In December of that year, assistant program director Lloyd Bolkcom attended a meeting of conference officials who voted to not accept Galesburg into the conference and at the same time shot down the idea of the remote. The reason was because the planned date of February 12th was against the rules which prohibited live broadcast of any game when another conference team was playing at the same time due to the fear of audiences staying at home to watch the game instead of going to the game itself. Another reason why the date in February would not work out was because WQAD was bound by ABC to carry the winter Olympics that year at the same time.

Bolkcom went to another meeting in January with the officials who this time agreed on a new date for the live feed. One thing was lacking - a live feed unit. Word went out to other stations and WTCN in Minneapolis not only had a truck but it was in color (black and white was the standard at the time) and it included three cameras.

The next obstacle was the lighting in Wharton Field House. The lighting was fine for black & white broadcast but much too dim for color. Incredibly, a Moline electrical firm was contracted to re-wire the ceiling of Wharton with 30 - 1,000 watt quartz scoops which put out 150 foot-candles, triple the previous 50 candles present at the time.

Channel 8 is a few blocks away from Wharton. How did the broadcast feed go back to the WQAD? The solution was that a reflector was raised above the stadium to send the signal back to the station. Don Raymond described the action of the game while Gene Oliver made color commentary in between quarters. Another two dozen cameramen and engineers worked behind the scenes.

History was made. This was the first live remote color broadcast of any local sporting event and the first coverage of high school basketball in the Quad City viewing area since WOC TV 6 Davenport broadcast a number of United Township High School games shortly after they signed on the air in 1949.

We had a spotter up in the broadcast booth and a sound engineer to watch the audio and lights. In the booth I was in was Ed Clauseman. He was my stat guy and also the CPA of WQAD. In the lower right hand portion of the picture at the top of this page, the guy in the suit was Gene Oliver and we had 2 tech guys around him. There were close to 30 tech people involved in the telecast. For them, it was a nightmare, for Gene and I it was a blast.

Gene Oliver (who recently passed away) and I sat in Wharton a couple of hours before the game and talked about the historical significance of what we were about to do. As a Rock Island resident, Gene agreed that the pressure was on us. Now, this was a guy who had played Major League Baseball for many years...CUBS, ST.LOUIS, Philadelphia, Boston etc: We knew what was ahead of us and the end result was that everyone did their job. It was flawless to say the least. It was one of the most exciting things I ever did in my broadcast career. Top of the line production, annoucing and results. The station had literally hundreds of calls thanking us for the telecast. Art Swift was a happy VP/GM. So were the sponsors. We sold out for the telecast by the way. 100% sponsorship.

- Don Welch

Below is the original press release issued on January 22, 1968 regarding the first ever "live" telecast of a high school basketball game in the QC's. The game was Moline versus Galesburg at Wharton Field House. It was a monumental job as to how all the tech stuff was put together. We had to re-light the entire playing surface, etc.

- Don (Raymond) Welch