In the ’60s, most radio and TV stations carried some sort of Christian church service on Sunday morning. Richmond was no exception. WRVA Radio carried the First Baptist Church, and its pastor, Dr Theodore Adams would give the station break from the pulpit at the end, to let the studio know to take back control.
WRVA TV, Channel 12, (now WWBT), was no stranger to Dr. Adams. Each Christmas he would do a holiday broadcast from the studio. The church folk would bring in dozens of poinsettias and fake trees with fake snow to make the studio a winter wonderland. I think there was even a den setting with a fake fireplace, where Dr. Adams would read the Christmas Story to kids “gathered round.” I think I remember this, but I could be thinking of someone else, Mr. Rogers, maybe.
Dr. Adams’ radio broadcast was so successful that the management of WRVA TV (same ownership as the radio station, if you haven’t already figured that out) decided to do a live TV broadcast. As I understood it at the time, TV could not simulcast the First Baptist broadcast, either because radio didn’t want TV to dilute its audience or because the church roof didn’t have a line of sight to the station. Broadcast microwave dishes had to “see” each other to work. This line of sight did work from a dish on the roof of the Grove Avenue Baptist Church to the receiving dish on Channel 12’s tower.
Since I was the newest hired director and already had to work Saturday afternoons directing a live remote from Richmond Chrysler-Plymouth, (see the “Richmond Chrysler-Plymouth and the Nolde’s Bread Truck” post), I was “invited” to direct the Sunday morning church service also.
So, after the Saturday remote, we would load up the bread truck with cameras, tripods, and cables, and head across the river to Grove Avenue.
Now I need to back up a bit. Before the first church broadcast, Channel 12’s assistant chief engineer and I did a site survey. It involved climbing to the church roof with binoculars to make sure we could see the receiving dish on the WRVA TV tower.
With the microwave transmitter on, and a walkie-talkie in hand, he lined up the transmitter dish by talking to an engineer at the station. The station had purchased a second transmitting dish so once it was aimed, it didn’t have to move. I remember this being winter which will be apparent in a minute.
The pastor insisted that both cameras be run from the balcony so as not to interfere with the congregation.
I felt so bad for the camera guys who, each week, had to carry those monsters up the tiny winding steps. This was before portable cameras were invented and the remote cameras were the same RCA TK somethings we used in the studio.
Week after week, month after month, we would break down at Richmond Chrysler-Plymouth and move to the church. The broadcast was at 11 and with the remote truck and cameras already in place, we could be on the air with only a two-hour setup time.
Then came spring. At 10 AM I called master control to do the signal check and was told it was breaking up. The on-site engineer did a complete system check but it showed nothing wrong. Up to the roof, we went to see if the dish had somehow moved. It hadn’t. So, with binoculars in hand, the engineer checked to see if he could see the tower dish, He couldn’t.
Spring had sprung and so had the leaves on the trees we were able to see through all winter.
No remote service that day. Master Control went to NBC for whatever church service the net was carrying. Monday morning it was back to the church roof to find a higher location where we could get over the trees. “Why did we not just prune the trees,” you might ask. Because the offending leaves were on trees in Maymont Park, several air miles from the church, and right in the line of sight between the two dishes. -dm