Produced by Jessica Greene


You see them on TV every night, delivering and reporting the news. Familiar faces you've known for years. The tools that help bring it to you are commonplace in most newsrooms and stations these days. But it didn't start out that sophisticated. WFLA-TV has traveled light years since its birth over 40 years ago.

Our journey back in time starts in 1954 on a vacant lot in Tampa. Construction workers are laying the foundation of a TV station and a few miles away in Riverview, a powerful transmitter climbs into the air. The January 23rd edition of the Tampa Sunday Tribune reported the news of the 1,054 foot tower with the high technology that could beam signals into the downtown station. For those lucky enough to have a TV set, the waves would broadcast news and entertainment into their living room.

The thrill of a local TV station that could deliver news and entertainment to a 26 county area was very exciting and new to the part of the state its signal reached. The reports showed that a whopping 40 percent of families had television sets. They were all looking forward to WFLA's programming that included hit shows such as Howdy Doody, Truth or Consequences, Today, and Tonight.

February 14, 1955 is a memorable date in Tampa's TV history. The first ghostly black and white images literally invaded the airwaves, as the fitting first broadcast of the Gasparilla Pirate Invasion flickered across the Bay Area. Every year since then, the parade has marched on through the airwaves.

News had a new way to reach the public now, and television would never be the same again. One look at the opening of the 6:00 pm news and the difference is clear. Compared to today's styles, the logos look like paper cut-outs glued to construction board.

Gathering news was different in those days too. News photographers hit the streets driving cars that would be considered classics today, and carried small 16-millimeter film cameras. Deadlines were much earlier in the day, necessitated by the demands of chemical film developing. Hundreds of feet of film had to be sorted through and spliced together to edit news stories. News scripts were typed out on paper with noisy manual then electric typewriters and wire copy was ripped from the teletype. With only one copy of the script, carelessness was unaffordable. As Gayle Sierens explains, "If coffee fell on those scripts, you were in big trouble."

Video led the revolution for electronic news gathering in 1979. Cameras and live trucks were bulky but expanded the reach of our coverage area. By 1984, technology allowed the viewer to be right in the middle of the action as news entered the live age. Technology also changed the weather. In the 50s and 60s meteorologists used magnets and drawings to help explain the forecast, now radar painted a new picture of the world. Relying on a picture on a wall was risky, it could fall just before it was used, or even right in the middle of the forecast. Today, the Storm Team 8 Forecast Center boasts eight different computer systems sophisticated enough to pinpoint lightning, rainfall, and storm cells right down to a specific city block.

Ownership changes in 1983 gave us new call letters, now we were the more awkward WXFL. By the first part of 1989, we were back to the better known WFLA.


TV Time Warp Part 2