WBKB Channel 7 (Station ID & Pre-Emption Notice, 1968)

Here is a rare animated station ID for WBKB Channel 7 (which became WLS Channel 7 on October 7th 1968), with a promo for an appearance by Chicago-based jazz legend Ramsey Lewis on a midnight program that aired right after The Joey Bishop Show (not Chicago with Ronnie Barrett, which premiered in July of that year). Also included is a preemption notice for The Invaders (while the slide indicated the show was in color, this bumper is presented here in living black-and-white! ;-) ).

This animated ID would have been used in this layout and form (with the call letters and city of license set in Standard Medium, a.k.a. Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold) by all five of the ABC-owned stations (also including WABC-TV New York; WXYZ-TV Detroit; KGO-TV San Francisco; and KABC-TV Los Angeles) from about 1962-63 right up to the 1967-68 season, after which the iconic "circle 7" logo would take up much of the screen for the ABC stations' IDs. (The "-TV" suffix had been added to WBKB's calls during the 1965-66 season, never mind that there was no WBKB radio at the time.)

This clip was extracted off of a very dirty Quad tape that was sitting on a shelf, without a case, in a barn, for probably at least 20 years. I kid you not. Tapes are being professionally cleaned so we might see more of this if it works out ok. My thanks to fellow researcher and historian Tom Holbrook for providing us with the Quad for restoration.

Station ID voiceover by Wayne Atkinson. Preemption notice voiceover by John Causier (?).

NOTE: This was originally broadcast in color, but for whatever reason this Quad recording was made in black and white.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Tuesday, April 9th 1968 at 9pm! (5 days after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

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