Fred Gault Remembers Channel 3 In The 70s

  • Thursday, September 12, 2024
  • Fred Gault

I was once threatened with being jailed while at WRCB-TV, Channel 3. We had broadcast an interview with a drug dealer and the District Attorney General’s office became interested. The short story is that they explained I could be or might be jailed if I didn’t reveal our interviewee’s name. They finally took no for an answer.

In the 70s, television news gathering in Chattanooga was undergoing a dramatic change. The evening news was suddenly able to have color news-film - a giant step forward from the days of black and while film.

However, due to the use of a modern motorized (not hand-processed) film processor, it took a specific amount of time to get the film ready for broadcast. One evening, after capturing dramatic film of a tornado near Cleveland, we wanted to show the film on the 11 p.m. news. The deadline was so tight there was no time for editing. As it came rolling out of the processor, it was supported by the hands of the studio crew from the film processor to the control room projector while it was still damp—a distance of almost 50 feet. Somehow it worked.

Viewers have no idea how stressful the job of a television photographer was, at least in the ‘70s. After the tragic crash of popular anchorman Mort Lloyd’s airplane, we had to send a photographer to the crash site — by air, due to the distance from Chattanooga. On aerial assignments, the door was always taken off the plane so the cameraman could get clear images. Flying over a crash site where someone you knew died is a surreal experience.

In the 70s, news vehicles often had the same rotating red or blue light on top of the vehicle as police cars. When I was at the Chattanooga Times, the police reporter’s car had a standard police blue light and a siren (think fire engine loud). The siren required so much electricity that if you turned it on at night, the headlights would begin to dim. I didn’t use the siren very often. Such lights were finally banned by the state government.

These days, television stations operate drones for aerial footage and news vehicles never seem to be in a hurry. Of course, the streets and highways are under constant surveillance from permanently mounted cameras supplying useful information for viewers.

A drone would have been great in 1973 when the St. Patrick’s Day flood was underway. Instead, Channel 3 news resorted to the use of boats to capture film footage. Eastgate Mall, Brainerd Village, Rossville Boulevard and 23rd Street, and the old Kmart store in East Ridge were all completely inundated by more water that anyone had seen in Chattanooga since the 1860s.

Finally, last week I wrote that Channel 3 was the first to have an African-American reporter at a local TV station. That was true. I also said Stan Coleman, also an African-American, was a great talent for the station. That was true. However, the name of the first black television reporter was Jim Hill. My thanks to my old friend Allen Jones for keeping me accurate.

More again later.

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Fred Gault can be reached at avfred@gmail.com

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