Keven writes:

> I was on Romper Room for a week (Portland, OR).
>  We used the cardboard fire-engines to slide down stairs at home.
>  Besides Sky King, another favorite was Mighty Mouse.

Romper Room, like Bozo the Clown, was a syndicated franchise. Virtually every
city of any size had locally produced versions of the shows. One reason for
this, I presume, was that it allowed for exactly Keven's experiences. Local
kids got to be on TV. But that was undoubtedly only a side-effect of a
"feature" of television broacasting at the time. In the 1950's -- and well
into the 1960's -- live programming was very expensive to distribute.
Nationwide microwave hookups were not cheap, and satellite links -- which
didn't even exist in any form until Telstar in 1962 (and that was only
experimental) -- were fabulously expensive.

I worked for RCA Service Company of Arizona (and at its sister television
station, KVIA) in Yuma, Arizona from 1959 to 1963. During my time there I
watched in awe all of the first transcontinental Telstar television
broadcasts, each only about 20 minues long, from Bell Telephone's facilities
in Andover, MA to Goonhilly Downs in England and back (Telstar was a very low
earth-orbiting satellite and twenty minutes was stretching the time
available). See:

    http://www.retrofuture.com/telstar.html

To this day, I remain wildly impressed by the event. One of the scenes in one
of the first transmissions that was broadcast was a Yankees' baseball game.
They announced over the stadium's loudspeaker that the game was now being
broadcast live to Europe, the very first such broadcast in the history of
television. Everyone in the stands stood up and cheered for several minutes.

As I say, I remain wildly impressed. I've always been impressed with first
events of great historical significance, such as the first intercity
telegraph message ("What has God wrought?") or the first laser-reflected
satellite message ("NASA. Rah. Rah. Rah."). That Yankees' game ranks in that
same league, and it tickles me greatly to remember it.

Wirt Atmar

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