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Editor's Note: Television, that collection of tubes and screens, has turned 50 years old this year, (h er the next 7weeks, IV at 50 will look at the influence of television on our society’ and what the future has in store.In the first installment, we take a look at the first television station in the Rio Grande Valley from its rocky start to where it is today. The quotes have been culled from articles published in The Brownsville Herald as well as from interviews with people who worked there at the beginning and who work there now.By MARCIAL GUAJARDO The Brownsville HeraldJutting boldly into the cool dusk mistiness, a lonely 1,500-foot tower just south of La Feria quietly beamed KVEO-TV to life on Dec. 17, 1981. With this inauspicious beginning, you couldn 't predict all the turmoil that would follow.Bankruptcy proceedings were filed against the station in 1982 and that same year, one of the station’s founders. Peter Dean, committed suicide.7Wo local news programs both failed, so the NBC affiliate currently pits “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” against KGBT-TV Channel 4 and KRGV-TV Channel 5 news shows.The first KVEO news show was canned only eight months after the station went on-air. The long-running comedy “Taxi replaced the station's 10 p.m. newscast in September 1986.KVEO has undergone three ownership changes since it went on the air.All the problems cause some to believe that the television station is haunted. Yes ... haunted. Calling herself a psychic, TV personality Bertha Benedict reportedly declared the station haunted on her show, which ran during KVEO’s early years.Adding to the belief is the fact that the building where the station is located was once a popular nightclub dubbed “The Godfather.” Rumors run rampant about someone being shot to death there.We zoom now to the first major scene of turmoil in the station's history, at the KVEO office off of Expressway 77/83 on a sunny day in April of 1981. The station hasn’t gone on the air at this time but is already locked in a legal battle with Public Utilities Board .ACT I SCENE IPUB utility lines have been cut. Channel 23 General Manager Darrell Davis and Peter Dean, chief executive officer, arc watching Central Power Light technicians hook up their own utility lines. PUB officials are upset, saying their lines were cut illegally.KVEO: (CPL) is more reliable.PUB (Associate General Manager Boh Driggers): It’s obviously a violation of local and state regulations. They broke a meter and cut a line without our permission and left the line just dangling.KVEO (Dean): We re only looking at the reliable service angle. We cannot afford any power surges.(Fade to black.)Shortly after, PUB officials file criminal mischief charges against KVEO.Television station managers say they met with PUB earlier in the month and told officials there that they were planning to disconnect the power lines. Brownsville Mayor Emilio Hernandez, present at the meeting between the two warring parties, says Davis displayed “cockiness” in his address toPUB.“And from what the CPLguy said in yesterday’s papei, it looks like CPL, too, is(See KVEO, Page B6)
Newspaper Details
Brownsville Herald
Brownsville, Texas, US
Fri, Sep 18, 1998
Page 25
Full Page
Clipped by
Sammi B.
NA 13 Dec 2021
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