Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1959)

OUR RESPECTS TO . John Taylor Reynolds "As manager of an independent station, I live in a different world than the man in charge of a network-owned station or even a station affiliated with a tv network," John T. Reynolds, general manager of KHJ-TV Los Angeles, comments. "Sales is a major problem for all of us, but we independents have an even larger one — programming. Each week contains 120 hours to be filled with material that's entertaining and exciting enough to keep viewers tuned to channel 9 in sufficient numbers to make advertisers and agencies anxious to buy our time. "With no network to draw on, we've got to depend on our own imagination and creativity for our program ideas and when we come up with one that pleases viewers and attracts advertising it's a very satisfactory experience, particularly as it doesn't always happen that way." Sports to Movies • To be successful, a tv station must create an image for viewers to identify it by, Mr. Reynolds believes. KHJ-TV started out as a sports station, carrying the lion's share of Los Angeles sports telecasts. As rights to major sports events became over-costly for an independent station, he developed a "neighborhood theatre" image, with Channel 9 Movie Theatre broadcasting a single feature picture at the same time each night for a full week. Tried and dropped elsewhere, the format has succeeded so well in Los Angeles that the program is now about ready to enter its sixth year with no end in sight. Last year, Mr. Reynolds began to develop an image of KHJ-TV as a "personality station" and succeeded very well with his chief personality, Oscar Levant, until illness forced the vituperative piano player to leave the air. This spring, he brought to Los Angeles an innovation in tv station IDs, using gay musical jingles radio-fashion behind the visual presentation to accentuate KHJ-TV's image as a station for young moderns, with programs that are fun and exciting to watch. "Nothing we've ever done has created as much comment as our new ID approach," Mr. Reynolds says. "People tell us they like our jingles; the kids are singing them. Identity is the main thing we have to sell to the public, to the advertiser and agency, and these IDs seem to be doing it." To match the improved sound, KHJ BROADCASTING, July 27, T959 TV is preparing to change the visual presentation of the IDs from static slides to films using live actors. John Taylor Reynolds was born May 26, 1921, in Mattoon, 111. He moved at an early age to St. Louis, where he spent his boyhood and his vacations from the New Mexico Military Institute and Washington & Lee U. World War II took him to Victorville, Calif., as an Air Corps aviation cadet, sent him to Sacramento for training as an instructor and then back to Victorville to teach newer cadets how to fly. Here We Come • Discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in the fall of 1945, John headed straight for Los Angeles, where he got his basic training in advertising with General Advertising Agency. He had advanced to production manager by the fall of 1947 when he left the agency and Los Angeles to take his wife and their newborn son back to St. Louis. A year there was enough to make the Reynolds family realize that its real home was now Southern California, so back they went. During the St. Louis sojourn, John had his initiation into broadcasting as § J ' I ' i HI' * 1 1 L KHJ-TV's Reynolds Identity is the stock in trade a salesman for KXOK. Here, he decided, was the field for him, so on his return to Los Angeles he looked around for another radio salesman's job and found one at KHJ. Not long after that, KHJ's owner, the Don Lee Broadcasting System, got permission to turn its experimental tv station, W6XOA into a commercial operation with the new call of KTSL and John became part of a two-man tv sales staff. "There were then all of 18,000 tv sets in the area," he recalls, "and tv time was tough to sell. The general attitude was that there were enough advertising media already and there was a question as to the need for tv. The encouraging buyer would ask us to come back when we had some circulation to talk about." Taste of Networking • In the fall of 1950, General Tire & Rubber Co. bought Don Lee's regional radio network and its two owned stations, KHJ in Los Angeles and KFRC in San Francisco. The tv station was purchased by CBS and its call changed to KNXT to match that of KNX, CBS-owned radio station in Los Angeles. Young Reynolds moved to CBS-TV with the station, moved back to Don Lee in 1952 when it bought KFI-TV and renamed it KHJ-TV, as sales manager. Both tv stations occupy the same building, which also houses KHJ, and John comments that he's the only man in television who changed jobs from one station to another and back without leaving the building. No one could say that he was in a rut, however. In 1953, John Reynolds was promoted to general manager of KHJ-TV and two years later he was appointed vice president of the Don Lee Division of RKO Teleradio (now RKO General), parent company of KHJ-TV. John lives in the San Fernando Valley with his wife, the former Jane Lawry of St. Louis, whom he met in the eighth grade and married in 1942, and their two children, John Jr., 14, and William Campbell, 8. John's evenings are largely spent poring over the contents of a bulging briefcase brought home from his office, but weekends give him time for his two favorite forms of outdoor sport, surf fishing and skeet shooting. He is a member of Phi Delta Theta, Sierra Gun Club, Television Pioneers, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Hollywood Ad Club. 107