Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - It's time to dig into our archives, as we continue our celebration of 50 years of "Colorful Channel 9." We're going to look at "The Early News” (and we don't mean NewsChannel 9 at 5:00 or even The Morning News). We’re looking back at our earliest news, 50 years ago.
News coverage has changed a bit since Colorful Channel 9 signed on in the early 1960's. For one thing, most of the color on Colorful Channel 9 came in the writing.
Newscasts were just 15 minutes long, at 6 p.m. and 11pm. There were no satellite feeds, no electronic graphics, and no live reports from the field.
If you were lucky, you might get a little silent film from the scene. Sometimes, the action photography was little more than a Polaroid picture.
To be honest, even if more advanced technology had existed, there weren't enough people to pull it off.
Back then, there wasn't even a permanent studio set. The studio was packed all afternoon, first with teenagers boogying on "Dance Party," then younger kids joining Baron Daemon's Bloody Buddies. It took some quick changes to get ready for the newscast.
Late night news recaps were recorded in the master control room. The station worked to do things just a little differently than the competition, to attract as many eyes as possible to the "new guys in town."
