Congratulations to WAFB-TV on 70 Great Years!

In April 2023, WAFB-TV will celebrate the 70th anniversary of signing on the air in Baton Rouge.  The local station has had a great run and established itself as one of the top TV stations in the South. Congratulations to WAFB-TV for all it has accomplished!  

By the way, I may be the only person still alive who watched WAFB-TV sign on the air for first time — in April 1953!  I was 6.  My dad put up an outdoor antenna in 1951 at our rent house in Rougon in Pointe Coupee Parish.  He had it pointed directly at WDSU-TV in New Orleans. The picture was ghostly at best, and the sound went in and out. We thought that was how TV was supposed to be!  

In 1953, when they announced WAFB-TV would be coming on soon in Baton Rouge as UHF Channel 28, my dad didn’t know where to point the antenna so he kept it where it was.  The station signed on with a test pattern which stayed up for almost 24 hours. I was glued to the test pattern the whole time, waiting for something to happen! Finally, it came on, and it was awesome! 

The picture was crystal clear and the sound was perfect. It wasn’t long after that that Buckskin Bill had his own afternoon kids’ show.  We had moved to Baton Rouge by then.  In 1955, when I was in the third grade at Fairfields elementary school in Baton Rouge, I was the star of our school play — the musical Peter Rabbit. The play got good reviews and Buckskin himself came to Fairfields to watch. He loved it and asked us to come to the studio and perform a segment on his show live, which we did. It was such a hit that he had us on a second time. Little did I know that in 1965, just 12 years after WAFB signed on the air, I would be in journalism school at LSU and working at WAFB-TV as an announcer and newsman! What a great opportunity!  I got to know and become friends with Buckskin, Carlton Cremeens, Sid Crocker, the old beachcomber Bob Scearce, Pete Goff who actually hired me, and all the rest. One day I went into my boss to ask for a raise. I was making $1.70 and couldn’t pay my bills. I asked him to consider raising me to two dollars. He said two dollars!  We were thinking of firing your ass! He didn’t fire me but he let me know where I stood in the pecking order. I thought I was headed to be Walter Cronkite but in reality I was just a minimum wage employee. That night my future wife Diane — who worked across the street writing copy under Grace McElveen — and I met to talk about our future. My dad always said I should be in business for myself and do what I love. He said to never worry about the money, because you’re smart enough to make money doing what you love. So I took his advice and our combined savings of $300 and launched the North Baton Rouge Journal newspaper three weeks later! It soon became a success. My days at Channel 9 were the only time in my life that I’ve received a W-2. Since then, I’ve been self-employed and pursued my own dreams.  One bit of WAFB-TV history!  In 1966, I introduced the first live COLOR television news broadcast in Baton Rouge history. Carlton Cremeens asked me to do the intro, which I did. “Now from the studios of WAFB-TV, Channel 9 — your Tiger in the Sky — the first live television news broadcast in Baton Rouge history in living color!  Now with the news, here’s news director Carlton Cremeens!”

— Woody Jenkins, Editor