WABC 11PM News 7.14.77

[roscoegino]

I was watching a rerun of Baretta.

[RANDY4410]

what a night it was driving my new car around in Harlem people looting all over the place stores being broken into fires i was 21 years old it was the same summer that we had the son of sam running around killing people and the birth of Star Wars the death of Evis and the birth of Saturday night Fever, that was some year that i will never forget.

[dlr1241]

@RANDY4410 dude that must have been nuts. I was 1 year old, but the son of sam killed a girl close to us in Queens. My mom cut her hair, nuts.

[luviananna]

Larry Kane big in Philly, Beutel hated him

[Fanik8]

2 months before the death of Elvis Presley

[deloreanman14]

At 0:04...it's Ron Burgundy!!!

[electronmusicjunkie]

Never expected to see an old news report of Larry Kane doing the new on CH7 NY. I recall back at the time seeing him do a news brief on ABC TV. He' s still on the air here in Philly on Comcast and KYW 1060AM though retired. I also heard during his stint in NYC he took a limo there everyday from his home in Philly.

[liveshowgrlz]

everybody was skinny back then.

[manhattan85]

If I had a time machine, NYC summer '77 would be my first stop

[TheTzdope]

didn't elvis die that summer too!!

[tyrese3745]

@TheTzdope Yes he did.

[pictureisup1]

@TheTzdope yes he was 42 

[SuperNicobellic4]

dam 650 fires wtf most of the looting took place in the bronx,harlem crazy night in the city that never sleeps! supa 70's rule!

[manhbx96]

the famous and worst of the three

[FutureNewsAnchor]

I turned -14 on this day.

[dionreedsamurai]

they destroyed their own neighborhoods.lol

[rentslave]

Just as in 1965,New Jersey was spared from this blackout,unlike 2003.

[n1uvu]

if an anchorman says there's a blackout to 90+% of NYC, does anyone see him???

[lianlaspinas]

ABS-CBN TV Patrol 1977-1979 OBB and news set anchored by Noli de Castro and Mel Tiangco.

[joni2691]

Man, at that time from what I remember besides the '77 blackout the "Son of Sam was still "loose" out there as we joked...he can strike any f***kin' time tonight. A month later he got caught!!

[manhattan85]

Golisano's the only guy who can keep the Bills in Buffalo once Ralph expires. Don't rip him.

[StukInBuf]

The Mets' ineptness holds NO candle to that of the Buffalo Bills or the Buffalo Sabres. These Buffalo teams are run by skinflints who have NO desire to put together a winner!

[azbaldy5]

i agree with you there ! ralph wilson has always been a FUCKING LOSER, and he is going to the hall of fame ! WHAT BULL SHIT THAT IS ! SAME GOES FOR GOLISANO ! another cheap bastard

[StukInBuf]

How Wilson gets to the H-O-F... I don't get it.

[azbaldy5]

i don't know either,but this JACKASS is going to canton, HIS SELECTION JUST CHEAPENS THE H-O-F !

[StukInBuf]

And one other thing... Golisano mixing himself in politics rather than making the hockey team championship-worthy... and leaving the management with a land developer who knows NOTHING about the sport! What jackasses,.. Ralph Wilson and Tom Golisano.

[StukInBuf]

I remember the night of the blackout my folks and I went to a Mets game, and then it all went dark. We had no street lights to guide us along the expressways, maybe some emergency lights.

[azbaldy5]

the way the mets played then (and now too) they may as well have played in the dark. They SUCKED in 1977 and they SUCK IN 2009 !!

[StukInBuf]

And, in between, they won a World Series in 1986, so I've got nothing to hold against them.

[azbaldy5]

that may be true but they were a ONE SHOT TEAM (or should i call it a SHOT IN THE DARK) mets management currently, may be the worst in baseball.

[TheRebel2007]

Dear old mayor Abraham Beam's solution to the black-out was to blame the people of NYC for causing it!

[tripjet999]

"Energy Crisis"? As long as there is matter, there will always be energy.

[KING5TORM1418]

lol...da good ole days

[ddavenport]

I'm Ron  Burgundy...you stay classy, NYC.

[Dook6]

I miss paul Newman's Theme Cool Hand Luke the Tar sequence.

[noahf67]

Have you got any portions of a WABC-7 documentary made that summer with John Johnson, on the crime throughout the city

during the '77 blackout?

[UncleMikeNJ]

Where's Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel? July 14, 1977 was a Wednesday, so they should have been on unless they were on vacation.

[wmbrown6]

This was the 11 P.M. edition. By 1977 Grimsby and Beutel were only on at 6 P.M. Notice how dark the street was. At 6 P.M. the sun would still have been shining.

[PANZER299]

vey sad how they destroyed thier own neighborhoods.

[creates100]

brings back memories of growing up in nyc in the 70's. thank you for posting

[dyinglikeflies]

It's easy to forget how dangerous NYC felt back then, between the "street" scene, Son of Sam, NYC going broke the year before and then this random blackout and looting. Of course, had you been smart enough to buy property here then, you'd be living on the Riviera now.

[68NYC]

creates100:

Same here-

As a child I didn't realize the full scale of this, other than it being hot and inconvenient.

Thanks for posting this...

[manhattan85]

An important landmark in the history of hip-hop; looting flooded the Harlem/BX street market with turntables and remix equipment which grew the genre south into Manhattan in the decade to follow.

[reprobacious]

If only the lights had stayed on that night...

[castillianwagon]

They has NASTY looting & riots in that black out !

[Myrolex]

Those were the days! Nothing like them!

[bhayes06]

I see that after Larry Kane left for WABC he took his "big story" shtick with him.

[City44errr]

Kane join WCAU channel 10 Philadelphia, The King Of Philadelphia News, especially Channel 10 News......

[prausch65]

What an odd set, where the various news casters are staggered behind each other, and those unusual graphics.

[Jasonian77]

The blue background proves quite useful as a blue screen to show Larry in front of the live shot of Manhattan, then a nice transition to the report on the street.

[wmbrown6]

After WABC changed its news set in spring 1978, they switched from a blue to a green screen for chroma-key.

[wmbrown6]

The news desks' basic design (if not the colors) date back to the earliest days of "EWN" in 1968; the layout of the set in terms of the desk arrangement dated to about 1971 or '72; and the background itself was first used in 1975 - and continued to the end of April in 1978.

[prausch65]

Thanks wmbrown for the interesting reply, my earliest recollections were the blue circle sevens logo in the background when Beutel and Grimsby were anchors, perhaps circa 1975.Question, How was the name "Eyewitness News" conceived?

[wmbrown6]

The name itself dated back to 1959, when KYW-TV, then based in Cleveland (that station is now WKYC-TV), aired the country's first half-hour newscast; the format accompanying the name first came forth in 1965, a few months after KYW (and owner Westinghouse) returned to Philadelphia as part of a government-ordered reversal of the 1956 NBC/Westinghouse license swap. The creator of the format? Al Primo, who brought the "EWN" name and format to WABC in 1968.

[prausch65]

Thank you wmbrown6 once again. I would assume Al Primo also had something to do with that distinct EWN music intro?

[wmbrown6]

No - but he selected it. The theme music was an edited version of the "Tar Sequence" cue from the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke," whose score was composed by Lalo Schifrin. WLS-TV in Chicago and WXYZ-TV in Detroit used WABC's edit; KABC in L.A. and KGO in San Francisco did their own edits, but KGO's was more along the lines of WABC's.

[sky1beam]

I saw this same newscast but it featured a cut where KGO-TV's and GMA's Spencer Christian appeared in this WABC newscast. Interesting that Spencer has been on ABC for 30 years. 20 of those years were working for 2 ABC O&O's WABC and KGO.

[wmbrown6]

And Mr. Christian, at WABC, was a jack-of-all-trades: working as a street reporter, weatherman, and sportscaster. On this newscast, he was a reporter.

[sky1beam]

On KGO Spencer Christian is a Talk Show Host and the Evening weatherman

[dinfg6]

wmbrown6 Do people in the rest of the country think Spencer Christian is dead because I live in the Bay Area and he is still doing the evening weather very well on the 6:00pm and 9:00pm via tv20sf editions of KGO's ABC7News.

[Dook6]

Wow WABC and KGO had great people Grimsby and Christian.

[glamslamcam]

Nice. I wish we could see the whole report.

[Julius121081]

To the user of this video, do you have the whole newscast?

[6news]

wow!

[wmbrown6]

The V/O I.D.'ing the station at the start, unless I'm mistaken, sounds like it could be Bob Lloyd, yet another among the array of announcers WABC had over the years.