|
|
|
In September, 1963, WOC relocated from the old Ryan building to the new building located near the top of Brady Street hill in Davenport, Iowa. Broadcasting was still performed in black and white but color was expanding on a regular basis. By 1967, all local programming had made the switch and a new era in the bi-state area had begun.
Ernie Mimms, star of the wildly popular Cartoon Showboat on WOC TV6 performed during this time of change. Staring as Uncle Ernie in black and white then switching to Captain Ernie by 1965, he experienced this directly during the 1967 Showboat season!
Jon Book, legendary WOC Engineer, has provided pictures and notes helping to give insight to the behind the scenes production at WOC during this period including Captain Ernie's show.
 |
When Captain Ernie was on TV, viewers watched him on RCA's TK-60. This was WOC cameras #1 #2 and #3 up until the switch to color in 1967. With its 4 1/2 inch image orthicon picture tube, the TK-60 produced pictures of peak quality. Thanks to Jon Book and Dave Coopman for providing images from RCA's "Broadcast News, Vol. No. 122 Aug. 1964.
|
This is the first vision guest of WOC would see of the spectacular Center as they traveled on Brady Street.
 Jon Book provides a layout of the new WOC Center and a description of what it was like for the children to enter the new, exciting building and end up on the risers to see Captain Ernie. The guest would enter the building into the lobby. They would then pass through the lobby and head to the right. On the right, they would enter the Studio Guest lounge to wait for their turn to enter the set. Sometimes they would walk the hallway to reach the water cooler which was located near the production office and then head back to the studio guest lounge. The big call would be made for the parents and children to enter the studio. Before 1969, Captain Ernie's set was located in the corner of Studio "B". Captains Don and Vern who were Ernie's predecessors also were located in Studio "B". RCA's WOC publication announced We use studio B for regular fixed programs. This includes weather, news and sports, as well as a youngster's program, "Cap'n Vern's Cartoon Showboat." While Studio "B" is the smaller, it can rightfully be termed the workhorse studio because of its constant daily use. Sets here are permanent, allowing for rear screen projection in sports and news programs, outsized weather maps to show maximum information at a glance, as well as interview areas for sports. Smaller commercial sets are also maintained. In this studio, microphones are permanently assigned, lighting is fixed, and formats governing production rigidly plotted. We feel this lends a continuity of presentation welcomed by viewers who look forward to basic programming each day. Special silicon-dimmed lighting boards are customized in each studio. Between 1969 and 1970, Captain Ernie moved to Studio "A". The risers in Studio "A" were located on the 18' turntable and sometimes were placed slanted to the right of the turntable and parents were located just off camera near the risers.
|
Notice the huge WOC lights hanging from the ceiling. Those children on the set of The Showboat look back and remember that it was nearly impossible to see while sitting on the risers!
Lighting wattage was actually turned down during the beginning of the color era due to the high tech sensitivity of the new cameras!
This is Jon Book, in studio at the TV color camera, one of 2 cameras for the Captain Ernie Show. He is doing a weather tilt of current readings for the TV news coming up later that evening. Special thanks to Jon for this rare shot from behind the scenes. Notice the color ban on the side of the camera as well as the station identification WOC. Jon stated; This is probably your only shot of the TV cameras used during Ernies Showboat as they were given to Scott College years and years ago, and probably are in the junk yard by now. The viewfinder was ok sometimes but once and a while it would go out and you were blind doing camera work....not easy.
Jon also explains; in this next picture I am at the master tv control switcher. The photo was taken in April of 1979. The interesting part of this shot is that the master control area was exactly the same way it was in 1971 when Captain Ernie's Showboat was running full speed ahead. Nothing at that point had changed. Then in 1985, this was all removed and a new master control switcher was installed.
The unit pictured, switched all audio and video sources. To the right are all the video film level controls and the camera video controller is to the far right. My hand is on the master audio.
|
These are the original RCA TK-42 color studio cameras that were used by WOC for its local programming. This model came out in 1965. The TK-42's had internal zoom lenses that were always a pain. Every station using them had the same problem - after a period of time the zoom became very jerky, especially near the close-up end of the zoom. In 1966, RCA came out with the TK-43 camera. It used the same electronic components as did the TK-42, but utilized an external zoom which solved the jerky action of the internal zoom. Around 1977, WOC retired the TK-42's and purchased TK-46 cameras, which were much superior to the 42's and 43's. - Dave Coopman |
 |
 | This is me as the video switcher, as they called it. The video switcher of all cameras, projectors, network and this unit was able to make special effects of picture wipes, fades, and a lot of neat video tricks. This was in the Studio A tv control room. Sometime in the early 70's this was installed. - Jon Book |
I was also involved with the Saturday and Sunday Night Movie on WOC. The theme which Ed Jones used for the
late night movie open and close background was
"Mr. Lucky" by Henry Mancini. That WAS the exact theme song from the early 70's for the Saturday and Sunday night movie on WOC.
It was the first 30 seconds of that song and it was used on the opening and closing of the show. It was the show that was BEFORE the Saturday Night Live show came on the air in 1975.
The Sunday Night Late Show was still there when i left in 77 for the radio side.
The video used for the intro/exit included 16mm color film shots provided by Russ Wingo or
Bob Brown of the yearly WOC Fireworks display on the waterfront of
the Mississippi River.
What we did was rent a portable generator and we powered up the gen set for a barge. Each side had a set of W O C on it with 6watt small lights. When the last fireworks were done, the gen set plugged in lights and lit up the river for both sides. It was pretty neat back in those days.
Bob Sidney, Capt Ernie Mims, Ken Young, Clay Travor, Mike Blair or Lee Bright would do the intro's for the movie theme. Ed Jones did the directing of the open and close cart tape that I made for tv land.
enjoy.... (Special thanks to legendary WOC engineer Jon Book for the picture of the 1980 WOC fireworks display on the Mississippi River. A 1970's showing was used (in color) for the movie intro but this is the exact same show almost a decade later. Click on the Windows Player below to hear the intro to Mr. Lucky.)
 | This is a 1969 photo of Max Roth, TV engineer for WOC TV. He was my neighbor. He passed away in 1994. Max helped build the building on Brady Street in the 60's. He would have love to have seen this website. The other photo is of Max and his wife Doris in the early 90's. He was cool and pretty inventive also. When he retired, I put him to work for me in 1987. In '88, the station regrouped and he was retired again. He was my friend and I always enjoyed him being around. |  |
This is a photo of Gene McHenry and his wife Delores who played a major part as the technical engineer for Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat. Delores spent many overnights with him at work while he fixed things that went bad during the daytime shifts. Most of the time he did not finish fixing those technical problems until the moments just before sign-on time of the broadcast day. Here is another picture of Gene, this time with my mentor and friend WOC Director of Engineering and Chief Engineer for the stations Coy Bullard.
 |  |
My name is Peggy McHenry Turnbough. I am the youngest child of Eugene McHenry and currently reside in Kansas City, Missouri. I found your wonderful website today and truly enjoyed all the memories it brought back to me.
Even though I was very young in the 60's I remember watching your show. My brother, Patrick and I would rush home from school, grab a snack and turn on the color console RCA TV, that my Dad just had to have, and laugh watching Gumby and Pokey, the Stooges and Looney Tunes. My Dad also did a great impression of you, just in case you didn't know.
Being the youngest of five, I never had the opportunity to be on Romper Room like my older brother and sister, Mike and Laurie. If they were short a couple of kids that particular day, off they would go with my Dad to be on WOC-TV. What fun!!!! I guess Mike, was a real hit with the camera men. He knew them all by name and would play catch with them during the breaks. Occasionally, he would just wander off screen to talk to them. He's always been a little bit rambunctious.
My Dad passed away in August of 1996 and my mother, Virginia, in May 2006. Even though we moved away from the Quad Cities in 1970, I recall visiting my Dad and Delores many times in the 70's while they were living in the small apartment at the Transmitter in Bettendorf. What a fascinating place for a young teenager to visit. In the early 80's I returned to the area as a new young wife and lived in Bettendorf as well. Even though it was only for about 4 months it was nice to be close to my Dad again. He was STILL living at the Transmitter and my husband and I always enjoyed going over there to see him. The TV set was always on, channel 6 of course, and occasionally he would call the station to have them fix something he "saw" on screen, or adjust a camera or something. Gosh, he loved that place. I've attached a couple of photos I came across for you to see. I think these were taken in either 1964 or 1965. I hope you enjoy them.
Thank you for the great memories,
Jon Book and Dave Coopman provide this ultra-rare picture of Ernie Mimms as he utilizes the WOC custom built combo console in radio studio No. 1. As he D.J.'s his radio program, RCA transistorized audio tape machines and control console are employed.
| This was the WOC Radio ON AIR console, where the operators would have played songs, news, etc, for the listeners. I had cut this studio out and place all equipment across the hallway to the conference room in 1986 while the main area here was updated. All walls here shown were torn down and rebuilt. |  |
 | This is WOC On-Air control room, shortly before the walls came down. Notice the TI 99-4A computer on the table to the right and keyboard. Notice in the area behind the racks two ceiling tiles (used for sound deadening). This area behind the racks would become a door to the corridor. The equipment was soon to travel across the hall to the conference room and I reconstructed the on air control room. On the second rack there is a white box. This was the TIME TUNNEL device made by Wang Company. This was a 7 second digital delay device we used for any live talkshows. We still have this today...although not used. It cost about $450 at the time it was new. |
| This was behind the Texas Instruments computer in the WOC control room. Note that ty-wraps weren't used here at this time period as they are today to clean up messy wires. The tv monitor for the computer is on the table on the right. |  |
 | To show a bit of the wreckage, this was the door leading out of the WOC control room. To the left of the photo is the audio console which was pictured previously and furniture would have been there as well. This lead to the master control room which was straight ahead. Out that door and to the left was the newstalk booth and to the right of this door was the hallway leading to another long corridor hallway. Here the contractors were remodeling and it almost looked like a war-zone. |
This is what was left of the WOC control studio and newstalk booth. What a mess of rubble! The tear out date was 1986. - Jon Book
|
Special thanks to Jon Book yet again for providing these rare pictures from behind the scenes at WOC Radio! This shot is the WOC AM control. I am cleaning cart decks and John Collins, the TV weather man, pulling an AM air shift. |  |
This shot is the WOC AM master control. I am doing radio production
recording of network shows and...this was the FINAL spot where all AM and
FM audio was sent via phone line to the transmitter site in Bettendorf.
This is Bruce Nelson in 1981. He was the radio production person and would dub all weekend network commercials to 4 track tapes for later use for the weekend programming schedules. Bruce also did the recordings for the Chicago Board of Trade, JR Underwood farm markets, commercials, public service shows, and some production work such as Eagle Foods, Carpetland USA, Iowa Illinois Gas and Electric Company, some banks and jewerly stores, etc. The list was endless.
| Bruce Nelson enjoying his work...but first has to answer the phone! - Jon Book |
 |
| This is probably the only shot of the KIIK 104 automation system! This is me programming the 1,000 event computer. It was a stereo automation system and was bought in '72. I think they had a promotion in '73 that said "should a one year old stay up all night..." so having said that, it was on 24 hours a day. On Sunday nights it was shut down from 12 midnight until 5am on Monday for studio or transmitter maintenance. Believe me, i needed all that time for maintenance during '82 to '87!
 Under the first 48 deck IGM Insta-cart Automation system was the time announce unit. Two tapes, one even and the other odd, were recorded with the time in minutes and when called upon by the computer, it would play them on the air. Funny thing, the person who recorded the time announce was MIKE PACE. The same man who does the Iowa lottery! Announcers i remember were; Mike Pace, the all night late night date, Terry Terry she replaced Mike as the late night date, Steve Ristau he was the programmer during the day shift, Rick Mcguire, Larry Dawson, Paul Fredericks, Jean Swan - she was really cool, Mark Barber, Dave Stark, who still works for Channel 6 now and a host of others! - Jon Book |
|
This was the NewsTalk Booth. During the period I worked at WOC, this booth was used by phone show hosts or, if there was a guest on one of the radio shows, the guest would be in this booth. No newscasts were read from this booth at that time; they all originated from the news booth down in the newsroom. During a newscast, all commercials were played from the AM air studio, but all actualities were played from the newsroom. - Dave Coopman
 The producer on duty had to control the microphones carefully so that the acoustics would not be objectionable to the listener. News announcers used this room from 6 to 9am and then the talkshow hosts used it from 9am to 12noon. During the time slot of 1pm to 4pm another talkshow host did his show and at 5pm to 6pm the news folks did their final news program. Then it switched back to pure gold music records. The video monitor was a slave to a Texas Instruments TI-99-4A computer. A computer program invented by the talkshow host's son at the time was used to get information from the caller. The information was the time, temp and caller location. A scratch pad was also in the program for chit chat between the talent and producer. A TI thermal printer was used for clients who wanted any information of topics of the program. This computer system, bought from Klaus Radio of Davenport Iowa, was around $400 at the time. An audio cassette drive unit was used. Since this was a combo studio booth, the master control room was able to record staff announcers or clients/guests for commercials or for weekend programming shows. You are looking towards the WOC control studio, thru the window. The telephone is a 10 button key set. Although it is old fashioned today, we still use the same type today at our facility. Some things never change. The headsets were varied - here is the Senniheiser 400 series. Many folks enjoyed those headsets.......lightweight, and vibrant sounding. Notice the cables under the table are untied.....under construction I guess. - Jon Book
|
 | These 2 RT-21 RCA reel to reel tape recorders were heavy. Used in the production studio that was built in 75, it was a workhorse. Many commecials were recorded on these and as a result, the tape heads wore out a lot and new ones had to be installed yearly. - Jon Book |
| Here is an old RCA microphone we used in the main recording studio for guests and talent. This room was about 15x15. |
 |
 | This mic was used in the KIIK 104 booth. It was used for news or talent and also for doing commercials. Some of the announcers I remember on WOC/KIIK included; Mike Pace, the all night late night date, Terry Terry - she replaced Mike as the late night date, Steve Ristau he was the programmer during the day shift with Jay Schaff, Rick Mcguire, Kevin Vargas, Larry Dawson, Paul Fredericks, Jean Swan - she was really cool, Mark Barber, Dave Stark, who still works for Channel 6 now, Teri Hannum and a host of others! Also who could forget, Mike Blair, the WOC AM announcer that recorded the overnight hourly newscasts for KIIK and made sure that the audio cartridge tape was ready and tended the automation in case of problems. Mike Blair did a fabulous job. Now if I could find any information on Tom Parker.....Ernie remembers him! Tom used to do the tv weekend hour show called: Golden Opportunity. after a couple of months, most of the talent in the Quad Cities had gone thru the circuit and talent was pretty slim to show on tv. - Jon Book
|
| This mic was used in the TV big studio overheads for church shows and more of them were used for Sunday morning church shows live on WOC Radio. In fact, I did every other weekend church show in the area! Once a month, we set up a church with all microphones and did the show from 11 to 12 noon. The next month it repeated the process with another church. I think the church shows on WOC went to KIIK radio in 82 and in 83 the church live shows were then taped shows of local churches and played early on Sunday mornings instead. |
 |
These were the WOC Radio downstairs newsbooth microphones The big mic on the right was a good sounding BASS type ribbon microphone. The brand was by Altec Company. - Jon Book
 Master Control: In the foreground is Master Control. All switching of audio/video sources was done from this area when programming was not "live." The gal at the left was the assistant director who directed the local inserts in shows like The Today Show and any syndicated programs that might be run. To her right were two cartridge machines that were used for commercial tags and voiced station breaks. Next to the cart machines was the master audio control panel for film projectors, video tape machines, and the production audio boards. The engineer's hand in on the master switcher and next to that was the remote start/stops for the tape machines and the film and slide projectors. The equipment with all of the tv screens were the video control units. In front of the Master Control bank is the Studio B control center. Towards the center are the remote start/stop unit where the director sat, next is the production switcher, and to the right is the audio control board and two more tape cartridge machines. This is where we did the Cartoon Showboat. The window looked out into Studio B and the Showboat set was right outside that window. The clock on the wall was the master controller unit for all the clocks in the building. - Dave Coopman This is WOC AM Master control room. Coy Bullard is at the console while Bill Smith is putting away some microphones. This is the 15x15 booth which I was talking about earlier. It used to have a small baby grand piano in it for George Sontag to use. It was sent out in 1973 to some unknown location out of the facility. This photo was taken in 1964, I believe. - Jon Book Coy Bullard, who later became chief engineer for WOC-AM-FM-TV, sits at the console. Coy was responsible for building all of the radio facilities in the new Broadcast Centre. - Dave Coopman I am indeed in the picture from the RCA publication Broadcast News of August 1964, describing the new WOC studios. It showed me from the back, probably my best side. Looking at the picture of TV master control, the "gal" at the directors position, the next year became my wife of 31 years. She started in the old building, working shows like Romper Room, Especially for You, and the other live shows. I'm not sure but I believe that we had a cooking show by the time she started. I started at WOC in 1953 as a radio control room engineer. At that time, the announcer sat in a small both and had control of the mike but the engineers did everything else. Back then we played mostly 78 rpm records using two turntables with 16" arms and we had one table converted to play the "new" 45 rpm records. Most of the commercials were played on 16" acetate transcriptions or ET's. We even had a lot of programs that came to us on ET, and when it was a 30 minute show, we would have to listen for the cues and segue at the right time to the next disk. We had two "working" reel to reel tape recorders rack mounted, and a portable machine of dubious reliability. When an announcer went on lunch break, either TV or radio, we recorded the break on disk. We had two RCA lathes and we could and did make continuous recordings. The tape was so unreliable, as to azimuth and speed, most of the engineers wouldn't use them. We only had about 5 or 6 reels of tape anyway, some of them using a paper base. I was lucky, and was given a chance by the Chief to learn the TV jobs, and for a while I worked vacation or sickness shifts as a camera man, audio operator, projectionist, video operator and sometime switched. I did a lot of remotes as well. I did TV and mostly radio but the only time I ever refused the Chief was when he asked me if I would consider going to the transmitter, and I said NO and I didn't. It was a great adventure for sure, and I had a chance to get paid doing things I liked to do as a hobby and had the chance to meet and work with some great people. Plus I got a super wife as well. Who could do better? - Coy Bullard.
|
 | Control Room: This is the control room where all commercial and program production (with the exception of the Cartoon Showboat) was done. Especially for You, the newscasts, and the various public service programming was controlled from this point. It's layout was identical to Studio B control. After '71, the B control audio console was taken upstairs and installed for the new KIIK stereo rock on air studio. The end result - B control was scrapped, a new tv master control room converted and Captain Ernie's Showboat ended up in the control room after all in 1971!
|
| Here we have the control room in November of 1971 when Ernie was still going full force. Dick Kramer sitting in the chair. |  |
Control Room Close-up:
This shows a better view of the remote start/stop unit and the switcher/effects unit. The switcher puts the video sources on the air. The bottom row of buttons provided a direct "cut" from one video source to another. The top two rows of buttons and the two levers allowed fades, dissolves, and special effects to be used in switching between the video sources. The buttons to the right were the various special effects that could be chosen. Above the window, which looked out into Studio A, were the monitors for each video source - fourteen in all.
 |
Video tape: These are the RCA two-inch video tape machines that ran commercials, network news items, and syndicated programs. By 1967, there were a total of 3 machines. Today, these behemouths have been replaced by one-inch and 3/4" machines that take up less than one-third the space. |
 Projection booth: These are the film and slide projector "islands." The camera for each unit is at the rear and the images reach the camera through use of a series of mirrors in that center box. The unit to the left is for black-and-white and the unit to the right handled both color and black-and-white. By 1967, the unit on the left was converted to handle color as well. - Dave Coopman
|
| Film Processor: This is the 16mm Houston fearless reversal film processor for news dept. They shot film and processed it in b/w, later years in color, all done in 30 mins flat. - Jon Book |  |
This is a picture of the newsroom news booth. News director Jack Thomsen is giving a radio newscast. The in-house designed control board is in front of Jack and a Motorola 2-way radio is just to the right of the board (almost hidden). In the rack to the right of Jack are audio inputs from NBC Radio, NBC TV, telephone, and the production studio upstairs. Below that is the record unit for one of the two tape cartridge machines, and below those is a Magnacord reel-to-reel tape machine. This is the studio from which all newscasts originated until the late 70's. |  |
 | Here is a picture of the second Captain, Vern Gielow, in the TV announce booth. The picture was taken from Control Room A. The window to Gielow's right looked into Master Control and Control B. When I was at WOC, the announce booth was used primarily during some commercial production and the newscasts for live announcements and openings and closings to the news. There were also tape cartridge controls whereby the announcer could "cut book," i.e. record commercial tags on tape cartridge to be used throught the day with commercials on slides or tags at the end of filmed or videotape commercials. During the Christmas season, the announcer would generally take the book of tags to be read up to radio production, record them on reel-to-reel, then put them on cartridges for TV Control, as there were usually so many to do. That way, if the announcer screwed up, he could re-take the announcement without having to redo all that he had already put on the cartridge. John Collins, Bob Allard, Ernie Mimms, and Mike Blair were the "booth announcers" during the period I worked at WOC. - Dave Coopman |
|
Dave Coopman has also provided an incredible shot of the interior of the WOC transmitter building! This is WOC-AM-FM-TV transmitter installation in Pleasant Valley. On the left is the AM transmitter, on the right is the FM transmitter, and in the center is the television transmitter (under the clock). In the foreground are the master controllers for each of the signals before those signals are sent up the towers to their respective antennae. In other words, when you were watching Captain Ernie or were on The Showboat, the signal went here before heading up the powerhouse antenna towers and then headed to the antenna which you used to have on your roof! 
|
| This, I believe, is Al Starkweather, tv engineer, later he was transmitter engineer. Here he is doing camera work for the Pat Sundine show. You can see Pat in the viewfinder! This would have been in the mid 60's. - Jon Book | 
|
 This is a tv commercial taping. The cameraman, I believe, is John Seran. The rest are various unidentified workers. - Jon Book |
 This is a Bob Neal Ford Commercial pre-taping session. Left to right; Ran Jensen, TV Salesman, Bob Neal owner of Sumption Ford Sales (later, Bob Neal Ford) located in Rock Island on 11th St, Stan Straight (tv engineer), Vern Geilow (production manager), Hank Nichol (tv engineer video man and lighting person). It looks like the picture involves checking for run thru on commecial before taping. - Jon Book & Dave Coopman |
 | This is a typical on the spot news coverage by the WOC team. This is mobile unit 1 of 7. That is Jack Thomsen in the middle getting the facts ma'm. It looks like it is an open and shut case of someone leaving town with their bags packed (maybe Hoffa is in it?!!). The year of the plates shows it is 1962. |
| First man, unknown. Second, Don Rhyne. Third is Jack Thomsen. This is the WOC newsroom including AM, FM and TV. - Jon Book, legendary WOC engineer |  |
Click here to return to Captain Ernie's Showboat!
Thoughts or comments or have pictures or stories....click here to email me!
This website is not affiliated in any way to WOC, KWQC or RCA. This is a fan site dedicated to preserving the memory of WOC during the 1960's and 1970's including The Cartoon Showboat. Any images on this site are presumed to be copyrighted by the owners and are used here only for example under the fair use provisions.
