I was sports announcer on WQAD from 1970 until 1976 (along with a side trip as new co-anchor with Jim King, and some times in the sales and promotion department.) I also hosted a talk show, did the live coverage and recap shows of the first two Quad City Open Golf Tournaments (an event co-founded by Art Swift, owner of WQAD).

I filled in doing wrestling interviews for Jim King. I have a lot of anecdotes about things we used to do to make each other laugh on the set. I am not sure just how printable some of them are. I am married to Carol Graflund, who was the first female weather announcer in the state of Illinois (weekend weather on "Newscope 8."), (as well as the reigning Miss Moline at the time of her hire by Ron Klayman, program direction.)

WQAD

I was hired by WQAD TV in March of 1970 as a weekend news photographer. The first week, I was asked to fill in as sports announcer for an ailing Don Raymond. He never got his job back. I had embarked on the most amazing six year journey of my life. In any ones wildest dreams…..

I was active in speech class in high school and participated in some inter-school debate speaking contest and that experience landed me a job for 25˘ an hour while I was in college at the University of Iowa radio station as a disc jockey. I did that for a year and one-half and then dropped out of college and joined the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps found out that I had broadcasting experience even though it was on a small campus and they invited me to participate in Armed Forces Radio in San Diego for a year and one-half doing one hour radio programs for distribution on television stations.

When I went to Vietnam I was assigned as a Radio Station Announcer and that lasted just one day. They put me on television and I did Armed Forces Radio and Television for one year. With that depth of experience, I came home and my mother knew someone, Wes Elliot, who was a news reporter for Channel 8 News. I was out in California at the time and mom said you come home, I think that I can get you a job at the local TV station. I never thought that it would be a career. At that point it was something to do. I had not been home for a while and I packed the car up, drove home and met Wes and was hired as a weekend news photographer. I worked Saturday and Sunday as a news photographer. Then that Monday Don Raymond, who was a news announcer, was sick. So they asked me to fill in for Don and he never got his job back for the next six years!

Don was heavily involved with Dimension Productions/American Rain and was ready to work normal hours and go out and flex his creative wings and I don't think he really ever looked back.

Television was still in it’s literal infancy in the early ‘70’.s All news film was black and white, and much of the programming was film. We did some shooting in color about 3 years later, and went full color in the news room about 1974.

ABC was a struggling new network, and WQAD a struggling new ABC affiliate. We were constantly bombarded with new ideas to try. The network was breaking historic ground with Monday Night Football and Good Morning America. Dimension Productions was breaking new ground with Creature Feature and Chiller theater. A "we try harder" attitude permeated every department. As local news was one area under total local control, and was the gauge by which ratings measured the success of local stations, local news was the laboratory for new ideas.

At the time, there were 252 "ADI"s (areas of dominant influence), or "markets" for local TV in the United States. The Quad Cities was the 126th largest market. Being exactly in the middle was key to testing future network concepts. "Will it play in Peoria" was the question posed on Broadway. "Will it play in Moline"was ABC’s battle cry. What if? We had the news announcers actually talk to each other! Unheard of. WQAD was the testing ground for "happy talk", which is a staple of broadcasting today. What if? We used "teasers" to keep viewers tuning back. (That was one most resisted by the news department but most loved by programming). The news department just couldn’t wrap its arms around leaving questions unanswered. We didn’t believe in teasing anyone, just delivering the "facts, maam. Just the facts." What If: EVERY news story had some graphic shown on the screen behind the announcer while the story was being read? Our already-overtaxed art department could barely keep up, and no one in the news department had the imagination to illustrate some concepts. What would a graphic look like in a story about inflation? We did about as well in the graphic department as we did the teasing department. Other concepts that DID fly, and in retrospect should be considered absolutely revolutionary: The hiring of females announcers. Nancy Ronald not only was a pioneer in Illinois broadcasting, she refined the concept of consumer reporting that is a staple on every TV station in America today. The hiring of Carol Graflund to report the weather on weekends marked the first female weather announcer in Illinois broadcasting history and broke the "glass TV screen" that allowed women all over the country to achieve credibility as forecasters.

Few local stations allowed their on-camera news team personnel to do any commercial or non-news production work. Many feared a loss in credibility if their news team assumed non-reporting identities. Program Director Ron Klayman, responsible for many of the ground breaking concepts mentioned earlier, fortunately did not believe that. Jim King became the OFFICIAL voice of Sexton Ford. Bob Wilford became the on-camera face for Muscatine Mall. Jim King "crossed over" to do interviews with pro wrestlers for promotional purposes. "Premier Nights" (the first week of the new fall programming season) found the news staff dressed in Tuxedos, and hosting lavish parties in the studios after hours to entertain local sponsors and celebrities.

Another notable concept was the willingness of WQAD to experiment with fund-raising via a new device known as a "telethon." The first live telethon on Quad Cities television was Bob Wilford hosting for the March of Dimes. The following year, the station was approached by the Jerry Lewis telethon people to host the local telecast to raise money for muscular dystrophy. The rest of THAT, as they say, "is history." Few people ever knew how personally the entire staff became involved with MD as their special cause. And no one took it more to heart than Jim King. He WAS Mr. MD, Mr. Telethon.

I do remember that I did that first telethon on Channel 8. It was for the March of Dimes. I do not recall if the first Jerry Lewis Telethon was myself or Jim King and I or Myself and Jim King but I was involved with the very first one until the day I left. One of the things that became a bit of a joke, on every telethon I was noted for wearing white pattern leather boots, try and imagine that! I would auction off my boots in the middle of the night on every telethon. I did that for six years and all of a sudden I could not get white pattern boots anymore! As a result a little bit of history went by the wayside. I did every single telethon. We all did. Every single person in the news department was devoted to it. We were so wired to be on the show and we were so committed to the cause so early that it would be an insult to even suggest that anyone went home during the long overnight hours. It was not just a job, we were not payed for it, it was something that we were allowed to do. Every single one of us on that news staff became believers in that cause.

With happy-talk, graphics, telethons, and other new concepts breaking new ground it gave the news department the credibility, exposure and funding to try other new projects. The station was invited to produce a documentary on the first-ever open heart surgery procedure performed in a local hospital. Jim King, Nancy Ronald and Bob Wilford were allowed to film the procedure in the operating room. The resulting one-hour documentary won several awards, and moved the news department from "reporters" to "journalists."

WQAD was also an essential key to establishing the first professional golf tournament held in the Quad Cities (continuing today as The John Deere Classic). Station owner Art Swift was one of four Quad City businessmen to receive approval by the PGA to hold a satellite tournament. He had the station which guaranteed huge publicity channel for the tournament which really grounded it. Art called me into his office one day and gave me an assignment. He said here is what you are going to do, you are going to fly around in a private jet to these golf tournaments and greet these golfers. That was Art's commitment to the tournament. In partnership with local golf hero Jim Jamison, my first "guest" was Lee Trevino. Trevino’s commitment alone brought tremendous credibility and influence to the tournament and persuaded much of the field to attend. Swift then promised maximum exposure to the event, culminating in a live broadcast recapping each days events. He even had a hand at arranging the volunteers. We would go out and set up the golf tournament. I would go out and set up snow fences in the afternoon out on the course and then go back and do my segment of the news in the evening. It was total involvement. The sales staff were the concessionairs. Jim McGrath, the public information officer for the sports department at Augustana College would help me run press releases and then go and pour orange juice! One of the golf pros, John Mahaffey, actually slept on my couch and borrowed my wife's car. As a result of Art's hard work behind the scenes, success was insured and the beginning of the long relationship between the PGA and the Quad Cities was born.

Hardees was the sponsor of the tournament the first year. They had just bought out Sandy's and had taken over their headquarters in Kewanee, Illinois. They were looking to promote the tournament and had their name on it as the sponsor. Then we tried to get a celebrity tie-in. That is how Ed McMahon came along. After that it was the Hagar Twins and then it went through a real period of struggle. About the time Art Swift sold WQAD and the Jaycees came in and said that they did not want the tournament to just die so they came in and helped. Ironically I was the vice president of the local Jaycees. The tournament was five years old or so and it had moved from Crow Valley to Oakwood Country Club. A lot of the personnel had change but a stayed on with it. The crew from Bob Griff transportation were still there and had been there from the day it had been born to the day that the Jaycees took it over. Then John Deere took it over and turned everybody loose.

Today, of course, broadcast journalism has evolved into a force that shapes personalities, policies and nations. And in color! I was proud to have been a part of the pioneering days and especially proud of my six-year career with WQAD. Jim King and Ron Klayman: I will always be grateful to you.

After my six year run at the sports and news desks, I stayed on in the news room as Executive Producer of the news and also moved into the sales and promotion department. Ron Klayman was a forward thinking Program Director. At the time he wanted someone to go to Iowa City, Muscatine, Burlington, the areas that our signal reached but we were not selling a whole lot of commercial time. For it to be cost effective, they wanted somebody who was able to sell the time and then on the spot write the commercial, read the commercial, film the commercial, produce the commercial and schedule the commercial and I was the guy. The only piece of the puzzle that I did not have was selling. So they sent me to sales school, they sent me to Dale Carnegie. We did that and I remember there was a furniture store in Muscatine and I had to dress up as a skunk and jump up and down on a mattress! Another time I was dressed up as the Easter Bunny. Those were some wild times.

There was a time in broadcasting that newscasters did not speak to each other. We were the first station in the Quad Cities to experiment with "Happy Talk". We were the first station in the United States to experiment with graphics behind every news story. We were the first ones to experiment with "teasers". These ideas, they were so revolutionary that they came from the top of the networks down. If we had come up with them we would have been laughed out of town. They said lets give this a try, lets try it in a medium market and since Klayman had such a relationship with the network and had such a relationship as being a progressive thinker, we became a natural testing ground for all of those. It was the network that came up with the idea to hire a female weather announcer and they hired my wife. It was all from the top down.

While I was at WQAD we did take the number one spot in the ratings in the Quad Cities. When I got there we were number three. Jim King was the one who hired us all and put the team together. It was his hiring decisions that got us there. By the time that I left the station in 1976, everyone across the country was jumping on the "Happy Talk" band wagon. There were different personalities and different techniques but everyone was working on it. It was all a matter of chemistry so when the stations tried it that is when the flaws would pop up. Don Rhyne on WOC was a great announcer but he was not much for small talk. Wally Boller was another one who was excellent at announcing and he made a valiant effort at it as well. John Bauman was a broadcasting legend who was from the old school but with all of these terrific news casters the times were changing in the television industry. It was amazing at the speed in which it was changing. ABC changed the annals of history in the early 1970's. They were the number three network and were frantically trying different things to establish credibility as a network. Monday Night Football was the one that really put them on the map as far as progressive thinking and nobody thought that it would ever last. Then when Good Morning America took over number one in the ratings, we literally had a party in the station. It was the first legitimate weekly/daily program that became number one for ABC.

I don't remember too many sunrises in the six years that I worked in the news department. Jim King would do wrestling interviews. AWA Pro-Wrestling would take place at Wharton Field House or Brady Street Stadium and along with the wrestling matches the wrestlers would come on over to the TV station and do wrestling interviews which were really promotional hype for the upcoming matches. More than once I substituted for Jim King when he was out on assignment. I tried my best to be as glib as Jim but they did not like my sense of humor! I can recall Dirty Dusty Rhodes wanting to kill me live on camera. It was terrifying! Ironically Dusty now lives a few miles from me and I ran into him in the hardware store the other day. Vern Gagne was in the last years of his career. I can recall interviewing him too.

We were pioneering back then in the news department. We would go after interviews. I can recall interviewing Jimmy Dean and Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and President Nixon. We were doing some groundbreaking stuff. During the Quad City Open tie-ins I interviewed Ed McMahon and the Hagar Twins from Hee Haw along with a lot of local celebrities.

We were so convinced that nobody watched late night television that the late night sign-off news became a literal playground. By playground I mean that we never did it straight. I don't know what would have happened if GM Art Swift would have payed attention to what was being said over the air. For a long time the late night news was read into a microphone and a slide for the Channel 8 news would go up. There was never a newscaster on TV during this time. Well I used to have to read those. They were recorded when the 10:00 local WQAD news was done. These recordings took place at a quarter till eleven. One of the directors was named Gary Franks. All of a sudden, Gary Franks would find his name inserted into every one of the late night newscasts. I don't care if it was a bank robbery, Gary Franks was arrested. If it was a plane crash, Gary Franks was killed. Gary Franks lived this life of fame for years! Later the stations decided that it was worth taping one of the news announcers.

It was usually Nancy Ronald or I on camera. It became a contest to see who could make whom laugh while reading the news. I remember streaking during the sign off news one night while Nancy was reading the news. I took my clothes off and ran across the studio and streaked behind her on the set. Needless to say she was laughing about that one. The cameras just kept rolling, there were no re-takes and that appeared on the late night news. You would have thought that someone would have saved an out-take reel of some of these things that took place. Unfortunately there is just that void out there of this material. I do have 16mm film of a commercial I was involved with Bernie Weaver selling Christmas trees in East Moline.

Special thanks to legendary WOC engineer Jon Book for the picture of Nancy Ronald from The Lost Picture Vault

East Moline basketball uniforms. I have film of us practicing. As for the UT photo; Charlie Steiner is absent from the picture, but I do have film of him practicing with us. He just retired after a long career with ESPN as chief boxing announcer and also baseball announcer. In the photo: I don't remember who the first two on the left are, only that one of them was from KSTT radio. Third from the left is Don Sharp, Sports director at WHBF; Jim King, refereree; myself, and Ed Wodka, general manager of WQUA. Kneeling: Tom Bergstrand, assistant sport editor Moline Dispatch; Murry Hanks, assistant sports editor Rock Island Argus; Unknown; Greg Lemon (Tommy Jonhs), disc jockey WHBF radio, and Dick Griffin, assistant news driector WQAD. {The two "unknowns" in the top row are l-r: David Bradley, disc jockey at KSTT; and Bill Pearson, news anchor at WHBF-TV. The "unknown" in the center of the bottom row is Gordon Nelson, sports editor of the Dispatch. - Dave Coopman author of "WQUA, Moline's Hometown Station" (info verified by Don Sharp and Jeff Blake)}. All of the local media, TV, Radio and Newspaper is represented in that picture. It was a local media team which scrimmaged against the Harlem Globe Trotters. I was not an athlete and got out of anything like what is in the picture any time that I could. I could not, however, get out of racing Wally Boller, sports announcer on WOC TV 6, down Brady Street Hill. Some of the things were pretty daring. We would go out to the Cordova Drag Strip and I was stupid enough to lay down on the drag strip between the two cars to get a unique view with my camera!

Jim was Mr. Sexton Ford for the longest time and they were really happy with the advertisements. I backed up Jim a few times when he was absent doing the commercials but I was not anywhere near as effective as him. Jim's success with Sexton Ford lead to Muscatine having me do live commercials for them. It was the first 90 second to 2 minute commercials that were done live. I remember shooting one of the commercials and the rocking chair that I was in rolled over my mic cord and the rocking chair fell over the back of the platform while we were filming live but there was nothing that we could do about it. I was laying on my back like a turtle during the filming trying to get back up.

My wife, Carol Graflund, started out in the weather department. What Ron Klayman would tell you is that he wanted a woman on the weather forecast. Coincidentally, my wife was the reigning Miss Moline, Illinois at that time in 1972. Ron knew her but never thought that she would entertain the thought that she would do it. She agreed to do it and she became the first female weather announcer in the state of Illinois. It was particularly amusing because we were dating at the time and it was me with the news and sports and Carol with the weather in between. At the same time we were doing the new "Happy Talk" during the news. There were times in our dating relationship where we really did not get along that well. We would literally snarl "Back to you Bob" or "Back to you Carol" during the news. After the news the hot line at the station would be ringing and it would be my mother proclaiming "You have to fight in front of a million people on TV!" Carol took a lot of kidding for it because she was also teaching school at Moline High. The kids would always give her a razzing about her giving the weather on the news. The ratings were good for the weekend weather. It was harder to track because back then they did not have a break-down of the ratings for the news, weather and sports as individual numbers. They did have quarter hour ratings but the news on the weekends most of the time was a quarter hour newscast.

We married when we were still working at the station. Carol left before me, she went to teaching school full time. The pay was much better teaching and there was no free time doing both. For her to have no free time and to get paid twenty-five dollars a night for Saturday and Sunday just became too much. Nancy Ronald was doing a tremendous job in the consumer reporting department that they then decided to try her on weekend weather. I left in 1976. I was getting tired of nights and weekends and sometimes working months without a day off. Weekend weather and Chicago Cubs lead-in shows on Sunday and taping commercials and everything else, it was starting to show on my health. 1976 was the first year that ABC wanted us to try the co-anchor of the news. The moved me to co-anchor with Jim King and Thom Cornelis took my job in the sports chair. Jim and I were great friends but there was no chemistry between us when it came to small talk in front of a camera and it just didn't work. After four to six weeks of trying this out they decided that it just did not work and they went back to just one anchor, Jim King. Jim was not leaving WQAD. He had offers from stations all around the country but he decided for his family that he was not going to become a nomad and travel all across the country, pull his kids out of school and move every other year. He passed up jobs in Detroit, Chicago and Denver to stay at his job in Moline. Thom was solid in the sports department and there was no place left for me to go.

I grew up in Davenport, Iowa and Thom Cornelis is another one who is a local Quad City guy who made good at WQAD and now KWQC. I remember when he first walked in the door at WQAD. He walked in and said "I want to learn this business and I am willing to do it for free." So the program director assigned him to follow me around for two weeks and learn the business. Thom then went to sports events with me and eventually won a spot on the news staff and when we went to a test of dual anchors, I was co-anchor with Jim King, Thom took my spot. When the test was over I never got my job back!

Rona Barrett. That was a big thing. ABC was really pushing the gossip column at the time. That was something that we did not like because we felt that it looked bad on our image as newscasters but it drew ratings. The network was right in having her on there. In one picture Ron Klayman doctored the photo to look like Rona is tickling Jim King's chin because Jim hated her segment so bad.

All of the ads were written by Ron Klayman Program Director.

Working at the sports desk also had its benefits. One of my favorite anecdotes: I had press passes to a Bears game against Dallas and invited my dad to go to Soldiers Field with me. He had never been in a press box before and had not even seen a live professional football game before. He was appropriately awed. As we got on the elevator to go to the roof of the press box, Jack Brickhouse….Mr. Cubs….was standing in the elevator. As the doors closed, he looked at me and said, “Hello, there, Bob Wilford.” We said,”Hello, Mr. Brickhouse” and nothing else. At the press box level, Brickhouse turned right to go to the WGN suite, and we turned left for visiting press. As we walked down the hall, my dad said, “You KNOW Jack Brickhouse?!” I just put on a modest smile, left my dad in the box to get a sandwich for each of us but walked past the concession area right to the WGN suite. I knocked on the door, and opened it, and said, “Excuse me Mr. Brickhouse. Have we met before?” He grinned and replied, “Nope. My daughter goes to Augustana, and when I visit her on weekends, I always watch the local sports. You’re my favorite.” I always MEANT to tell my dad before he died I didn’t really know Jack Brickhouse.

The pants. Check out the pants! The styles of the 70's. One of the pictures shows me wearing a leisure suit! How times have changed! That was Channel 8's car and they paid for the gas. The camera is not as heavy as the one that we had to carry around that was like an old suitcase. It weighed forty pounds. In one of the pictures in the operating room, the little brownie camera that Jim King is wearing, all three local stations' reporters were required to carry those around with us 24 hours a day.

I had the Rock Island beat. Nancy had Moline and others had the other segments of the Quad Cities. It was not uncommon to be called in the middle of the night to go and cover a story. We had to splice our own film together as well. There was a deadline to get our film into the newsroom. While it was being developed we would write our own copy and we wrote our own story. The film would come out, still hot and still wet, and we would sit down at the splicer and edit it. Then we would hand the editor a copy of the script and Jim King a copy of the script and hand the film over to be loaded. It was a long day driving all around the WQAD viewing area such as Dubuque and Burlington and it was especially hectic on the weekend when you only had one reporter. You did not have five or six reporters. I remember one Saturday I was in Galesburg to report tornado damage, back to Rock Island to cover a railroad fire and then there had been a fatality in Kewanee. I had been to all three and had taken film at all three and then went back and had it developed, wrote all of the copy, all of the stories and made the film and editor's deadlines. After awhile it gets to be pretty stressful. In my transition out, during my last year at the station, I had a desire to work weekdays. There really was not much opportunity to work news in the mornings and so I took a position as a salesperson for several months. Then one of my customers offered me a job to work days and I never looked back.

1972 election picture - we stayed on late that night with election results. Election night was just like a telethon night. We had no idea just when we would go off the air. Jim King would make the call as to when we would sign off. It would be two or three in the morning and all of the precincts were in or had slowed to a trickle and he would finally just call it a day.

WQAD's 1972 winning ticket. Bob Stuart, Jim King and Bob Wilford.

Click here to go to WQAD's Bill Flannery's page

Click here to go to WQAD's Don Raymond page

Click here to go to WQAD's Keith Andrews and Chris Grantz's Bozo's Big Top page

Click here to go to the WQAD page!

Click here to go to Captain Ernie's Showboat

If you have any film, pictures or great memories from the golden years of WQAD, click here to email me!

Special thanks to Dave Coopman, author of "Someplace Special ... KSTT" for the image scan of the original Channel 8 logo.

I also have a photo of an old KSTT billboard where I was pictured in hot pants and boots. It was from 1972 when I was Miss Moline. It was taken in downtown Moline at the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue . What you see in the background is 6th Avenue. . - Carol Graflund Wilford