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Old Texas TV Show Received On British TV?

ChasFink

ChasFink

Justified & Ancient
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There was a rerun of an old Dick Cavett talk show on today. Guests included Arthur C. Clarke and Rod Serling, and it was taped in July 1972.

At one point Cavett mentioned a story of people in the UK* receiving a telecast with American accents that supposedly turned out to be a show transmitted years earlier from Texas. Clarke was quick to cast doubt on the story, pointing out differences in the technical standards in the two countries.

The story is vaguely familiar to me, but I don't remember any details. Does anyone know more about this incident and possible explanations?

*At least I think it was the UK. My attention was diverted momentarily.
 
@ChasFink - may I please ask you whether the episode synopsis below sounds familiar (annoyingly the strange reception incident isn't included, but it's probably not a comprehensive summary).

Also- how did you access the archived Dick Cavett show recording? Do you have a link to the podcast, or was it a 'live' rebroadcast via eg WGBH/PBS affiliate?

https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=dick&p=6&item=T84:0270

DICK CAVETT SHOW, THE {ARTHUR C. CLARKE, ROD SERLING, CATHERINE MACKIN} (TV)​

Summary​

One in this series of late-night talk/variety programs, hosted by Dick Cavett, featuring interviews with newsmakers and people in the political and cultural forefront. This program features NBC newscaster Catherine "Cassie" Mackin, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and writer Rod Serling. Cavett's opening monologue is a humorous "chess lesson," which he delivers before a chess set placed onstage. Mackin then joins Cavett and discusses covering the recent political conventions; the pressures of being a woman in a field dominated by men; her background as a print reporter; and the technical challenges of reporting from the convention floor. Cavett and Mackin are joined by Arthur C. Clarke, who talks about being constantly asked to explain the ending of his novel "The Sentinel," the basis for the film "2001: A Space Odyssey"; the possibilty of discovering a new planet in the solar system; why it is always assumed that extraterrestrial life will be more advanced than humans; religious interpretations of the concept of life on other planets; impossibilities such as the "perpetual motion machine" and "squaring the circle"; whether God is limited by the laws of His/Her universe; the final Apollo launch, which Clarke will view from a cruise ship at night; the Bermuda Triangle; UFOs; the possibilty of life after death; biofeedback; and firewalking. Rod Serling then joins the group and comments on his creative conflict with NBC over the series "Night Gallery," which he dismisses as "a run through a graveyard"; the writer's lack of creative control in television; his big screen adaptation of the Irving Wallace novel "The Man" (a clip of which, featuring Martin Balsam, Burgess Meredith, and James Earl Jones, is presented); the absurd extent of political "equal time" practices on television; and television protocols that preclude naming or alluding to political parties in entertainment programming. Includes commercials, promos, and public service announcements.

(Cavett hosted several talk shows under the title "The Dick Cavett Show," which aired on ABC from 1969 to 1972, on PBS from 1977 to 1982, on the USA network from 1985 to 1986, and on CNBC from 1989 to 1995. During 1973 to 1975, the show aired irregularly as part of "ABC's Wide World of Entertainment." Other versions of "The Dick Cavett Show" include a variety series on CBS in 1975 and a talk show on ABC in 1986.)

Details​

  • NETWORK: ABC
  • DATE: July 19, 1972 Wednesday 11:30 PM
  • RUNNING TIME: 1:25:12
  • COLOR/B&W: Color
  • CATALOG ID: T84:0270
  • GENRE: Talk/Interviews
  • SUBJECT HEADING: Films; Talk/Interviews
  • SERIES RUN: ABC - TV series, 1969-1972
  • COMMERCIALS:
    • TV - Commercials - Bayer aspirin
    • TV - Commercials - Cling-Free fabric softener spray
    • TV - Commercials - Close-Up toothpaste
    • TV - Commercials - Crazylegs shaving gel for women
    • TV - Commercials - Glade air freshener spray
    • TV - Commercials - Hefty trash can liners
    • TV - Commercials - Johnson's baby powder
    • TV - Commercials - Ken-L ration dog food
    • TV - Commercials - Levi's jeans and slacks
    • TV - Commercials - Pamprin pain reliever
    • TV - Commercials - Peter Pan peanut butter
    • TV - Commercials - Red Devil home improvement products
    • TV - Commercials - Revlon Eterna '27 night cream
    • TV - Commercials - Tootsie Pop Drops candies
    • TV - Commercials - Volkswagen automobiles
    • TV - PSA - "Be Careful With Fire"
    • TV - PSA - CARE (aid to Bangladesh)
    • TV - PSA - Girls Clubs of America, Inc.
    • TV - Promos - "ABC Evening News"
    • TV - Promos - "ABC Wide World of Sports"
    • TV - Promos - "Love American Style"
    • TV - Promos - "Owen Marshall Counselor at Law"
    • TV - Promos - "Password" (voice-over only)
    • TV - Promos - "The Brady Bunch"
    • TV - Promos - Summer Olympics in Munich

CREDITS​

  • Bobby Rosengarden … Conductor
  • Dick Cavett … Host
  • Fred Foy … Announcer
  • Arthur C. Clarke … Guest
  • Catherine Mackin … Guest
  • Rod Serling … Guest
  • Stephen Birmingham … Talent, Bayer commercial
  • Howard K. Smith … Talent, "ABC Evening News" promo
  • Ken Berry … Talent, "Ken Berry's 'Wow'" promo
  • Henry Winkler … Talent, Close-Up commercial
  • Jonathan Winters … Talent, Hefty commercial
  • Mike Farrell … Talent, Crazylegs commercial
  • Martin Balsam
  • James Earl Jones
  • Burgess Meredith
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Ermintruder said:
@ChasFink - may I please ask you whether the episode synopsis below sounds familiar (annoyingly the strange reception incident isn't included, but it's probably not a comprehensive summary).

Also- how did you access the archived Dick Cavett show recording? Do you have a link to the podcast, or was it a 'live' broadcast via eg WGBH/PBS affiliate?
https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=dick&p=6&item=T84:0270
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This is the episode, and it was a broadcast. The Decades channel - carried as a subchannel on broadcast TV - shows old Cavett shows every weeknight.
 
I should probably say there was not a lot of detail in Cavett's story. I was hoping someone else had some memory of the incident as reported in the usual fortean sources.
 
In a decidedly-spooky coincidence, a YouTube member named Steven Barry has just posted (7hrs ago) a fascinating extract of the previous week's show (broadcast it says originally on July 12th 1972). Which is a heck of a coincidence, yes?

But: the topics (eerie radio messages) and the guest-list (Clarke, Serling), make me think it's perhaps from the show you just saw as a re-run?....please would you have a watch, and see what you think

 
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Ermintruder said:
In a decidedly-spooky coincidence, a YouTube member named Steven Barry has just posted (7hrs ago) a fascinating extract of the previous week's show (broadcast it says originally on July 12th 1972). Which is a heck of a coincidence, yes?

But: the topics (eerie radio messages) and the guest-list (Clarke, Searling), make me think it's perhaps from the show you just saw as a re-run?....please would you have a watch, and see what you think

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All the same show. July 12, 1972. Either the Paley Center is off by a week, or everyone else is (including the IMDB and Cavett's YouTube channel).
 
ChasFink said:
This is cued up to the beginning of Cavett's story (5:42 in):
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Fascinating! I agree entirely with Arthur C. Clarke, regarding the fundamental technical incompatibilities between the US vs UK television broadcast systems (and could encyclopaedically expand upon this fruitlessly for hours). His observation regarding the difference in screen frame-rate as a partial function of mains power frequency is just one part of the improbabilities of direct reception.

Let's ignore for a moment the minor issue of the massive time delay between the original Texas broadcast and the alleged reception years later: the transmission limitations of what would at that time have probably been mid-range VHF tv broadcast in the US, somehow being miraculously received upon what were short-range UHF/VHF tv receivers in the UK: it just does not add-up.

Let's for the sake of a fascinating discussion imagine that somehow the normal laws of physics could have been suspended, and the electromagnetic waves of the original transmission headed out into space at the speed of light (including, obligingly enough, the associated intercarrier audio transmissions) were somehow received by an Unknown Agency, and then rebroadcast back in a transcoded/transverted high-power reflected format that could be received by UK television viewers from Outer Space....hmm. Interesting, but highly-unlikely (why just this one time, why this broadcast, why expend the effort?).

Ironically, contemporary SDR (software defined radio systems) can now do this type of fiddly inter-standard translation....

However: some more thoughts-

Firstly, I myself have a number of technically-feasible alternative theories which might explain what the UK television owners thought they experienced. To be revealed later....

Secondly, I'm a member of a highly-technical old-time technology forum, who will express all the same scepticism as me (with much-more depth, I'm sure). They may also agree with my alternative theories....but: most-intriguingly, they may have substantial (or ideally at least some) personal awareness regarding this alleged incident.

EDIT- from the comments section below the YouTube video (I don't necessarily agree with the somewhat mismatched 'debunking', not in the least)
Screenshot_20221230_211807_YouTube.jpg

Screenshot_20221230_212319_YouTube.jpg
 
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Ermintruder said:
Fascinating! I agree entirely with Arthur C. Clarke, regarding the fundamental technical incompatibilities between the US vs UK television broadcast systems (and could encyclopaedically expand upon this fruitlessly for hours). His observation regarding the difference in screen frame-rate as a partial function of mains power frequency is just one part of the improbabilities of direct reception.

Let's ignore for a moment the minor issue of the massive time delay between the original Texas broadcast and the alleged reception years later: the transmission imitations of what would at that time have probably been mid-range VHF tv broadcast in the US, somehow being miraculously received upon what were short-range UHF/VHF tv receivers in the UK: it just does not add-up.

Let's for the sake of a fascinating discussion imagine that somehow the normal laws of physics could have been suspended, and the electromagnetic waves of the original transmission headed out into space at the speed of light (including, obligingly enough, the associated intercarrier audio transmissions) were somehow received by an Unknown Agency, and then rebroadcast back in a transcoded/transverted high-power reflected format that could be received by UK television viewers from Outer Space....hmm. Interesting, but highly-unlikely (why just this one time, why this broadcast, why expend the effort?).

Ironically, contemporary SDR (software defined radio systems) can now do this type of fiddly inter-standard translation....

However: some more thoughts-

Firstly, I myself have two technically-feasible alternative theories which might explain what the UK television owners thought they experienced. To be revealed later....

Secondly, I'm a member of a highly-technical old-time technology forum, who will express all the same scepticism as me (with much-more depth, I'm sure). They may also agree with my alternative theories....but: most-intriguingly, they may have substantial (or ideally at least some) personal awareness regarding this alleged incident.
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I'm in 100% agreement with you and Clarke on the technology. I'm not a technician, but have enough understanding of the analog technology of the day to get it. (I used to work with the old half-inch reel-to-reel AV-3600 Sony VTRs.)

I know I heard of this story before - maybe in a Brad Steiger book or a "true tales" section of a comic book from the same time. I was probably a child or teen at the time. I'm not sure, but I think the last I heard of it was that at best it was a gross exaggeration.
 
I've never worked personally on open-reel VTRs, but I've seen them in use. All Sony kit was always eternally amongst the very best of design & build anywhere in the world. My hands-on experience with that area of technology would be more into the VCR era of Betacam/BetacamSP and of course Betamax (prior to the invasion of VHS).

I've posted previously here on the Forteana Forum/FTMB about one of my all-time favourite technology-meets-supernatural-time-paradoxes films, namely, 'Frequency' starring Dennis Quaid. It's an underrated & flawed masterpiece of a movie, one which has some levels of resonance with your alleged time-shifted Texan Transmission....

 
https://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/history/eyes_of_texas.html

Famous Television Myths: The Eyes of Texas
TV's Biggest Mystery:
Texas Station Signal Seen in England - Three Years After It Went Off the Air!

TV Guide, April 30-May 6, 1954
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Is there an intelligence somewhere in outer space which is beaming TV signals at the earth?

Or can television signals from Texas wander around the ionosphere for more than three years and then be picked up in England?

These are two of the questions with which engineers are wrestling in Houston, Texas, and in Britain as they delve into the mystery of KLEE-TV. And these are the facts.

1. At 3:30 PM, British Summer Time, September 14, 1954, Charles W. Bratley, of London picked up the call letters KLEE-TV on his television set. Later that month, and several times since, they have been seen by engineers at Atlantic Electronics, Ltd., Lancaster, England.

2. The call letters KLEE-TV have not been transmitted since July 1950, when the Houston station changed it letters to KPRC-TV.

3. A check of the world's television stations confirms the fact that there is not now and never has been another KLEE-TV.

Paul Huhndorff, chief engineer of KPRC-TV, to whom the Britishers sent their report, has no explanation. He contends it is not unusual for signals to be received hundreds or even thousands of miles from the transmitter. KPRC-TV [and the old KLEE-TV] has been picked up at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2000 miles away.

Such freak reception occurs when signals shoot off into space, strike an atmospheric layer known as the ionosphere, and rebound to earth. However, the reception of such pictures has been as nearly instantaneous as electronics permit. A time lapse of 30 seconds would be a cause for wonder.

Members of the old KLEE-TV staff have identified pictures of the signals as looking like the standard call-letter slide they used. Engineer Huhndorff, waiting for more information from England, reserves final opinion. Meanwhile, he offers three theories.
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1. The whole business is a hoax perpetuated by some amateur TV operator. This he discounts on the grounds of his fellow engineers' integrity.

2. The signals may have rebounded from a celestial object a light year and a half away. This would be a mathematical miracle if it happened once. Several times is just too fantastic for belief.

3. Some intelligence in outer space has received the signal and has re-transmitted it in the hope of communicating with this planet.

Those are the theories. We suggest the readers take their pick or invent their own.
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This story cropped up on the alt.tvdx.earlytv newsgroup on Usenet (the newsgroup section of the Internet). The tale itself is as old as the hills (naturally) but there may be some people to whom it is new. To the best of my knowledge it has never been fully proven or disproven but several points come to mind. Barry Fox, the well-known technology writer, brought it to my attention again some years back and remarked that theese television researchers invited the press to a demonstration of their amazing reception. Summoning up DX television signals to order indicates this was no mere isolated incidence of Sporadic E reception.

Apparently it was said that they managed the feat with standard unmodified (British) sets and any observant reader will by now be smelling a strong odour of rat, for any such signals would have been transmitted on the American 525-line signal, in negative modulation, whereas our sets in those days were 405-line and positive modulation. Every indication points to a hoax; only call letters were seen, never any live programmes. But even so, how on earth could British workers come up with a KLEE station ident, authenticated by the station engineers?

Easy (when you know how)! The early 1950s were a period of keen interest and experimentation in television technique. Literature on the subject was scarce but in those days imported radio/TV magazines from America were widely sold in London. The name of the company involved, Atlantic Electronics, also suggests an interest in what was going on in the USA.

It so happens that the January 1950 issue of Radio Electronics magazine has a rundown on all the television stations operational in the USA and conveniently, there on page 53, is a sharp photo of the KLEE station ident caption. To put this onto a TV screen would not need a camera; a simple home-made flying-spot scanner would be quite adequate for televising an opacity. And for my money, that’s how it was done although until someone comes forward and confirms it, we shall never know! (credit: Andrew Emmerson G8PTH)
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This still may not be the final words on the matter.....
 
I heard this legend many years ago, and I so wanted it to be true. Alas, I trust that Snopes nailed it.
 
GerdaWordyer said:
I heard this legend many years ago, and I so wanted it to be true. Alas, I trust that Snopes nailed it.
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Aha! There is another potential dimension to this tale, which can be evidenced. It's nowhere as exotic as we might've desired, but it has certain interesting virtues. I'm still pulling together the details...meantime, another contemporary report:
Screenshot 2023-01-01 144513.jpg
 
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I feel as though this story appeared in EVERY book about the unknown/paranormal/weird shit that I read as a kid in the 80s.
 
Reverend D said:
I feel as though this story appeared in EVERY book about the unknown/paranormal/weird
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Unfortunately I may be able to submit a highly-detailed & persuasive non-paranormal explanation for this story: it's in progress.
 
Ermintruder said:
Aha! There is another potential dimension to this tale, which can be evidenced. It's nowhere as exotic as we might've desired, but it has certain interesting virtues. I'm still pulling together the details...meantime, another contemporary report:
View attachment 62057
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Aside from someone getting the year off by one, I see nothing in this version that can't be explained by a reasonable distortion of Snopes' explanation. The "Contact" explanation is, of course, possible - but not the most likely.
 
ChasFink said:
I see nothing in this version that can't be explained by a reasonable distortion of Snopes' explanation
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Oh, there is a lot more that is capable of being explained on this one, trust me!

Unfortunately my detailed explanation will involve citing relevant recorded data, terrestrial physics & applying contexts of historical technology, so it's only going to be interesting in a debunking-&-demystifying mode, rather than in an arguably more-fulfilling Fortean-mystery-is-perpetuated sort of way.

But: I will have my say on this incident, as it's something I appear to have a number of specialist insights about (and perhaps have multiple avenues for peer review & comment).
 
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Ermintruder said:
Oh, there is a lot more that is capable of being explained on this one, trust me!

Unfortunately my detailed explanation will involve citing relevant recorded data, terrestrial physics & applying contexts of historical technology, so it's only going to be interesting in a debunking mode, rather than in a fullfilling Fortean way.

But I will have my say on this incident, as it's something I appear to have a number of specialist insights about (and perhaps multiple avenues for peer review & comment).
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You do talk a good game.
 
I was going to comment, earlier, that this story seems to have had a particularly enthusiastic way of spawning dozens of different mutations over the years. I think it would be funny if it really did start with some careless compositor pasting up an ad. That would have been done back when those things were literally pasted up; bits of paper pasted together. At least that's how it was done when I did it after school fifty years ago, for the little local daily paper where I lived.
 
Ermintruder said:
I can talk a good game, thanks for that compliment! (But: I have also always won, done & delivered much-more than I've ever just talked; or, talked about).
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I can talk a good game when it comes to football, for example, just a pity the legs and the lack of skill that follow...
 
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