Any chance other meetings can be taped as well? Now is a great time to perserve the faces, places and memories. As the years go by, it will be priceless for those doing research or just wanting to get a better understanding of the early days.

Art, Appreciate your efforts, but I am now managing our company’s media operations in both Boise and Spokane and I will in Spokane on the 25th and 26th and won’t be able to attend your event. We have some old Idaho Statesman newspaper stories framed in our conference room and I’m sure you would enjoy reading them. One newspaper story is from December 24, 1952 announcing that the FCC had authorized the construction of Idaho’s first full service television station KIDO Channel 7. You will also find a couple of stories about Georgia Davidson and her pioneering history. Have fun… Doug

Thanks Doug – we DID have fun! The occasion for the meeting was to celebrate the Channel 7 going on the air 54 years and 2 weeks earlier this month on July 12th, 1953! After introducing everyone in the room we listened to some classic old KING-AM jingles from the 50s to ’set the mood” for 1953 (“You ain’t got the swing…if you’re not tuned to KING!”). Then we heard a couple of great Gib and Jeanie Hochstrasser “big band style” KIDO Radio (AM-630) jingles that ushered in KIDO’s March 18, 1951 move move from 1380 to 630 on the dial with 5,000 watts! It was just 2 years later they put KIDO-TV on the air…so these really set the mood as what life was like in the early 50s in Boise, which had a poulation of about 35,000 people with only 350-500 TV sets in the whole town! Lastly, we heard actual recorded-off-the-air tapes of KTVB from 1972, the actual sign-on of KAID-TV on December 31, 1971, and the actual sign-on of Channel 6 (then KITC) from February of 1974, featuring Mark Hopkins, who is still at ther station!

After some fun discssion about KIDO-TV (now KTVB) we watched KTVB’s 40th Anniversary Special aired in 1993. It was great! Brad Bond and Laurie then gave us a brief tour of the studios and Newsroom. Rick Lantz and Mark Johnson as well as the studio crew could not have been nicer! Marty Holtman was there, former KBCI Chief Engineer (and now Idaho Public Television Engineer) Larry Smith also attended as well as some “surprize” visitors including RW Eagleston who worked at KIDO for Harold Toedtemeier in the 1940s, and Gary Dean Mosier…who was on KATN (Kay-Ten) in the 60s as well as C.E. at KEST and KYME!

Our full-color Newsletter was handed out to all with features a 10-page spread on KTVB’s History and a Trubute to Georgia Davision…founder of Channel 7 who was also a big public television booster in Idaho!

Thanks to Brad Bond, Laurie Asin, Don Day, and of course Doug Armstrong for hosting this meeting. It was first class and just what you expect from Idaho’s most successful Television station. Everyone left with good feeling about KTVB and a real appreciation for KTVB’s colorful history and a better understanding of reasons for KTVB’s continued and current success. Thank You KTVB!

Art Gregory Pres. History of ID Broadcasting Foundation and
Frank Aden Jr. Vice Pres. and TV-History Guru!