Well I guess I’ll post something KING-related for some of my readers.

Throughout most of the 1950s, BMI hosted a bi-yearly “Television Talks” clinic held in various cities around the US for the benefit of news directors, engineers and other station personnel to meet and share ideas. In 1957, KING general manager Otto Brandt was one of the speakers.

A short, amusing excerpt from the transcription of his presentation on how KING did business with images rather than words to make a point (and evade the equal time rules):

Seattle is a beautiful city and the first thing that hit me when I first went out there was the way the beauty was marred with these telegraph poles with the power lines all over the place. And so about a year ago we put together some ID slides and we sent a photographer out and had him take a shot of the beautiful scene with Mt. Rainier in the background but with these poles sticking up right in front of the mountain and almost blocking it out and we simply used it on an ID slide, saying “This is Seattle, KING-TV.” We didn’t say we were against the poles or the power lines or anything else. We knew that if we had done it with an editorial we would have to go into the same thing that we are all afraid of and that is getting into the problem of presenting equal opportunity to all qualified opponents with opposing views.

We did the same thing with a traffic intersection and we took a shot of it with cares completely jammed and piled up all around the place and also used that. Now, that’s doing it the sneaky way but there are ways of getting around this equal opportunity provision I suppose.”