WTVD: "Eyewitness News" (March 5, 1979)

The complete 6 p.m. newscast from WTVD/Durham, as aired March 5, 1979. A fire badly damaged the station the previous evening. The newscast is presented from the station's conference room. Bob Hughes and Beverly Burke anchor. Cheryl Toney has weather and Don Shea reports on sports.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Durham
• Raleigh
• television
• TV
• fire
• broadcast
• studio
• cbs

[bhayes06]

1. Was Cheryl Toney substituting for Skip Carpenter? He was the main weatherman for WTVD until 1982 shortly before he died.

2. What are the earliest newscast for WRAL and WTVD that you have?

[AuburnTowers]

@bhayes06 I don't know about question 1. The earliest WTVD newscast is the one from 1963 I posted a few years ago. This is the next earliest. I'm told most of the older tapes were lost in the fire. The earliest WRAL newscast I have is the 1977 one that I have posted.

[tyrese3745]

@AuburnTowers According to Wikipedia, the WTVD newsroom was rebuilt by April of that year (1979).

[mobilene]

Wow, Bob Hughes. I used to watch him on WSBT in South Bend in the 70s.

[eyeh8nbc]

Love the commercial at 16:59 which uses the best track from the Saturday Night Fever album!

[tkaye2]

@AuburnTowers I'm curious what they were using for cameras in the makeshift studio. Were they ENG cameras or did they manage to round up some studio cameras somewhere that weren't damaged? I'm very impressed how they managed to deliver a comprehensive newscast so quickly... of course, they were lucky in that a lot of their facilities were unscathed.

[newstarcadefan]

Wow...imagine if this happened to a TV studion now since they have tens of millions of dollars worth equipment. That is...it'd been devistating espcially for smaller station chains like New Vision.

[AuburnTowers]

@worm082 Yes, they had to move into the station's conference room. I'm not sure how long they were there before they rebuilt. Anybody?