Live from the moon, Part II

(NASA photo)

The prospects for live satellite coverage of the moon landing were looking good. Lieutenant Tom Scanlan, the top dog at AFTV's Ramstein and Spangdahlem operations, had carte blanche to tap into the Eurovision microwave feed of Apollo XI coverage from NASA and the States. And Eurovision waived the fee. But he still had two major problems. How was he going to get the microwave signal from the mountaintop repeater at Donnersburg to Ramstein? He'd need a 25-mile link that didn't exist.

And he still had not told his bosses what he planned to do.

The first problem was easily solved, although the solution would bend a few more regs. Tom and his staff put together a list of all of the NCO and Officers clubs at bases and posts in the Ramstein and Spangdahlem coverage areas. "Salesmen" from the stations called on them and asked for money to pay for a microwave link to Eurovision. In return, they agreed that AFTV would run "commercials" for the clubs during cutaways from the Apollo XI coverage. The clubs knew a good deal when they saw one, and Tom quickly had the money to pay Deutsche Bundespost for the equipment to receive Donnersburg's Eurovision signal.

Ramstein would then send the signal on to Spangdahlem, using for the first time a three-hop military microwave system that was in the final stages of construction.

On the day before our first Apollo XI telecast, engineers from Deutsche Bundespost showed up at Ramstein with a mobile crane. They aligned a microwave receiver with Donnersburg. Within a few minutes, AFTV Ramstein had a clean signal from Eurovision. Soon, Ramstein fed the signal to AFTV Spangdahlem, where we let out a cheer in the control room. For the first time ever, we had a live picture from the outside world on a monitor in our master control.

On July 20, AFTV's live Apollo XI coverage began on its stations at Ramstein and Spangdahlem and on the repeater at Wiesbaden Air Base. Ramstein packaged the coverage, but during breaks the individual stations cut away from the ad hoc network and broadcast their own spots for local NCO and Officers clubs. At Spangdahlem, we stayed fully staffed in the control room and in the announce booth to handle live cutaways. Given the intense interest in this "experiment," there was no shortage of volunteers.

What our viewers saw on July 20 and 21 was wall-to-wall coverage.

Depending on what the Eurovision pool director decided at any given time, we saw familiar American faces: CBS coverage with Walter Cronkite and former astronaut Wally Schirra, ABC coverage with Jules Bergman, and NBC coverage with John Chancellor and David Brinkley. Our transitory network aired every morsel of coverage that was available.

At 3:39 Central European Time on the morning of July 21, Neil Armstrong began his descent from the lunar module Eagle, down a short ladder to the moon's surface. Tension in the crowded control room at Spangdahlem was acute. At 3:56 a.m., Armstrong's foot touched the lunar surface and he delivered his "one small step" speech. The pictures were fuzzy. The audio was scratchy. But we were broadcasting live from the moon! In the Spangdahlem control room, we all started cheering and grinning at each other. Tom tells me that in the Ramstein control room, grown men in uniform had tears streaming down their faces.

The Apollo XI mission was a success, and so was Tom's sub rosa network.

As dawn broke, a few of us from the station walked over to the NCO Club looking for a cup of coffee. The place was still full of people watching AFTV's coverage. When the crowd recognized us from TV, genuine applause broke out, and strangers shook our hands.

Later that day, the stations at Spangdahlem and Ramstein were deluged with congratulatory phone calls. Tom fielded inquiries from German and American news organizations about his one-off Apollo XI network. He also took calls from 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-star generals who expressed their heartfelt thanks -- and their surprise and even amazement that a live broadcast had been arranged from "back home," let alone by those eccentric Air Force TV guys.

AFTV Germany had captured the hill in military broadcasting.

Early on, as he was setting up his secret network, Tom decided that it would be easier to seek forgiveness afterwards than to seek permission in advance. As it turned out, he didn't even have to ask for mercy. "Not once -- not one single time -- did anyone, anywhere, at anytime, ever question what we did, how we did it, why we did it, or on whose authority we did it," he told me in a recent e-mail.

Forty years later, we take live satellite broadcasts for granted. But in 1969, AFTV Germany did something no other AFRTS TV station had ever done. The dam broke. Within months, AFRTS headquarters was providing satellite feeds of the World Series and the Super Bowl. Today, satellite feeds to U.S. military stations overseas are commonplace.

But ... the big moon-landing broadcast was the last major event of my AFTV career. Five months later, my tour in Germany was over, and I headed home.

Six months after that, the Spangdahlem studios were shut down and the staff was dispersed to other locations. The Spangdahlem transmitter became a repeater for programming out of Ramstein.

And local live shows from AFTV-22 were no more.

John David Wild, AFTV's "Wild Child," e-mailed a further update after I posted the story above. Here's what he wrote: "Tom Scanlan went on to a civilian career in broadcasting, opening TV stations in the U.P. of Michigan. Those successes included men from his AFTV days. Tom remained in the USAF Reserves, retiring at the rank of Lt. Colonel. A Prince among men, he was a King amongst military broadcast leaders."

Live from the moon, Part I

The Apollo XI flight to the moon was launched on July 16, 1969. (NASA photo)

A little background will help. AFTV-22 was, in official military-speak, Operating Location B of Detachment 3 of the 7122nd Support Squadron. That meant our station manager at Spangdahlem reported to the commander of Detachment 3, about 90 miles east of us near Kaiserslautern. The commander of Detachment 3 also ran the AFTV station at nearby Ramstein AB.

In 1968, the new officer in charge of Detachment 3 was Lieutenant Tom Scanlan. Tom brought a few unique qualities to his job. He had been a TV broadcast engineer in civilian life. He had also been an enlisted man, a staff sergeant, before becoming an officer.

As he had seen station executives do back in the States, he got to know his competition when he arrived in Germany. His interest in engineering also made him eager to visit German TV operations ARD and ZDF. It was then that he learned details about Eurovision's "Blue Line," which used microwave relays to network most of Europe's nations, including some behind the Iron Curtain.

Meanwhile ... in the late spring of 1969 GIs all over Europe were as fascinated as people back in the States by the prospect that, if all went well, an American would walk on the moon in July.

That enthusiasm, however, was tempered by the fact that we wouldn't see it on AFTV until a few days later, not until film could be flown in from the States. AFTV stations had no satellite capability.

Then came word that German authorities had okayed a plan for AFTV stations to use live pictures as they were broadcast on ARD and to use an English-language audio feed via short-wave from the States. That was an acceptable solution, but still not good. To rebroadcast the live ARD pictures, AFTV stations would have to aim a studio camera at a TV set receiving the ARD signal, thus creating a picture of a picture and further degrading what were expected to be low-quality NASA images from the moon. Complicating the plan was the fact that short-wave audio transmissions from the States were ... well ... marginal at times.

That wasn't good enough for Tom. He was an engineer. He would not be happy with less than the best video and audio. He was a former enlisted man, and he thought the troops deserved the best.

Tom asked around and found out that German-television engineers were, as he puts it, "just as 'geeked' over this looming worldwide event as we were."

Tom just couldn't stop thinking about that European microwave circuit -- the Blue Line he'd learned about during his get-acquainted meetings at ARD and ZDF. He called ARD and learned that the main Eurovision circuit ran right through a mountaintop repeater just 25 miles from Ramstein. Tom made a few more calls and sought permission from Eurovision to tap into its raw, live feed of satellite images from the States and NASA. The answer, he says, was, "Yes, indeed!"

He also arranged for a raw English-language audio feed via England and a backup plan to use BBC audio.

But how was he going to pay for all of this? And how would he manage to get the live signal from the mountaintop Blue Line repeater to Ramstein and then to the other American military television stations under his command? Spangdahlem's AFTV-22 had no microwave link to Ramstein.

And there was another problem. Tom had not shared his plan with those further up the chain of command. He was operating on his own, a risky business when you're in uniform.

But Tom and his staff plowed ahead. His AFTV stations would carry the best signal possible for the Apollo XI moon landing -- so the troops could see history in the making.

"We were off and running," he says.

In my next post, I'll tell the rest of the amazing story of how Lt. Tom Scanlan made it happen.


I am grateful to Tom Scanlan for the information and details he has recently provided to me about AFTV's live broadcast of the moon landing and its consequences. In his e-mails, he has answered my arcane questions with patience and good cheer.

Do not talk lies about the dead

We were so young. And we were so defiant.

We might have been wearing USAF uniforms, but we were still civilians at heart and full of youthful rebellion magnified in so many ways by the turbulent times we were living through.

Perhaps the most defiant act that Sergeant Charles Minx and I committed at AFTV-22 was on Memorial Day of 1969. We believed that the tribute we had prepared was inspired. We also thought it might get us in very deep and very hot water.

Very few visuals survive from my years at AFTV in Spangdahlem. I have a couple of small reels of black-and-white film and a few audiotapes. They're so old that I no longer have access to media that will play them. I thought all traces of our tribute were lost.

I was chatting last week about the Memorial Day affair via e-mail with Chuck when he surprised me by sending me an MP3 file of the music and his narration. He had kept it all these years.

I surprised him by spending about 12 hours re-creating the missing video, keeping as close as I could to the spirit of the original. I e-mailed it to Chuck.

John David Wild looked at very early edits and made sure I kept the field images to the period from World War II to Vietnam.

I had found the words Chuck speaks in the 1946 novel "Mr. Roberts" by Thomas Heggen. I saw the film with Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon, but I had not known it was based on a book -- and a Broadway play -- until I picked it up in the base library at Bitburg in about 1967. The passage is from an interior monologue by the Mister Roberts character, contemplating the futility of war.

I found the music on an American Forces Radio and Television Service transcription. It is from the soundtrack of the 1967 Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." As Chuck told me recently, the music bed fit so perfectly that it sounds as though we commissioned original music.

After the piece aired in 1969 on primetime Memorial Day newscasts, I expected to be called on the carpet or worse. It never happened. I got a few comments from fellow staffers and friends, and that was it.

Chuck told me last week that he remembers being reprimanded by our station manager because the narration included the word "bastards." He was ordered not to use that word on AFTV-22 again.

Why did the brass at three U.S. air bases -- Spangdahlem, Bitburg and Hahn -- not go through the roof? Did our anti-war sentiments (coupled with visuals) not come through as defiant? Did the brass hear only what they wanted to hear -- only the words that sounded heroic? Or ... were they even watching?

As the King said to Anna, "Tis a puzzlement."

AFTV-22's nerve center

When you entered master control at AFTV-22 you took a step back in time. The only pieces of equipment of anything like a recent vintage were the two Spotmaster audio-cart machines (on the left, behind me). Spotmasters had been standard broadcast equipment in the States for six or seven years. They played endless-loop audiotape cartridges, and they re-cued themselves automatically using a tone on a separate track. We used them for station breaks and, with slides as visuals, for local PSAs.

That's our resident rebel, Airman John David "Wild Child" Wild, sitting next to me. Behind us is Sgt. Peter Neumann, who was an adroit news anchorman as well as a clever and witty colleague.

Note the 15-inch reel-to-reel audiotape machine to our right, rack-mounted above a patchboard. Anybody who had worked radio in the 1950s would have been right at home with that bulky machine.

A small live-announce booth is on the other side of the window behind us. Peter is sitting on the console where the audio operator would be during a live broadcast.

To my right you can see part of a row of camera, preview and on-air monitors that have a 1950s "Industry on Parade" look to them. The rudimentary switcher is to my right below the monitors. Note that it's on a sloped surface, slanting down and away from the director, who would be sitting where I am. I had never before seen a switcher configured that way, nor have I seen one since. We could see the studio itself through a large window behind the row of monitors.

There was never any hope of more modern equipment at AFTV-22 during my tenure. The brass already knew that microwave links would eventually tie the American Forces Television stations together and that Spangdahlem's site would eventually be nothing more than a repeater for programs from AFTV headquarters at Ramstein AB.

In 1970, the links went into operation, and AFTV personnel at Spangdahlem were assigned elsewhere.

Bubba

Sgt. Tom "Bubba" Quinn at the AFTV-22 sports desk. (Don Dale photo)

Nobody didn't like Sgt. Tom "Bubba" Quinn. I think the nickname was one we gave him, but I'm not sure. Tom didn't care. Of all the AFTV-22 staff, Tom was the most easy-going, the most even-tempered. He was dependable. Reliable. Steady.

The only time I ever saw Tom rattled -- seriously rattled -- was one evening when I was anchoring the news and he was sitting next to me, waiting for me to hand off to him for sports. The anchor desk that night was right below the large overhead mirror we had been using for the tabletop Fußball tournament on "Catch 22." Just as I was reading the weather forecast, the mirror slipped loose from its moorings and fell -- shattering in an explosion of sound on the desk in front of Tom. If Tom had been leaning forward to read his sports copy on the air, he probably would have been badly injured.

The crash scared the daylights out of both us, although neither of us was hurt. We both froze for an instant. The director hastily faded to black and punched up the newscast logo. I rolled my chair back from the desk and walked to the control room, where I burned off adrenaline by pacing back and forth. Tom slowly stood up, never saying a word, and walked out of the studio's back door. We found him sitting in the base library, badly shaken.

Another memorable on-air moment came when Tom was ending his sportscast with a funny short about an Atlanta Braves home game: The Braves' Indian-chief mascot had accidentally set fire to his teepee while attempting to send smoke signals. Tom had read the story in advance, but he didn't read it out loud until he was on the air. He hadn't given much thought to the mascot's name, thinking it was just a nonsense word. But when he heard himself saying "Chief Noc-a-Homa" aloud on his sportscast, he realized what it meant and cracked himself up. He simply could not stop giggling. He tried valiantly to continue, but with tears of laughter running down his cheeks, he finally gave up. Watching Tom break up tickled me so much that I had to work hard myself to hold it together. The director cut to me and I managed to sign off the newscast.

In Tom's defense, it must be noted that he was not the first to be taken in by the chief's name. American network sportscaster Curt Gowdy also missed the point completely the first time he said the mascot's name on the air. Gowdy pronounced it as though it rhymed with "Yokohama," the Japanese port city.

At least Tom nailed the pronunciation, even if he didn't get the pun until late in the game.

Fußball and football

Tabletop Fußball was a revelation to me when I first got to Germany. Fußball is German for football, but it's not the game we know in the States as football. It's more like ... well ... soccer. (Since it's a noun, it's always capitalized in German, and that odd character, an Eszett, in the middle of the word is actually a double "s.")

The Americans picked up tabletop Fußball from the Germans. But the American troops were obsessed by it. There was a table in almost every dayroom I ever set foot in. The NCO Clubs had tables. So did the rec centers.

In late 1968 we decided to hold a live Fußball tournament on "Catch 22." Finally, we'd get a chance to use that overhead mirror in the studio -- for tabletop shots. The response to the call for entries was enthusiastic. Air Force and Army units from all over the region entered teams. It was one of our most successful attempts to involve our audience in "Catch 22." The competition was keen. The tournament lasted several months.

The AFTV-22 crew also broadcast a live American football game from the Spangdahlem field that fall -- a first for us. Fortunately, the field was just behind the AFTV-22 building, between the studio and the flight line. By dragging long cables to the near side of the field we were able to run three live cameras and direct the show from master control. Everybody on the staff was involved in broadcasting that game, from running cameras to doing play-by-play and color commentary, to directing.

Word filtered down that the brass at Spangdahlem had laid down one rule for us: Do not show pictures of activity on the flightline. Given that the flightline was behind the bleachers on the far side of the field, we didn't really see how it would be possible not to see it on camera. But we agreed to the guidelines anyway: "Sure, yeah. We'll follow the rule."

Of course we couldn't. Just a few minutes into the game, a successful 30-yard Spangdahlem pass had the crowd on its feet. The roar of approval segued seamlessly into the roar of a 49th Tactical Fighter Wing Phantom taking off above the heads of the cheering crowd. There was just no way to shoot the game without showing takeoffs and landings.

The secret was out: USAF jets were operating at Spangdahlem. What a shock.

We never heard one word of criticism from the brass after the game.

The '68 election

In 1968, Sgt. Les Jackson (left) and I anchored AFTV-22's coverage of the U.S. presidential election. (USAF photo)

The 1968 U.S. presidential election would be the last to be anchored live in the AFTV-22 studio. Our resources: a UPI teletype machine, American Forces Radio and Television Service short-wave radio broadcasts from the States, and a decent selection of stock slides and film clips. AFRTS was not yet providing any live satellite coverage.

Planning for election night began several months in advance. Sgt. Les Jackson and I were assigned as co-anchors. Master Sergeant Jimmy Walker, the station manager, assigned himself to be producer.

Les and I spent hours in the library researching the candidates, their career paths, and their positions on the issues. Walker and the crew built an election-night set, lit it and plotted camera angles.

In our planning meetings, we realized we faced some obstacles. There were simply not enough of us to produce wall-to-wall coverage. But we could do live cut-ins twice an hour, more often as the unfolding story warranted. We knew we would have short-wave reports from network radio correspondents in the States. (We also knew that relying on short-wave radio could be dicey because of the medium's inherently poor quality.) We knew we would have vote tallies by way of the UPI teletype machine just as fast as they were available in the States. (We also realized that the UPI signal itself relied on short-wave radio from the States, and garbled news copy was a familiar problem.)

Back in the States the polls would close in the early evening. But that would be around midnight in Spangdahlem. It promised to be a long night at AFTV-22.

1968 was a year that came close to ripping the fabric of American unity apart. At AFTV-22, we had not been able to provide live pictures of the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the race riots that spread across the nation, or of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, or of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, or of the confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention. But our audience did read the Stars and Stripes newspaper every day, listened to the news on AFN radio and watched the nightly newscasts on AFTV. They had watched delayed film coverage of the campaign, and they were intensely interested in the Humphrey-Nixon race.

Richard Nixon ran on a promise to restore law and order, developing a strategy of appealing to conservative white Southerners. Hubert Humphrey decided on a combative campaign style and painted himself as an underdog in the mold of Harry Truman. Complicating the race was a strong third-party candidate, former Alabama governor and ardent segregationist George Wallace.

AFTV-22's coverage, given the obstacles, was respectable if not state-of-the-art. Our small staff began its reporting with the 10 p.m. newscast and cut-ins continued through the night. It was not until the next afternoon that a winner emerged. Nixon took the election with 301 electoral votes. (Humphrey got 191 electoral votes, and Wallace took 46. Just half a million popular votes separated the top two.)

By the time our coverage ended, the entire AFTV-22 staff was exhausted. We had done our job with few tools. We had kept our audience informed, maybe not with the bells and whistles of the professionals back in the States, but with the same speed and accuracy.

In the following weeks, as we sat around the bullpen office at the Spangdahlem studio, we talked about the coming of live satellite coverage. We knew that the days when we'd be working alone, and isolated, were numbered.

It happened faster than we expected. Just seven months later, we brought our audience live pictures from the moon.

Baseball and burgers

Film breaks were a frequent problem at AFTV-22. The projection equipment was old and not well maintained. Splicing and re-spooling the film could be a nightmare.

My AFTV-22 colleague Sgt. Chuck Minx, who reads this blog, e-mailed me this morning with a story he remembers. He recounts the tale well, so here are his words:

"Back in the days before videotape was commonplace, or communications satellites existed, or color TV was the norm (and, yes, there were such days), we in the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service stationed overseas used to air baseball games on 16mm one-mil mylar film, about as thick as thin audiotape and much thinner than regular movie film. A complete three-hour baseball game would fit comfortably on a single standard 16mm film reel.

"Being typical Air Force slackers, after we got the game on the air we would sprint to the bowling alley next door to enjoy beer and hamburgers while the film projector ground on, a lonely toiler in a deserted TV station. We monitored the game on the bowling alley TV just to make sure that everything was OK.

"One Sunday afternoon we followed this procedure as usual, and as the game wound down to the last inning we came back to the studio in time to get us into the following show. I switched us through the break and went down to telecine to take down the game ­­ but the game was already down.

"Now it must be understood that this aforementioned mylar film was a very special medium and could be spliced only with sticky tape. Regular film cement only made a tenuous and temporary splice. The last person to handle this game film was evidently unaware of this requirement and attached the academy leader with film cement, as was his usual practice. The splice managed to hold together through the gate and over the sound drum, so the sound and picture of the game went on the air OK. But the bad splice parted somewhere between the last sprocket wheel and the take-up reel.

"While we were refreshing ourselves for hours at the bowling alley, the projector was diligently unspooling the entire baseball game. A tangled haystack of film was forming waist-deep on the floor.

"AFTV-22 had a very nice German fellow to handle all the film duties: cleaning, splicing, shipping, timing, etc. We looked at the film haystack, convinced ourselves that it really wasn't our responsibility, grabbed it up as best we could and transported it to the film room floor. We left a note for the film guy, explaining the problem, and forgot all about it.

"A few weeks later I was berated by an irate station manager, who had just himself been berated by the base commander, who had been berated by his superior, because the baseball game, which had been shipped on to the AFTV station in Berlin, had been aired with an unusual problem. Our film guy had spliced the academy leader to the wrong end of the haystack, wound the film onto a reel, and sent it on to Berlin. When Berlin aired it, the game came on upside down and backwards."

Thanks, Chuck, for sharing the story. The only thing I'll add is that the base bowling alley at Spangdahlem served the tastiest burgers I ever had in the USAF.

Chasing stars, Part III

Interviewing pop star Bobby Rydell (left) after a show at the Spangdahlem NCO Club in 1969 was a tough slog. (Photo by Chuck Minx)

Six years earlier, he'd been at the top of the charts. In 1969, not so much. Bobby Rydell was on a USO tour, and one of his stops was Spangdahlem's NCO Club. Chuck Minx and I didn't have to lug the Auricon sound camera far to snag an interview for "Catch 22."

Rydell hit the high notes of his short career in the show that night. His discography included "Wild One" and "Volare" in 1960, "The Cha-Cha-Cha" in 1962, "Forget Him" in 1964 and a scattering of others that made the Top 100. But now he was a Philadelphia kid from the "American Bandstand" days trying to make a living in the face of the radical changes wrought by the British Invasion.

Rydell was one of the few entertainers I interviewed for "Catch 22" who were approximately the same age as the majority of their AFTV-22 audience. That meant he was young, and off-stage he lacked the ease and grace that were the hallmark of older performers. As we set up the camera and lights in a far corner of the NCO Club, he kept to himself, refusing to make small talk.

The interview did not go well. Rather than being enthusiastic, Rydell was cruising on autopilot and husbanding his words as though they were rationed. I think we wound up using a 45-second sound bite on the air -- out of a 15-minute filmed interview.

Rydell was an exception. All of the other entertainers we interviewed for "Catch 22" were delighted to show their support for the troops. They were playful and spirited. They seemed to get a kick out of being interviewed for this primitive little AFTV-22 outfit.

Perhaps Rydell was just having a bad night. Or maybe he was bored.

By the book

Master Sergeant Jimmy Walker (right), Sgt. Les Jackson (center) and I huddle in a hallway outside the AFTV-22 studio before a live broadcast in late 1968. (USAF photo)

In 1968, the USAF got all serious with us at AFTV-22. That was when Technical Sergeant Ray Santangelo, the station manager we all adored, rotated back to the States and Master Sergeant Jimmy Walker took over.

Walker was old-school, hard-line military and rigid -- what we called a "lifer." The USAF was his career. Formerly a military plumber, Walker had cross-trained to the American Forces Radio and Television Service. We secretly called him the "broadcast plumber."

Ray Santangelo had been a great guy to work for. His philosophy took into account the fact that his troops were all imaginative, intelligent, up-and-coming broadcasters. He never let military BS get in the way of running a television station that served the needs of everybody from the base commanders to their lowliest troops.

Walker ran things differently, and his troops didn't much like it. Some of us were marginally insubordinate. Others of us were openly rebellious.

Walker instituted GI parties. We'd all have to come in on our off-duty time on a weekend morning to strip, wax, polish and buff the studio and office floors. Most of us hadn't done that since basic training. Sometimes this involved using razor blades to scrape built-up wax from the floors by hand. (The station did employ a putzfrau, a charwoman, who kept the place clean -- but not clean enough for Walker.) He insisted that we wear our on-air blazers only in the studio. Otherwise, we had to be in the military uniform of the day. He insisted that we answer the phones by the book: "American Forces Television, Sergeant Dale, how may I help you, Sir!"

We didn't accept all of Walker's edicts gracefully, to say the least. Chuck Minx reminded me recently of one GI party in particular. While we were scraping wax from the studio floor with razor blades, we began singing a parody Chuck came up with of the official Air Force song, the one that begins "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder..." The standard lyrics end with the line, "Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force!" Chuck's parody ended with "The floor's the limit in the Air Force!" As Chuck tells the story, "While lustily singing this song I looked up to see Jimmy the Plumber standing in the doorway, a look of consternation on his face, with three or four of his cronies standing behind him, laughing. He must have brought them over to see his rebellious crew being taken down a peg and was chagrined to find them desecrating one of his sacred hymns."

We were not little angels in blue. Oh, no. AFTV-22 and the base library shared a building and bathrooms. It was shortly after Walker's arrival that graffiti began to appear on the walls. Considering the bathroom's clientele -- librarians and TV people -- the graffiti had an intellectual aspect as well as an irreverent enlisted-man flair. I remember the week a list of names began to appear on the wall. At first I didn't see what they had in common: James A. Garfield, Charles Darwin, Yosemite Sam ....

But then I got it: They all had facial hair. In the Air Force, that was verboten. So I, too, began to add to the list. Within a month, there were hundreds and hundreds of names scrawled on the wall, and the list kept growing.

Walker's most outrageous onslaught against his staff followed a prank executed by an airman whose identity to this day remains a secret -- mostly. Walker had taken great pride in creating an array of photographs of us AFTV-22 personalities on a wall near the station's entrance. A picture of one of our more inept staff members, a career NCO, was among them.

Young Airman X decided to re-caption the picture. Below it, he placed a new label: "Norman, the Friendly Drelb." (It was a nonsense phrase that announcer Gary Owens used on "Laugh In.") Walker eventually noticed the new caption and took it to be it to be an insult to all NCOs everywhere. He demanded to know who did it.

It was on the day that Neil Armstrong took "one giant step for mankind" that Walker lined us all up at attention in the studio and told us he'd drop plans for a nonjudicial Article 15 punishment if one of us would confess. Being the fairly slack military outfit that we were, our first formation wasn't up to military standards. Walker suggested we use a line created by linoleum tiles on the floor as our guide. Then he walked down the line asking each of us to tell him who had "desecrated" the photograph. We all knew -- or thought we knew -- the answer, but nobody talked. Walker held us at attention for a good half hour before he finally accepted the fact that nobody was going to squeal. It wasn't that our loyalty to Airman X was so strong. It was that Walker himself was disliked by so many. He finally gave up and dismissed the formation.

For the next 18 months, our new station manager did his best to whip this unruly band of airmen into something resembling a military unit.

For the most part, he failed.

Come fly with me, Part III

This image was taken from the cockpit in the skies over Spangdahlem during my ride in an F-102 in early 1969. I used a Pentax Spotmatic 35mm camera. (Don Dale photo)

I had next to no experience shooting film before my F-102 ride. Chuck Minx, our film expert, gave me a crash course with the station's 16mm camera. His major piece of advice -- and it was good advice -- was to hold the camera still and not to try any fancy panning or zooming.

I had no experience in an F-102 either, but the Air Force took care of that. I had to go to Wiesbaden Air Base near Frankfurt to be checked out in a pressure chamber. I had to have a thorough physical. I had to learn about the workings of the flight suit. The pilots and instructors who walked me through the process seemed to think it was all such a lark. They did warn me, though, that my pilot would probably do what he could to make me throw up and that I'd have to buy the ground crew a case of beer if I did. They'd be the ones who'd clean up after me.

I wish I could remember the name of the officer who took me up in his F-102. I didn't meet him until the morning of the flight, and the only other time I saw him was for a few minutes before the live broadcast a week later. I do remember being told he was a real pilot's pilot and that one of his regular duties was training other pilots.

On the appointed morning, I suited up with the pilots, walked through the pre-flight process with them, and we were ready. When we actually got into the cockpit, I remember thinking that it was much more cramped than I had imagined and that I'd have to be careful not to bang the camera into anything.

When clearance for takeoff came, the power of the F-102's engine shocked me. We took off down the runway in a blur. The pilot pulled back on the stick and suddenly we were headed straight up. The g-force pinned me to my seat. Clearly, this was going to be an e-ticket ride.

Once we were aloft, the pilot pointed to other members of the squadron who had taken off with us. I began to shoot film. The sky was clear blue with puffy white clouds -- perfect for pictures.

Then the pilot asked me if I'd like to try a few aerobatics. I was doing great, so I said yes. We did barrel rolls, loops, climbs and dives. I alternated between shooting 16mm film for the broadcast and 35mm still shots with my Pentax Spotmatic. I was getting some great pictures. I was also having the time of my life.

"I'm going to lose some elevation and fly right over the base so you can get some shots," the pilot told me. "Good idea," I said. He told me that at our speed I'd have only a few seconds over the base for filming. "Warn me," I asked. I looked through the camera's lens as we approached the base and started filming when the pilot gave me a heads-up.

The sprawling base abruptly rolled by beneath us. I could see the flight line, the athletic field, the PX and the AFTV studio. It was a perfect shot. My view of Spangdahlem through the lens was faultless -- straight down, as though the base were some sort of miniature tabletop display. I was exhilarated by the flight and by the prospect of some exciting pictures.

Then I stopped to wind the camera and promptly threw up. I had just enough notice -- barely -- to grab the barf bag from my flight-suit pocket. I was totally disoriented.

What I hadn't realized as I was shooting was that the pilot had gradually rolled us almost upside down so I'd have the best angle. When our flyover ended and I stopped looking through the lens, my brain couldn't reconcile what I was seeing with what my inner ear was telling it.

Almost immediately I felt fine, but I kept the barf bag in my left hand just in case. I did appreciate it when the pilot switched the cockpit AC to max cold air. For a short time it was so frigid that I could swear I saw snowflakes coming out of the air vents.

I steeled myself and asked the pilot if he could make another pass over the base so I could shoot it again, just to give us some editing alternatives. He did. But this time I knew what was coming and had no problem.

When the flight ended, I thanked the pilot for the ride and gave him some money to buy beer for the ground crew.

We had five days to go before the Crested Cap episode aired on "Catch 22". I wrote and recorded the voiceover to accompany the film -- omitting any mention of being airsick -- and Chuck Minx edited together a slick film package. The station's staff all wanted to know what the ride had been like. I told them it had been the thrill of a lifetime. I asked Les Jackson if he would refrain from mentioning anything on the broadcast about me being airsick.

The show turned out to be memorable. Les hosted. Chuck ran audio. I directed. It began with our "exclusive" film piece and segued into a lively interview with Spang's commander, brass from the visiting F-102 squadron and the pilot who had taken me up.

As the show was ending -- with no mention of my throwing up -- we rolled film of the second base flyover. Les had time for one more question for my pilot, and he actually smirked when he asked it: "What's that in the lower left corner of that last shot?"

"That's the top of Sgt. Dale's barf bag," my pilot said. "He threw up the first time we tried that move."

Come fly with me, Part II

A squadron of F-102A interceptors from the States was temporarily stationed at Spangdahlem as part of the Crested Cap exercise in early 1969. (Photo by Chuck Minx)

As AFTV-22 was working hard to improve its look and beef up its audience appeal, it was easy to forget that the station's primary mission had to do with disseminating that pesky "command information," as the AFTV regs put it. In short, the real purpose of AFTV-22 was to allow commanders to communicate with their troops.

On a routine level that included, for example, the weather forecast. We got updates before every newscast from the base meteorologist. At air bases, which are by their very nature focused on flying conditions, the weather was command information.

Public service announcements about re-enlisting, limiting the gold flow, service club activities and educational opportunities also fit the definition. In commercial television, cynics say the programs are just a way of keeping the commercials from bumping together. At AFTV, entertainment programming was just there to keep the command information bits from piling up on each other.

Then along came a big challenge: Project Crested Cap in early 1969. Crested Cap was the Air Force contribution to what was to be the Army's annual Reforger project, in which units from the States would be deployed to Europe for multinational exercises. (The name Reforger came from "Return of Forces to Germany.") It wasn't merely a show of force. If war broke out in Europe, it would be the actual plan to strengthen the NATO presence.

This exercise was a big deal for the U.S. military in West Germany, whose very reason for being there was the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The West knew that if the Soviets attacked, tanks would likely come roaring through the Fulda Gap. The Fulda Gap was a passage in the mountains near the East German border that would be suitable for operations by large-scale armored forces. The prospect of a tank battle at the Fulda Gap dominated NATO Cold War planning. The multinational Crested Cap exercise would tie directly to a potential NATO response to such an attack.

The brass wanted us to spread the word about Crested Cap on AFTV-22.

The station's management first proposed the usual round-table interview with Spangdahlem's brass and officers from the squadron of F-102A interceptors that would be temporarily deploying from the States to our base.

It was an idea that sounded deadly dull. And it probably would have been.

But ...

Les Jackson, Chuck Minx and I got our heads together and began to bat around ideas. What if we devoted an episode of "Catch 22" to interviews about Crested Cap? Nope, that would be a real audience chaser for our top local production. But what if ... maybe ... we could get one of the F-102 pilots to take the "Catch 22" reporter -- that would be me -- for a ride with a film camera. Then he -- I -- could write a first-person account of a ride in a Deuce and illustrate it with film shot in the cockpit during the flight.

What the hell, I thought: I'm game, and I'll probably never get another chance to ride along at the speed of sound.

We were mildly surprised when the commander of the visiting squadron agreed. I'd be allowed -- after some minimal training -- to go for a ride in a TF-102. Since the F-102 was a one-man operation, a trainer version had been developed with side-by-side seats. The pilot would fly the plane from the left side of the cockpit while I shot film from the second seat.

Now we had to create a show that would serve both missions -- disseminating command information and entertaining the heck out of our audience.

Chasing stars, Part II

From left, Don Dale, Peter Bernard Noone and his entourage. (1968 photo)

Peter Bernard Noone, the "Herman" of Herman's Hermits, was riding the height of his short career as a British Invasion pop star in 1968 when he stopped in Wiesbaden on a concert tour. Herman's Hermits had hit it big in 1964 with "I'm Into Something Good" and twice in 1965 with "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am." But the group's most recent hit, "There's a Kind of Hush," had dropped off the charts more than a year earlier. The song would be the last to get any significant airplay for the group, and Noone would leave Herman's Hermits in two years.

Nobody knew that the group was on its way down when the Wiesbaden concert was announced, and we considered the band's frontman to be a prime candidate for a "Catch 22" interview. Once again Chuck Minx and I loaded the bulky Auricon sound camera into the back of a motor-pool station wagon and hit the road.

The band's staff had arranged for a late-morning interview over coffee at a hotel bar. Almost nothing is less attractive before lunch than the smell of stale beer and the sight of gaudy surroundings in the glare of full daylight.

We showed up on time, and so, surprisingly, did the band. Chuck and I lit up a two-shot area for the interview, but Noone insisted that several female members of his entourage join us. There they are in the picture above, with the light falling off significantly on the right, where they sat. Chuck grabbed a few opening wide shots that included Noone's companions, but once we began in earnest he kept a two-shot on me and Noone. (Moral: Never try to outwit the cameraman.)

Noone was an okay interview. He was a pop star. There didn't seem to be much else at that stage of his career that he could talk about. But he photographed well and appeared to be at ease as we talked about his career so far and the plans for the rest of his tour.

A sizeable portion of our audience were Herman's Hermits fans, and the interview played well when we aired it on "Catch 22."

The wide shots of Noone's entourage wound up on the cutting room floor.

Chasing stars, Part 1

Ruth Buzzi, who was then a big star on NBC's "Laugh In," was one of the energetic personalities to show up on "Catch 22" in Spangdahlem. Here she is in our studio with Col. Jack Albrecht, whom I had never seen before and never saw again. He was the Commander, 4th BTN, 6th ARTY at Spangdahlem. The brass all wanted to meet Buzzi, but she was focused on the enlisted men. I think Chuck Minx shot this picture.

Chuck Minx and I chased stars all over our part of Germany to film interviews for "Catch 22." And every celebrity we approached made time to talk to us. I never had it so easy getting well-known people to talk to me in front of a camera as I did when I was representing AFTV-22. They all wanted to connect with the troops.

Sammy Davis Jr. was probably our biggest "get" for the show, although we didn't have any time alone with him. He was starting a European concert tour at the height of his career -- and at a time when he was firmly identified with Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack -- and his people set up a press conference in Frankfurt am Main, about 200 kilometers away from Spangdahlem. Chuck and I loaded the Auricon and some spare film magazines into a motor-pool station wagon. We knew the big boys from the German TV networks would provide the lighting.

I had read Davis's autobiography, "Yes I Can," in preparation. I knew he had been a hit on Broadway, had a lucrative recording and concert career, had starred in major movies, was well-known to TV audiences, and had written a book. "What's left for you to conquer?" I asked. I suppose he'd been expecting the earlier questions, but he hadn't anticipated mine: It made him think and then reminisce a bit for the cameras. He never did get around to answering my question specifically, but he wanted to know who I was and where our film would be used. When we told him, he insisted on filming a special "hello and thanks" to the troops.

My connections as a medic got us a one-on-one filmed interview in our own studios with Ruth Buzzi, who was then starring in "Laugh In," the hot comedy show on NBC (and on AFTV-22). She got guaranteed laughs every week playing Gladys, a little old lady on a park bench, beating comic Arte Johnson with her black felt purse.

She was actually on a private visit to Bitburg, where her brother-in-law was the top NCO at the hospital's dental clinic. He asked me if we'd like to talk to her (yes!), and then he set it up. She couldn't have been more gracious -- and funny. She brought her "Laugh In" purse, with which she beat me about the head and shoulders at one point in the interview. Then she asked if I wanted to know what she kept in the purse.

By this time, I knew she was in change of the interview, not me, and I just went with the flow. Out of the purse she pulled a slice of Wonder bread, all the while telling me about doing commercials in her early days. One that we all remembered involved her and a talking dog at a supermarket check-out register. "Do you want to know how they got the dog to talk?" she asked me. "Well, sure." With that she began to tear off chunks of white bread and stuff them in my mouth -- lodging them firmly between my cheeks and my gums. By this point, even the studio crew was laughing out loud.

"Now get those chunks of bread out of your mouth without using your hands," she told me. Chuck took a tight shot of me as I gave it a valiant effort. Sure enough, when we screened the raw film, my facial contortions as I worked on getting that soggy bread out of my cheeks looked much like those of the talking dog in her check-out line.

Thank you, Master Sergeant Buzzi, for setting that one up for us. It was a funny, funny interview.

Morey Amsterdam was another star who treated the AFTV crew graciously. Amsterdam was a former vaudevillian who was then a regular cast member of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," a hit TV sitcom in the States and on AFTV-22. He was appearing at Hahn Air Base in a USO show, so we asked if we could drive over and interview him. "Of course," one of his staff said. "Why don't you have dinner with him at the NCO Club, do the interview after dinner, and then stay to enjoy the show?"

Well, yeah, that was okay with us.

I expected to find Amsterdam surrounded by "his people" when we got to the Hahn NCO Club -- but he wasn't. It was just the three of us for dinner -- him, Chuck and me. He knew every old joke and schtick in the book and kept us completely entertained. (He didn't even seem to notice when I dribbled spaghetti sauce down the front of my white shirt.)

After dinner, Chuck set up the Auricon and we rolled film for the interview. With his lifetime of experience in comedy, Amsterdam took whatever questions I asked and ran with them, keeping the laughs coming. (He still said nothing about the spaghetti stain.) Chuck and I both knew we had a great interview for "Catch 22."

Within minutes of the end of our interview, Amsterdam was on stage, telling jokes and looking back on funny incidents in his long career. He had the audience eating out of his hand. But then he switched gears and began to talk about how good he felt about entertaining military audiences. He said that he'd just told a crew from AFTV (that would be Chuck and me) about his respect for us all. Then he pointed out Chuck and me to the audience, asked us to stand up, and told the follow-spot operator to light us up.

"Chuck is the young man who shot the film for the interview," he said. "Don is the one who interviewed me." Then he added, helpfully, "Don's the one with the spaghetti stain on his shirt."

Come fly with me, Part 1

"Catch 22" went on the air in 1968, and Chuck, Les and I came up with more than a few shows that caught audience attention. Some of them were probably even as good as we thought they were.

Judging by audience reaction, our most successful show was one centered on tourism and the many destinations that were just a short flight away -- Paris, Brussels, London, Amsterdam and so on.

The Luxembourg airport was the closest departure point -- maybe a 40-minute drive -- so we decided to spice up the show by inviting each of the airlines that served Luxembourg to send us a stewardess for a live interview. We called the airlines, expecting to be turned down, but to our surprise every airline we called agreed. Sexist youth that we were in those days, we explained that our show was aimed at GIs, so we wanted gorgeous stewardesses. As show time drew near that night, the AFTV Spangdahlem studio was drenched in pulchritude.

We knew we wanted a knock-your-socks-off opening to the show. Somebody came up with an idea: We'd take the film camera to the airport and film Les and a couple of Luxair stewardesses getting on a plane. We'd use Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly with Me" as the soundtrack.

But ... we realized that would take only about 20 seconds. Chuck came up with the idea that made the introduction memorable. Once he had Les "airborne" on film, he cut to stock footage of aerial acrobatics from the 1930s, military dogfights from World War II and Vietnam, and even some early flights from aviation's experimental beginnings. Then he cut back to film of Les landing and "staggering" as he disembarked at Luxembourg, aided by his attractive stewardess companions.

I watched as Chuck created his masterpiece over the course of a week or so. How he managed to synch the film and the recording -- and to make his cuts match the rhythm of the music -- I'll never understand. It was meticulous, nerve-wracking work. We had none of the specialized equipment that would make it so much easier today.

On the night of the broadcast, the opening credits rolled, the "Come Fly with Me" film montage worked perfectly, and Les and the comely stewardesses had a rollicking good time on the set. He teased them, flirted flagrantly, and simultaneously kept the chatter on point about air travel in our corner of Europe.

The phone calls -- all positive -- started even before the closing credits. And when we took the stewardesses and the show's crew to the Spangdahlem NCO Club for dinner after the broadcast, viewers stopped by our table to tell us how much they liked the show -- and to chat with the stewardesses, who told us later that they'd never seen such a positive reaction to a TV interview.

Okay, we were shameless. But the show was a hit.

Those damned blue curtains

In 1967, the AFTV-22 news set consisted of a V-shaped desk and two chairs. Behind the newscaster was a not-quite-big-enough paper map of the world. Behind the sportscaster were four circles with simplistic game icons. That's Chuck Minx sitting at the news desk. (Don Dale photo)

Boring blue curtains that hung on tracks in front of three of the studio walls were about all we had to work with in Studio 1 (there was no Studio 2) at AFTV-22 -- and a cramped news set. Stored behind the curtains was a set of risers that might hold a small choir, a few flats on more tracks, and a plastic potted plant or two. In one area there was an overhead mirror for table-top shots; nobody could remember why it was up there. Anything else we needed had to be "appropriated."

We decided early on that the washed-out blue curtains -- so associated with local-live programs on AFTV-22 in the past -- would be used only as a last resort on any show we Young Turks produced. And Chuck Minx set about creating a new set for the news. The result was a meticulously hand-painted Mercator projection map of the world in white on medium gray -- with plenty of gray space in the overshoot margins -- behind the news desk. The new look opened up the way we could shoot the shows and was more like what our audience was familiar with back home. Overnight, Chuck's new design dramatically sharpened the look of AFTV-22 newscasts.

Those damned blue curtains still figured prominently in the station's half-hour Friday-night variety show, but we set to work on that, too. We decided, with Ray's approval, to put the show on hiatus for a few months and rethink it from top to bottom -- from the look of it to the name of it.

The show's former host had rotated back to the States, and Les Jackson was the obvious replacement. He was intelligent, clever, funny and an easy conversationalist. (In his off-camera time, he could also be acerbic and cynical -- and even more funny.) We wanted to open up the show to the world outside our studio, so Chuck, who was our film expert, agreed to lug the cumbersome Auricon sound camera around to shoot stories on interesting places and people in our corner of Germany. He'd also handle the show's live audio. I would work with Chuck on the film stories and direct the live show.

We still lacked a name and a design for home base, the set in the studio where Les would play ringmaster.

Our solutions give some insight into who we were (enlisted men) and how we thought (like civilians). After long conversations in the control room, the hallways, the offices and the studio, one of us (I don't think it was me) remembered the title of Joseph Heller's satirical World War II novel. The serendipity of our broadcast frequency clinched the deal: The new show would be called "Catch 22."

That led somehow to the decision to use parachute silk -- not in short supply on an Air Force base and metaphorical to us of ... something -- as the backdrop for the "Catch 22" home base. To dress up the parachute silk, we spattered it lightly with gray paint. We appropriated a few modern chairs from the base library next door. The set looked crisp and clean on camera in black-and-white.

Chuck found a primitive stop-action animation setup somewhere in storage and painstakingly created the show's filmed opening -- animation of an ash tray filling up and "Catch 22" spelled out one letter at a time. That bit of creativity turned out to be labor-intensive; it took days to execute. On air, it would run about 15 seconds.

But the biggest problem was ahead, and it's the issue that haunts TV producers still: content. With what, exactly, would we fill this new show?

Transition

Airman John David Wild operates one of AFTV-22's three low-end Dage black-and-white cameras during a local live broadcast. Note the four-lens turret at the front of the camera. We all managed to accidentally rack (turn) the turret at least once while the camera was live.

I had never considered changing my MOS (military occupational specialty) from OR medic to TV broadcaster. It's not something that's easily accomplished in the military. But the commander at Bitburg decided one day that because of budgetary and administrative reasons we had one too many OR medics at the 36th Tactical Hospital. I wasn't the new kid in the OR any more, so the problem didn't look like it would affect me. But the sergeant in charge of the enlisted men in the OR dropped a suggestion in my ear: If you want to crosstrain to the TV station and they'll have you, now's your chance.

That afternoon I was on the phone to Tech. Sgt. Ray Santangelo, the AFTV-22 station manager. "Yes, I'll take you. You can do the required coursework by mail." Within a few days, the paperwork was in progress at the hospital and at the TV station, and I was reading through a stack of manuals Ray gave me.

It was hard leaving the hospital and my medic friends behind. In 18 months, we'd formed some close bonds. I knew I'd miss the intense teamwork around the OR table, and I'd miss our shenanigans in our off-duty time. As a going-away present, Lt. Goldman, a fun and dedicated OR nurse and an amateur artist, gave me a pastel chalk drawing of me with an AFTV microphone in hand.

By the summer of 1968, I was full time at AFTV-22, and Ray Santangelo had appointed me news director.

My days in uniform were headed in a whole new direction. But that didn't mean I'd be spending my days in uniform. As a medic, I wore whites and scrubs instead of fatigues or 1505s. At AFTV-22, because the chain of command thought we should look like TV broadcasters without regard for rank, I'd be wearing a navy blue civilian blazer with an AFTV crest on the pocket. My complete set of cleaned and pressed uniforms would still spend most of the time hanging in my locker.

You gotta laugh ... or cry

The 36th Tactical Hospital at Bitburg AB in the spring of 1968. (Don Dale photo)

I have to tell one quick story about watching AFTV-22 while I was still a medic but was working part-time at the station.

Not everybody who got through the DINFOS school at Fort Benjamin Harrison was fit to be on the air. (DINFOS was then the Defense Information School, where most military broadcasters were trained, at a large Army post on the outskirts of Indianapolis.)

A case in point was Airman ... well ... let's just call him Airman Doofus. He was assigned to AFTV-22, but nobody quite knew what to do with him. For the most part the station manager kept him behind the scenes, since he was awful on camera. He'd write and voice PSAs for various entities like the base theater or the PX or the recreation club and make sure the filler films about "stopping the gold flow" (spending too much money on the German economy instead of on base) were on the log. Finding things for Airman Doofus to do -- and keeping him out of trouble -- was almost a full-time job for the station manager.

I was sitting in the hospital barracks dayroom one evening watching TV. "Star Trek" was about to come on, so the room was crowded. And up pops Airman Doofus's voice on a PSA promoting a "fun, two-week railway getaway from Spangdahlem to Australia." Hmmm ... that would be impossible unless somebody had laid train tracks across the Pacific Ocean. Airman Doofus had confused the nearby country of Austria with the faraway continent of Australia. When "Star Trek" ended, the PSA ran once more. The dayroom crowd again roared in laughter.

On a more serious note, Airman Doofus was a disaster on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in early April of 1968. Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis at about 6 p.m., but it was after midnight in Germany when the bulletin came through. Most of us learned about it when we woke up. AFTV-22 didn't sign on until 11 a.m. And Airman Doofus was the only broadcaster available to do the first news headlines.

He couldn't quite get his tongue around the slain Civil Rights leader's full name. Every time, it came out sounding like "Martha Luther King Jr."

Seriously.

Every time.

I think that might have been the last time Airman Doofus ever got any airtime on AFTV-22.

Small-town TV

Local live entertainment at AFTV-22 in 1967 relied on amateur performances and boring interviews.

It's tempting to say that AFTV-22 was tinker-toy television in 1967. But military television was still in its infancy then. The pilot station for what would become a worldwide broadcast TV network for service members and their families stationed abroad had gone on the air in 1954 -- just 13 years before.

The more appropriate way to look at it was as small-town TV. Very small-town TV.

When I started there as a part-timer, AFTV-22 served three major U.S. air bases in Germany's Eifel Mountains -- Spangdahlem, Bitburg and Hahn -- and a lot of army batteries in between. It was broadcast television using U.S. technical standards so that when GIs brought TVs with them from the States, they worked. A scattering of German nationals had adapted their home TVs so they could watch American television. (German television sets couldn't receive the American signal, nor could American sets receive German signals.) My guess -- and it's just a guess -- is that there were about 40,000 people who could watch AFTV-22.

AFN, the American Forces Network, was far better funded and far more established than AFTV was. AFN radio sounded as good as any of the big three radio networks back home. They had decent equipment, completely professional talent, and major financial support from the Army. AFTV-22, on the other hand, was underfunded, young and brash, and not doing so great on the professionalism scale.

Imagination was also in short supply. Local live shows often featured bands or choirs or majorettes from the American high school at Bitburg or deadly and unenthusiastic interviews with this or that base or wing commander. Visuals were also scarce. We had a Bell & Howell Filmo hand-held silent camera, and we had an Auricon film camera that recorded optical sound. But the only way to get film processed was to plead with the technicians who developed film shot by fighter jet surveillance cameras. The technicians had to do a special run for our snippets of film. And they could process only negative stock. That meant we had to edit in negative and then reverse the polarity when it was broadcast. Given that the Auricon weighed as much as a loaded duffel bag and was just about as unwieldy, we didn't use it often. The station didn't have even a rudimentary videotape setup.

AFTV-22 had one TV studio and a small announce booth for station breaks. The control room overlooked the studio, and behind the control room was a room containing a film chain -- two 16 millimeter projectors and a 35 millimeter slide changer. The technology was old but serviceable. Most of what we had to work with looked low-bid. Even a task so simple as doing a smooth dolly took experience and skill with one of our low-end Dage cameras. The linoleum tile floors didn't help. The ceiling was no more than 12 feet high, so lighting was tricky.

Not only was AFTV-22 a lot like small-town television, it was a lot like small-town television that was 10 years behind the curve.

But it was what we had to work with, and we set out to make do. Over the next two years, Les Jackson, Chuck Minx and I -- along with later arrivals John David Wild, Peter Neumann, John Noble and others -- were the Young Turks who aimed for more of a professional attitude and a sense of audience involvement in local-live programming at AFTV-22. We took some risks, and we got called on the carpet more than once. Sometimes we even knew we deserved it.

But - hot damn! - we put imagination and inventiveness to work, and for a few years we made some pretty good GI television.