of our kids have learned about violence and.