There they were … Captain Jinks (Stan Lonergan) and Salty Sam (George Bahsillyun).
They hosted the afternoon children’s program The Captain Jinks TV Show on NBC affiliate WEEK-TV in Peoria, Illinois. The show was live and unscripted and ran from the 1956 – 1972. The show had various segments like the joke barrel and cartoons, but the fun part was hearing the Ol’ Captain adlibbing making Salty Sam laugh.
The two characters were actually the station’s booth announcers. The booth announcer was a person in a small room off of the control room and he would read live commercials and live tags to a commercial or every hour he would do the station ID. This was before everything would be pre-recorded.
The Captain was the morning booth announcer and Salty was the afternoon booth announcer; doing the Captain Jinks Show was their transition time. The show was first an hour, and it became so popular that they expanded it to two hours. That meant they could sell a plethora of advertising in the show.
Now a little back story, I had started my TV career at the competing CBS Affiliate WMBD while skipping classes at Bradley University as a lowly floor director or a … ‘hey you, I need a glass of water or that set needs to be constructed’
Then due to my immaturity, somehow, I was asked to leave the station that I loved. But I was able to garner a floor director’s position at the WEEK-TV for a while. I was able to regain my position and career at WMBD, but that is still another story.
Also, at this time I am also still a first-year freshman at Bradley University in name-only and a young entrepreneur with the Sugar Shack in my hometown asking kids to dress up and go dancing on the weekends. I was booking bands from around the area.
Combining my studentship and entrepreneurship, I spotted four upper classmen at Bradley University who had formed a band called The Trademarks and I thought they had real potential.
Now my work schedule was to work the Captain’s show and then get ready for the local news program and stay until the 10 pm news cast was finished, I clean up and went home.
At that time, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was 90 minutes long. After the Tonight Show was over at midnight George Buhsillyun would read the closing sign-off announcement for the station. Then the station would run a film of the National Anthem and the engineers would shut off the transmitter.
I saw this as a great opportunity to get The Trademarks to come into the big TV studio and get recorded. Something they hadn’t been able to do. I became friends with one of the engineers at the station and he agreed to stay after the station signed off to record the band.
(INSERT RECORDING) I have the only recording and it was a very was educating night.
Now for the rest of the story, the story that I set out to tell.
It was a Friday night and the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson had just started and the switch board started getting calls complaining about the signal of the station was coming in and out. That was scaring all the engineers because they were checking all of the dials and meters. The signal strength of the network coming into the station was strong. That wasn’t a problem.
The calls kept coming. Another round for system checks began. The only people in the station were the person taking all the calls, the four engineers, myself and George B.
But the calls continued coming. Finally, one of the engineers decided to go behind the studio building to observe the tower. The base of the tower sat in the middle of a field next to the building. The tower was guyed-masted.