TeleMonteCarlo ID 1989 - I post this because of the wonderful TMC spot. As you know, I taped this as a kid at my grandparents’ flat - yes, I took a Beta tape with me! Also, it goes without saying that the video just sort of happened! I only had one shot at this - it was only a brief stopover, I was seeing everything on the video for the first time right there (including CBS, which was like jaw-dropping awesome for me as a young newsie) and I had the recording skills and foresight of a 12-year-old! So - for me, a beautiful memory of that time at Nanna’s. Incidentally, WWUpdate, I was just in that same living room 4 weeks ago! 
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The first edition of ABC’s World News Tonight from 1978, anchored by Frank Reynolds in Washington, Max Robinson in Chicago, and Peter Jennings in London. The tri-anchor, tri-city format would live on until Reynolds’ death in 1983:
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By the way, for anyone interested in American TV news up until 1983, this is a good read:
Image: openlibrary.org
Barbara Matusow; The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor; Houghton Mifflin, 1983
Matusow’s book focuses on American news anchors and how they became such influential media personalities. It is essentially a serious, well-written history of television news in the United States, from the fledgling first broadcasts to the 1980s, with some revealing behind-the-scenes “gossip” thrown in.
One of my all-time favorite idents/IDs:
If you have some spare time, here’s an interesting YouTube mini-documentary about the history of television presentation in the London ITV region (the home of LWT, Thames, Carlton, Rediffusion, etc.):
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Rediffusion, the owner of the first London ITV license/franchise, also owned Rediffusion TV, better known as RTV, in Hong Kong.
Here’s a rare 1980 clip of the late news from RTV’s English-language channel:
And here’s a 1969 schedule for RTV’s English-language channel:
Source: http://gallifreybase.com/w/index.php/Main_Page (in accordance w/ that site’s Creative Commons license)
And here’s more information about the history of RTV in Hong Kong:
http://www.rediffusion.info/hk.html
The station became known as ATV in the early 1980s.
The entire “ITV In the Face” series is interesting.
Ten was using typewriters for scripts in the 1990s. Yes.
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Could that have been a teletype machine?
In any case, when Walter Cronkite retired, Johnny Carson did a great skit that, among other things, poked fun at the sound of typewriters and teletypes in the CBS newsroom:
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Yeah, it could be a teletype machine. Reporters had typewriters at their desks. And the scripts were typed on paper. I still have some!
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Some impressive, Hollywood-like production values on display in this epic 2011 Russian news promo:
Here’s a fairly elaborate 1992 ID from XHTV-4 in Mexico City:
And speaking of Mexico, the city of Tijuana in the northwest was home to one of the world’s most interesting stations: XETV-6. (All Mexican callsigns begin with the letter “X”.) Although it was licensed to Tijuana and had its transmitter there, for years the station broadcast in English for the city of San Diego, just across the U.S.-Mexican border.
Tijuana (Bajanorte.com)
San Diego (forbestravelguide.com)
XETV broadcast in English from its launch in 1953 until it switched to Spanish-language programming in 2017. For the first two decades, it served as San Diego’s ABC affiliate. It lost that affiliation as a result of a court battle, and it became an independent. When the Fox network was established, the station became its affiliate for the San Diego market. It spent its final years as an affiliate of the CW network.
(Logopedia)
For years, films were taken from San Diego across the border to Tijuana, and even the local news originated in the Mexican City. Later, the FCC allowed the station to maintain a production facility in San Diego, so the signal was beamed from there to the transmitter in Tijuana.
Here’s a XETV news update from 1977:
Here’s a sign-on from 2017, XETV’s final year as an English-language station. The Mexican national anthem is followed by a sign-on announcement in English and Spanish. The clip also includes the start of XETV’s morning news:
And here’s a behind-the-scenes tour of XETV’s facilities in its final years as an English-language station:
https://www.fybush.com/sites/2009/site-090213.html
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<If not for my favourite childhood themes, this is probably my favourite news theme ever!
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I also love the late '70s look of Antenne 2 (as France 2 was known then). Every day, the newscast would start with some creative camerawork. In this case, the camera followed the anchor as he made this way to the news set from above:
Since I mentioned XETV above, this is how the station looked back at its history on its final day as an English-language operation:
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That’s amazing, I’m surprised this happened at all. I’m guessing there weren’t enough licenses in San Diego?
Great that it was a Fox affiliate given, you know, all that’s happened since with Murdoch and all.
Bill Kurtis currently of NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!
That’s exactly the reason. From Wikipedia:
XETV came into existence because of a technical quirk affecting stations in San Diego and Los Angeles. Even after the Federal Communications Commission’s Sixth Report and Order lifted a four-year-long freeze on awarding television construction permits in 1952, signing on a third television station in the San Diego market proved difficult. While San Diego and Los Angeles are not close enough that one city’s stations can be seen clearly over the air in the other, the unique geography of Southern Californiaresults in tropospheric propagation. This phenomenon makes co-channel interference a significant enough problem that the two cities must share the VHF band.[ citation needed ]
By 1952, San Diego (assigned channels 8 and 10) and Los Angeles (assigned channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13) already had all but three channels on the VHF band covered. Channel 3 initially had been deemed unusable as a signal because KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara would travel in a straight line across the Pacific Ocean (it would ultimately be allocated to Tijuana Canal Once outlet XHTJB-TV). San Diego’s first two television stations, KFMB-TV (channel 8) and KFSD-TV (channel 10, now KGTV), which were respectively affiliated with CBS and NBC, were among the last construction permits issued before the FCC’s freeze on new television station licenses went into effect. The UHF band, introduced by the FCC after the freeze, was not seen as a viable option; television set makers were not required to include UHF tuners until 1964 as a result of the passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act. Additionally, several portions of San Diego County are very mountainous, and UHF signals do not carry very well across rugged terrain.[ citation needed ]
Complicating matters, the Mexican authorities had allocated two VHF channels to neighboring Tijuana – channels 6 and 12. Since these were the last two VHF channels left in the area, the FCC did not accept any new construction permits from San Diego as a courtesy to Mexican authorities. One of the frequencies, channel 6, had originally been assigned to San Diego before the freeze; it was reassigned to Mexico as a result of the Sixth Report and Order .[4]
Although San Diego was large enough to support three television stations, it soon became obvious that the only way to get a third VHF station on the air would be to use one of Tijuana’s allocations. The Azcárraga family, owners of Telesistema Mexicano (the forerunner of Televisa), quickly snapped up the concession for channel 6, and signed XETV on the air on April 29, 1953.[5] It is the San Diego area’s second-oldest television station after KFMB-TV, which began operations on May 16, 1949.
At its launch, XETV was an independent station, broadcasting programs in both English and Spanish from its studio facilities in Tijuana.[6][7] Channel 6 also established a business office on Park Boulevard in the University Heights section of San Diego, which handled sales accounts from north of the border. The Azcárragas chose to focus XETV toward San Diego and its English-speaking audience because there were more households in that side of the market that had television sets at the time than there were in Tijuana,[8] which did not get its own all-Spanish station until 1960 when the Azcárragas signed on sister station XEWT-TV(channel 12).[7] Owing to its initial bilingual, bi-national audience, XETV billed itself as " The International Station " during its early years.[9]
Joining ABC (1953–1973)[edit]
In January 1953, former ABC programming executive Alvin George Flanagan filed an application with the FCC to supply programming to XETV via microwave relay from San Diego.[10] Flanagan’s request was neither approved nor denied and he took a position with Los Angeles station KLAC-TV (now KCOP-TV) in early 1954.
A subsequent petition by ABC to allow it to transmit network programming across the Mexican border to XETV via microwave relay was approved in November 1955.[11] Pending the outcome of an appeal by KFMB-TV and KFSD-TV, ABC signed an affiliation deal with XETV which allowed channel 6 to carry network programming via film and kinescope; that became effective 5 April 1956[12] and replaced the part-time carriage of ABC programming by the two San Diego-licensed stations.
The original decision was stayed by the United States Court of Appeals due to the decision having been made in the absence of hearings by the FCC; after hearings were held, the FCC upheld the grant in October 1956. KFMB-TV again appealed the grant and the Appeals Court remanded the decision to the FCC.[13] The Commission again upheld the grant on April 22, 1958; in November of that year, KFMB-TV again asked for revocation, based on an ad in Broadcasting which XETV identified itself as a San Diego station.[14]
Throughout XETV’s tenure with ABC, network programs were received via microwave and AT&T cable at the station’s San Diego offices, where they were reproduced (on film or kinescope, and later videotape) and then physically transported to channel 6’s transmission facilities in Tijuana, a practice known in the television industry as “bicycling”. While this arrangement legally circumvented the station’s inability to receive and broadcast a direct network feed from across the international border, it left XETV unable to carry live network programming, such as breaking news events and some sports coverage. The FCC held the option of renewing the authorization on an annual basis, as well as reviewing it if – and when – a third commercial television station signed on in the American side of the market.[15]
XETV cleared most ABC programs, with one exception: an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. was self-censored, as it depicted an abortion in a Mexican border town at a time when abortion in Mexico was still illegal.[16]
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He was also the narrator of Anchorman:
An ID from Singapore’s English-language Channel 5, 1995; it still looks fresh today:
A historical compilation of news opens used by The National, the flagship primetime newscast of Canada’s CBC – as well as its predecessors and temporary replacements:
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I was an ITN guy (as you know, WWU!) - however, spending 4 years as a kid in London, BBC News was definitely a presence in the background. I wasn’t a fan, but I had a respect for it. Watching that clip on composer George Fenton, you can only give him kudos for his incredible work. I’m glad to have been growing up to witness these awesome opens (and, yeah, 1989 9 o’clock News is the bomb):
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