Marion CATV: Those Seventies Shows
Judy Rock and Sandy Park
In the early Seventies, Marion actually had its own television "station." The local cable TV system, then known as Marion CATV, produced shows in a small studio at 196 South Main Street and occasionally televised events from as far away as Columbus. The programs were seen daily, in black and white, on channel 3. And as the Program Director, I helped make it happen, until the time came for the plug to be pulled.
TV-3 debuted on June 1, 1970. These pictures were part of a full-page ad and a full-page story that appeared during the previous month in the Marion Star.
Among the first offerings were several short programs for women with Mary Ann Stolarczyk, and Nancy Fisher had a daily exercise show, ‘Measuring Up”. There was a kids' show, with a costumed Linda Davis portraying teacher Jolly Jingles in Alphabet Land.
Soon Columbus TV pioneer Sally Flowers had a daily hour. After five months, this morning talk show was turned over to home-grown hostesses and became Marion Today. And there was a 15-minute evening newscast, first with Terry Van Dyke, then with John Snyder, and finally, starting in September of 1970, with me.
Later we added bingo, movies from the 1930s and 1940s, gospel and country and rock music half-hours, telephone talk shows. One program was hosted by the sheriff of Marion County, first Max Ross and then Richwood native Ron Scheiderer. High school coaches would bring in their game films. If a local basketball team had a good run in the state tournament, we'd go there to tape their games.
However, CATV didn't want to absorb all the programming costs or raise the rates on subscribers' monthly cable bills. We tried to make TV-3 self-supporting by selling advertising, mostly to local merchants, but it was tough to balance the budget. Do you know how much Regis Philbin makes for hosting a live hour every morning? I don't either. But I do know that the same job in Marion paid only $8 per show. We cut costs as much as we could, using cheap equipment and doubling up on our duties.
On the revenue side of the ledger, we couldn't charge much for the advertising we ran. The networks get megabucks for a Super Bowl commercial, seen by millions of people; but our commercials were seen in (at most) a few hundred homes, so they were worth only a few dollars. And our technical quality was far below the networks, so the ads weren't easy to sell. All that we had going for us was the local content.
Eventually, we had to give up. I found another job in Pennsylvania, and TV-3 shut down on February 22, 1974. But I still have memories of that "one brief shining moment" in Marion.
