THE BEGINNINGS OF TELEVISION

The power of the visual images which also could travel on the radio waves Heinrich Hertz had discovered in the 1880's finally was unleashed in the middle of the 20th century.

The explosion of television began at the end of World War II. Radio entertainers such as Milton Berle reached unheard of new levels of popularity through the new medium. But for four long years, it was largely confined to the east coast and a few large cities.

Beginning in 1948, applications for TV licenses were frozen while the FCC crafted a national system of channel distribution. In Iowa, only two stations were on the air during the freeze. One was WOI-TV in Ames, owned by Iowa State University.

The other was in Davenport, where once again B.J. Palmer pushed to be in the vanguard of electronic media development. His company's application for a television license had been approved before the freeze went into effect.

WOC-TV, Davenport

The original WOC-TV studios, as seen in the early 1950s.

On October 31, 1949, WOC-TV signed on as Iowa's first commercial TV station. Their studio was in the living room of a building known as the Ryan Mansion.    Harold Heath, then a young announcer from WOC radio, was on the original TV staff.

Harold Heath, as seen in his radio days.

"We had to originate all of our own shows. There was no network. There wasn't until several years later that the network came. We originated live musical shows; we originated a weather forecast with a puppet called Mr. Weatherwise. I had a program called 'Sportraits,'" Heath said.

However, the very first program on WOC-TV was a delayed broadcast kinescope of a show originated in Chicago called "Kukla, Fran and Ollie", which became one of the early network television hits.

It featured an Iowan -- Fran Allison, who got her start in broadcasting in Waterloo on WMT radio.

University of Iowa sports got an early television debut on WOC, thanks to a new coach named Forest Evaschevski. Evy was looking for publicity for his football program.

"That man would take the film highlights that the coaches made, edit them, bring them up here, drive them personally to Davenport, put them on the air, narrate them -- all for 75 dollars a week," Heath said.

That was a lot more than Heath got for his early work on television. He was paid at the radio station, but at TV, he was a volunteer.

"None of us got paid. We all went down there because we wanted the experience. It was exciting. It was new. We were pioneers. It wasn't until several years later that any of us got paid for working at the television station. It couldn't make any money," Heath said.

The Brady Street facilities are still being used today by Channel 6, which is now known as KWQC-TV.

That would change radically as television fastened its grip on Americans. There were only about 400 receiving sets when WOC-TV signed on in the Ryan House in 1949. But the Quad-Cities had grown to become the 90th market with 400,000 television homes by the time a then-ultra-modern studio facility replaced the Ryan House as WOC's new home in the early 60's.

WMT-TV, Cedar Rapids

With only two stations on the air during the FCC freeze on new licenses, frustration escalated among the thousands of Iowans who could not view television. By the time it was lifted in 1952, the "We Want TV" clamor was loud and intense. From his powerful WMT radio base, Bill Quarton -- with the proper FCC approval -- had positioned his company to be one of the first to make the move into TV, after the freeze was lifted. The first pictures from Channel 2/WMT-TV went out from a new facility in northeast Cedar Rapids on September 30, 1953.

During that first broadcast, Quarton counseled the audience not to expect too much at first. "Please do remember that we are not experts. We're trying to do the best we can. We're going to make many mistakes. You're going to have a lot of fun with us, laughing at our mistakes. But one of these days, we'll end up, I feel confident, with a very good operation. So let me end my little talk with a plea to you to be patient."

While Channel 2's transmitter antenna was being hoisted into place for that inaugural telecast, a titanic struggle was taking place 60 miles up the road in Waterloo over the Channel 7 license.

The Fight for Waterloo's Channel 7

R.J. McElroy (L) and Joe Dumond (R) each wanted to bring television to Waterloo.

It was a David and Goliath fight between two WMT alumni, R.J. McElroy and Joe Dumond.

Dumond had parlayed the Josh Higgins radio character he developed in his early WMT experience into prominence on the NBC radio network, and later into ownership of KXEL, a 50,000-watt radio station in Waterloo.

McElroy meanwhile was struggling to make his way in the retail business. WMT radio, its headquarters now relocated in Cedar Rapids, originated Art Shepard's popular man-on-the-street show in the downtown district, where McElroy was assistant manager at the Woolworth dime store.

On bad weather days when it was hard to get someone to stop and talk, the garrulous McElroy was only too happy to be interviewed.

"We had a little group of people we could call on on those bad days, and one of them was Michael McElroy," Bill Quarton said. "Mac did such a good job, and we were doing so well with this program, we duplicated it up to Waterloo. That's how Mac got started in the business."

"Man on the Street", as  hosted by McElroy.

WMT ultimately closed its Waterloo studios, and at about the same time, in 1947, Mac started his own radio station -- KWWL. McElroy continued to do his daily man-on-the-street broadcast on KWWL in Waterloo until 1959.

Later, he also took the TV plunge. McElroy and one of his associates, Lyle Harvey, were photographed here as they mailed KWWL's application -- which challenged KXEL's bid -- for the one VHF television channel which had been assigned to Waterloo.

McElroy and Dumond locked horns over Channel 7, amidst a storm of controversy from a public clamoring for television.

  It was resolved in a federal courtroom in Waterloo rather than in Washington, where Dumond had assumed his political connections and broadcasting experience would make approval of his application for Channel 7 a foregone conclusion.

Dumond was so confident of winning the TV license, he made no secret of his construction plans, as seen in the newspaper article (L) and promotional materials (above). The new facility was complete with a kitchen set (above R).

Acting on that assumption, and with clear disdain for McElroy and his upstart radio station, Dumond constructed a new building on the outskirts of Waterloo, where he moved KXEL. All was well and good -- except that the building included an entire section obviously designed for television production, which KXEL proclaimed in ads displaying the "Josh Higgins Radio-Television Center". However, all of this was without the FCC-required TV-construction permit and in clear violation of FCC rules for license applicants.

When KWWL filed its competing application, it set the stage for a contested FCC hearing and the prospect of a long delay in bringing television to Waterloo.

When the national license freeze came off in the early 1950's, Dumond set about telling just about anyone in a TV-hungry public who would listen that KXEL was ready to go -- and that KWWL's application was what was holding up television in Waterloo. One of those occasions was a speech to the Exchange Club. What Dumond did not know was that two of McElroy's employees, Warren Mead and Ed Falk, had placed a microphone in the room.

"KWWL had had a board of directors meeting at the President Hotel, and it was adjacent to the meeting of this club, so we surreptitiously that afternoon strung cord with a microphone and set up our recorder in the room adjacent, and we recorded the whole thing," Falk, who was then KWWL's news director, said.

That tape, recorded April 12, 1953, contained the voice of Joe Dumond and some of the statements which sealed the outcome of the license fight. His public comments proved to be fatal to his TV license application.

"I can say this much and I think you have a right to know," Dumond said. "I'm going to be honest with you. On behalf of Waterloo, on behalf of you, we filed an application and bought equipment. We have it now. It can be here in a matter of days. That will bring you television, and I have ten thousand dollars that I will leave with any responsible group that if it's granted today, you will have TV by the first of June. I'll put up a performance bond. Why? Because the equipment we have on hand is true production equipment...Now the proposal made by the other people, it's strictly a paper proposal."

  With the tape locked away in a safe-deposit box, McElroy's attorneys filed a lawsuit which accused KXEL of conspiracy, restraint of trade and violation of FCC regulations.   It effectively moved the outcome of the channel dispute from Washington to a federal courtroom in Waterloo. The trial went forward in Judge Henry Graven's court in the summer of 1953. When the secretly-recorded Dumond tape came into evidence, the handwriting was on the wall.