BROADCAST NEWS

As a former KNXT staffer, I read with considerable interest “Broadcast News, L.A.” However, Channel 2 was not known as KNXT in 1947. As an experimental television station (I believe it was the second in the country), it had been broadcasting since the 1930s as W6XAO, with studios and transmitter atop Mt. Lee in Hollywood, just above the Hollywood sign. When it was licensed for commercial broadcasting (that may have been 1947), the call letters were changed to KTSL, named for Tommy Lee, son of a prominent Southern California auto dealer and owner of KHJ radio. KTSL eventually moved down the mountain to 1313 N. Vine, where it shared space with KHJ. The station was sold to CBS in 1951, and shortly thereafter the call letters were changed again, this time to KNXT. The station remained at the Vine Street location until 1959, when it moved to Columbia Square, home of sister station KNX radio.

I joined the staff in 1951, when it was still KTSL but in the midst of the changeover to CBS. Those were exciting and innovative times, and over the course of the next 28 years, I would be privileged to work alongside many of the pioneers in broadcast news.

DAN GINGOLD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, BROADCAST JOURNALISM,

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles