Television made big splash locally

By Johna Strickland
Argus Observer
Sunday, August 24, 2008 2:02 AM PDT

Johna Strickland | Argus observer The advent of television into the Treasure Valley was big news. The Argus Observer made the 1953 event a high priority for news coverage (above).

Ontario—Raymond Westcott saw his first TV in Boise, and he wanted one.

“Dad was just taken with it,” his daughter, Cheri Phillips, said of the 1953 encounter.

Completely enthused, he soon purchased one for himself, bringing the first TV to Ontario.

“Dad found a TV he could have at the shop ... He put it on a bench and would keep it on all day,” Phillips, 67, Portland, said of her father who died in 2007 at the age of 91.

“And then there were people who followed behind when Boise was getting their station,” Phillips said.

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Westcott worked with his father, Roy Westcott, at Westcott Electric Service — later Westcott Radio & TV Service — repairing appliances and radios and checking headlights among other services on South Oregon Street.

Mostly, he watched snow on his new TV because Ontario didn’t receive a television signal. Occasionally, to his delight, the weather would blow in a 15-minute program which originated hundreds of miles away.

After a while, Westcott took the set home to his wife, Maxine, and children, Cheri and Lynn.

Then they watched snow.

“Mom would do her ironing in front of the TV, and it was just snow,” Phillips said. “If something came on, she’d call him and he would rush home in no time to see it.”

The final weekend in May 1953, more than a single 15-minute show flickered onto the Westcott’s snowy screen. An unusual series of storms that weekend blew broadcasts from Omaha, Kansas City and Oklahoma City to Ontario, the Ontario Argus Observer reported June 1, 1953.

“Viewers gathered around sets in increasing numbers this morning to watch the ‘Guiding Light’ program and news broadcast from Omaha,” the newspaper reported in its Monday edition.

Recently, Larry L. Lynch, son of 1950s Argus publisher and editor Don Lynch, wrote about this story in his blog, RememberingTheArgus.blogspot.com.

“After a weekend of occasional viewing, she (Mrs. Raymond Westcott) was hoping the phenomenon would continue long enough for her to watch ‘I Love Lucy’ Monday evening and ... the coronation of Queen Elizabeth later in the week,” Lynch wrote in his June 20, 2008, blog post.

Cheri Phillips, who was 14 or 15 at the time, remembers the excitement of catching the spotty programming and wondering how the picture got in the box she sat before.

“It was just like you’d expect,” she said of the community’s reaction to television. “It was something new and wonderful, lots of excitement.”

TV comes to Ontario

Local TV reception possibly rode the airwaves to Ontario around June 18, 1953, when Idaho’s first television station, KFXD-TV in Nampa, was scheduled to air pattern tests, the Argus Observer reported June 15, 1953. Ray Westcott expected Ontario to pick up the signal, though further Argus stories did not confirm or deny his belief.

As the people of Ontario awaited TV’s advent, local merchants started selling TVs, advertisements and stories in the Argus show. In fact, the city observed Saturday, May 23, as TV Day to give “an adequate introduction for television,” a May 18, 1953, article states.

Advertisements from July 1953 offer a 17-inch Zenith TV for $199.95 and a 21-inch for $279.95. In that same issue — July 16, 1953 — the classified page displayed a 1940 Pontiac with a radio, heater and new paint for $225 and a “1940 Buick Super 4 door sedan, heater. Ready to go (for) $195.”

A month after TV Day, a Boise station began pattern tests and broadcast for the first time July 12, 1953, a Sunday. People gathered in homes and public places like the lounge in the Moore Hotel, where a group watched wrestling, an Argus photo published July 16, 1953, on the front page shows. Another photo published in the same issue showed the Hathaway family watching their television set.

“We were just, it was magic,” Sue Hathaway, 70, Ontario, said of that day when she was 15. “It was entertainment, something we never had before. ... kinda a miracle. We didn’t understand how the picture got from here to there. ... Of course, everyone had to have a TV set (then).”

Braving the hottest weather in 13 years, thousands of people flocked to watch KIDO-TV’s dedication day programs, the Argus reported.

“Viewers occupied virtually all of the available space in showrooms throughout the city,” the July 16 story reads. One store reported more than 1,500 people visited as the Boise station began broadcasting at 2 p.m. Idaho Gov. Len B. Jordan, Boise Mayor R.E. Edlefsen and Philo Farnsworth, “the nation’s foremost TV inventor, were principal personalities” in the televised dedication service, the Argus Observer reported.

Farnsworth, who as a high school student in Rigby, Idaho, figured out the present basis for TV in 1921, solving the problems other inventors encountered. Later, he developed the TV from his 1921 blackboard drawings. He came to Idaho “for the dedication of the first TV show in his home state,” an Argus Observer July 16 story reported.

An 81⁄2-hour block of programs — including “Dennis Day,” “Hit Parade,” “Cisco Kid,” “Two for the Money,” a news broadcast and a feature film, “Don’t Trust Your Husband” — followed.

‘Glued to the tube’

As Ontario settled before the tube, KIDO-TV broadcast for only a portion of each day — from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. or 10:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and from about 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The station’s entire Thursday broadcast, 8 hours, equals how many hours of TV each American household now watches daily on average, according to The Nielsen Company. Each individual views 41⁄2 hours of television daily on average.

Phillips said she remembered the excitement of regular TV programs.

“That was the thing, a big time in town,” she said. “Of course, as time wore on it just became a fixture.”

Bill Oxnam, 62, Ontario, said he recalled coming to town as a kid with his parents to watch his first TV broadcast at a store’s promotional screening in the fall of 1953.

“They sat us all in front of a TV, and all the parents were in the back trying to figure out how to buy one. ... ‘This is a movie in a box. Gosh, this is amazing,’ ” he said he thought. “This was like the 20th century coming to Ontario.”

Oxnam, though, like Phillips found the excitement changed to routine as he came home from school and watched TV with friends before his family’s set, the only one in the neighborhood. During the winter, they watched more often too.

“It became part of our lives, just like everyone else. Before that you were reading books or doing whatever, then you were glued to the tube. It kinda opened the world up and made easy access,” he said. “I can remember when we got our third channel. We thought we had the world.”

Hathaway said TV brought new careers to Ontario such as providing TV repair and “opened up people,” she said.

“It really changed the way things were done. We had the news, and we had pictures. ... It really propelled things,” Hathaway said.

Information arrived faster, Hathaway said, noting newsreels could be shown a month later in a movie theater while newscasts came daily on the TV. It also became possible for a nation to witness something at the same time, she said.

“I think it started to change lives when it got to be such an instant communication,” Hathaway said. As a child growing up, Hathaway remembered listening to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats, then realizing how different it was to be able to see, not just hear, programs.

As TV’s black and white images crept into homes and lives, Phillips said her father added color to their television set.

“You had a green plastic film that stuck to the screen,” she said, describing Westcott’s purchase as a piece of “chartreuse Saran wrap” that created no distinguishable colors, just green.

Don’t forget to check out the Argus Observer’s 125th Anniversary special section coming in October.