Today, Thursday, I got a chance to speak to folks at CCC and ask them
about the television signal on Channel 4. The young lady who answered
the phone at 620-251-7700 said to me she had only worked there a short
time and knew nothing of it. She put me through to a man who had
worked there for about twenty years and he said they had discontinued
the 'station' (which was a learning exercise or practice for students
*more than ten years ago*. He said "it was only licensed as a low-
power station and we had so much interference (which, under the terms
of our FCC license we had to accept) from the bigger station in
Oklahoma City, and our equipment got old and hard to maintain, so we
decided to abandon that part of our program. We have not been on the
air in years, but Oklahoma City still comes booming through now like
a local now and then."
I told him I believed they were still a licensee in FCC records (Neil,
am I correct on this? You said you looked it up) and he was surprised
to hear that. I asked him about the television station broadcasting in
the 1950's doing weather all the time. He said he started working at
the college about 1981 and he could not help with that, but he was
*certain* it had not been them. He concluded our phone conversation by
saying "for about the last ten years or so, our students have worked
on the local (Cox Cable) municipal-based 'educational' channel. CCC
shares a channel with Field Kindley High School in Coffeyville, cable
channel 21. Our students involved in that maintain the studio, the
equipment, and direct the programming. The FKHS students in the
program take their classes here at CCC." He did agree, Neil, that the
'old station, when it was running, more than a decade ago' was 310
watts. He suggested I should speak to someone at the 'Dalton
Defenders Museum' (which doubles as the Coffeyville Historical
Society).
A phone call to the historical society (a/k/a Dalton Defenders Museum)
did not produce much luck. The man there basically confirmed what
the guy at CCC had told me, and when I mentioned the 'local' station
in the 1950's he said it drew a blank with him. He *did* remember both
my father George (who died in 1991) and my Uncle Clarence Lowrance who
died about a year go. He seemed to think 'channel 4' was not a local
operation but (in those days, 1950's) it was still a relatively new
operation in Oklahoma City and it was likely large amounts of time
each day were spent 'just staying on the air' broadcasting things
like pictures of weather dials, etc. He suggested trying the
daily newspaper, the Coffeyville Journal.
The Journal was no help at all; the kid who answered the phone said no
one around there had been there *that* long, 'even our publisher is a
lady in her fifties who has worked here for a long time, ten years or
so.' The one guy I know of at the Journal, Jim Tickle in their
circulation department is an older guy who doubles as their manager of
the e-Journal they used to put out for awhile on the Internet, and he
was not in the office today. The kid who answered the phone at the
Journal invited me to 'stop by anytime and check the old films. We
have most of them, except for a few missing issues in the 1880's when
there was a fire.'
So Neil, there is your half-answer. I realize not a very good one. I
rather suspect the one time I got ghosting images and snow with a very
faint picture it must have been the OKC station under good atmospheric
conditions.
PAT
TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@telecom-digest.org)