Hi Eric,
Here come my “KQV at the Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk” photos! I’ve reformatted them to 1920 x 1080 @ 300 dpi. They look pretty decent considering that I shot them without flash, in low light, on slide film, under florescent lighting, when I was in high school way back in 1971.
I don’t have an exterior shot from 1971. I shot the exterior picture in 1975. The rest of the pics are from 1971.
A number of KQV personnel are visible in the photos, but it was so many years ago that I’ve forgotten all their names. Hopefully, your readers will be able to figure out who they are. I am eager to find out.
The sequence of photos pretty much follows the tour I was given. You’ll see details of the racks in Master Control, which feature Ampex AG-440 decks for air checks and network delays, plus patching and the transmitter control and monitoring for both KQV and WDVE.
You’ll see a KQV jock at work in the left side showcase combo “Studio A”. There were three big windows facing Seventh Street. Master Control was visible through the middle window, with showcase “fishbowl” AM combos to the left and to the right.
I was able to take some detailed shots from inside the showcase combo on the right “Studio B”.
Outside, there was a small horn speaker that played KQV audio to the street, loud enough to be heard when standing in front of the windows, but not blasting.
Note the audio board in Master Control controlling the master levels for KQV. The jocks only have very basic mixing controls and the master levels were controlled by engineers in Master Control. ABC owned the station at this time and this was the “big city” way of doing things.
You’ll also see the lobby, newsroom and record library.
As I recall, KQV-FM had recently become WDVE in 1971. I was given a tour of the old KQV-FM automation, but I think it might have been recently decommissioned and for some reason I don’t have any pictures of it. I may have run out of film, or perhaps there wasn’t enough light, or the automation might have been turned off and in pieces at that point. I am curious about what WDVE was doing in early 1971. Did they have a live studio somewhere that I didn’t see?
I hope you and your readers will enjoy the pics, Eric. Now that your employer owns KQV, it seems only fitting for these images to “come home.”
Regards,
Bruce Graham
Pittsburgh Radio & Television Online
