Frank Kyle Spain is the owner and chief executive officer of WTVA, Inc., which is the licensee of WTVA, Channel Nine, Tupelo, Mississippi. Additionally he is the sole owner of WMDN Television, Meridian, Mississippi, and Microwave Service Company of Mississippi and Florida.

Mr. Spain was born in 1927 in Ohio and moved with his family to Mississippi in 1930. While still a high school student, he helped build and operate a local AM radio station, serving as chief engineer on a part-time basis. Having graduated with honors from Mississippi State University with a degree in electronics engineering at age nineteen, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was employed by NBC to participate in the construction of WNBW (now WRC-TV). He assisted with the first TV programs originating from The Capitol, The White House and at various other historic locations and events, such as the 1948 Presidential Inauguration. In 1949, he joined the NBC Development Group in New York to design television and microwave relay equipment.

Mr. Spain helped build the first UHF TV station in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and supervised the antenna pattern measurements. He participated in the 1949-1950 demonstration of the RCA compatible color television system before the Federal Communications Commission. In 1952, he left NBC to assume the duties of director of engineering for the Meredith Syracuse Television Corporation, which operated WHEN -TV (now WTVH) and WHEN Radio in Syracuse, New York. In December 1953, while with the Meredith Corporation, he successfully petitioned the FCC to assign channel nine to Tupelo, Mississippi, and was subsequently granted a construction permit. Mr. Spain designed and hand built the antenna, transmitter, cameras, and all ancillary equipment used by WTWV (now WTVA). That station commenced broadcasting on March 18, 1957.

In 1959, Mr. Spain started Microwave Service Company to provide distant signals to CATV systems and network interconnect links for broadcast facilities. At the peak of the terrestrial transmission business, the company served twelve states. Because of these strategically located facilities, Mr. Spain joined Jack Goeken and Bill McGowan in the start-up of MCI. This resulted in his sole ownership of MCI Mid-South and an equal partnership with the Meredith Corporation in MCI Southeast.

Today, Mr. Spain continues ownership of WTVA, Microwave Service Company and WMDN Television. His philosophy of ownership is the belief that his stations have a vital responsibility to be a major contributing force in their communities' social and economic development.

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program at The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mr. Frank Kyle Spain and is being conducted on January 4, 2000. The interviewer is Marty Ramage.

Ramage: I'm Marty Ramage with the Mississippi Oral History Program, and today, we're here in Tupelo with Mr. Frank Spain. Today is January 4, the year 2000. And Mr. Spain, if you will, give me your full name.

Spain: My name is Frank Kyle Spain. I was born 11-29-27. I started school in Aberdeen; went to school there through the second grade. And we moved to Tupelo, and from the third grade through high school, I went to the Tupelo school system.

Ramage: What did your parents do in Aberdeen? Were they originally from Aberdeen?

Spain: No, they weren't, but my father was a funeral director for the Harrison Funeral Home there. And he and Mr. Harrison opened a funeral home here in Tupelo. And that's when we moved up here.

Ramage: And that was the funeral home there on Main Street.

Spain: That's right.

Ramage: In the old, three-story home.

Spain: Right.

Ramage: There at Main and—what is that? Main and Madison?

Spain: Right.

Ramage: Southeast corner of Main and Madison.

Spain: Right.

Ramage: So, you moved up here in the third grade. What was Tupelo like when you moved up here?

Spain: Well, you know, when you're that young, everything is bigger than it appears when you're an adult, but even given that, Tupelo was pretty small. In high school, Jim Green and I worked for WELO, the local radio station which we helped put on the air in the early '40s. And it was down about where one of the car dealerships is on South Gloster, now. And that was way out in the country. There was basically nothing past Crosstown to the south.

Ramage: Now, had the tornado come?

Spain: Yes.

Ramage: So, when you moved up here—or was it about that time?

Spain: I forget exactly when we moved here. Of course, the tornado was in '36, and I would have been, I guess, in the fourth grade there.

Ramage: That was about the time [of the tornado].

Spain: Yeah. Right.

Ramage: And what did—some of your memories of Tupelo—then we had a downtown, right?

Spain: Right. That's all we had. (Laughter.)

Ramage: So, downtown. But on Saturday night, would your parents ever take you downtown? And, I mean, did people—

Spain: No, at that point in time, my father's funeral home was on Troy Street. I guess the bus station is gone, now, too, but anyway, we lived in the funeral home, and it was one street south of Main Street, so, we were right downtown.

Ramage: Now, what year did you move over to the other funeral home there? Do you remember?

Spain: In the early '40s. Forty or '41, I would think.

Ramage: And then, now, starting the radio station. That was pretty interesting.

Spain: Yes, it was.

Ramage: And do you remember anything interesting that happened in starting that?

Spain: Well, two or three things. Bernie Imes Sr. had the newspaper in Columbus, and he built a radio station there. And his general manager was Bob McRaney Sr. And they decided to come to Tupelo and put a station in here. And I remember that Bob McRaney had a Cord convertible which was much impressive in those days. Jim Green's older brother Leroy was to be the chief engineer of this station. And this was just—I guess you'd say that the Depression was about ending, but Leroy couldn't get a job as an electronics person in those days, so he went to work for the state highway department. Somewhere along the way, he bent a piece of reinforcing rod over his thigh and bruised the bone and got osteomyelitis. So, when he was supposedly being the chief engineer, he was never there because he was having this problem. And ultimately, unfortunately, he gave up and had his leg amputated. And if he'd have waited another couple of years, penicillin which was basically developed during—or at least it became public during or after the war. If he'd have waited just another couple of years, he could have gotten penicillin, and it would solve that problem. Anyway, Jim Green, his younger brother, and myself were in the same class in high school. And God only knows why, but they basically let us do the engineering for the station. And Jim and I had great sport doing that while we were going to high school.

Ramage: Now, what was your parents' names?

Spain: Walter D. Spain and Letha M. Spain.

Ramage: And her maiden name?

Spain: Mefford, M-E-F-F-O-R-D.

Ramage: Now, were they originally from Aberdeen?

Spain: No. They were originally from Ohio.

Ramage: Now, how did they get down to the South?

Spain: The usual. Because of certain family irritations and whatever, my father decided he wanted to get out of that part of the world, and he went to work for a funeral home in Memphis called Thompson Brothers. And first one thing led to another, and he wound up with Mr. Harrison in Aberdeen.

Ramage: And your mother, what did she do for a living?

Spain: Before they were married she was a schoolteacher. And then she—and it's certainly not the case these days—didn't believe that any wife should have work outside the home, at least until the children—and I'm an only child—were at least ten or twelve or fourteen or so. So, she was a home keeper until, I guess—I can't remember precisely, but it was probably about the time I went to high school, she went back to teaching. And she taught here, and most of the time, she taught over in Lawhon.

Ramage: Now, the radio station, when you got it started, now, there were two radio stations, WTUP—

Spain: No, no. No, no, no. No, no. This was many, many years before there was a second radio station. WELO was the first one, and I don't know when TUP went on the air, but it must have been at least fifteen or twenty years later.

Ramage: Now, ELO, did it come from the end of the word Tupelo?

Spain: Sure.

Ramage: Then, of course, when the second one came about, they picked up the TUP.

Spain: Exactly.

Ramage: All right. I wondered if they both got together on that.

Spain: No. It was totally separate and apart, and they were highly competitive, one with the other.

Ramage: Now, Bernie Imes, did he own WELO or was he just the person that was sort of—

Spain: No, his father did. The present Bernie Imes, his father owned the newspaper and the radio station.

Ramage: OK. And then, back then, how was the radio station different? [Did] you have live acts back then?

Spain: Yes. Yes. The fellow that used to show up there rather regularly was a fellow called Mississippi Slim, and I have no earthly idea where he went or what he did, but the typical picking and singing. You know. The usual group of preachers. I was never that interested or involved with the programming, but it seems to me like we were—the station was affiliated with the Mutual Network which in those days was a network and has long since disappeared.

Ramage: So, you got a lot of the programming from that.

Spain: That's right.

Ramage: And now the length of time it was on the air, was it primarily during the day and evening?

Spain: Oh, yes. Yes. I think that initially that it signed off about ten o'clock at night, and I don't remember, at least until Jim and I were gone from there, that it ever stayed on much beyond eleven o'clock at night.

Ramage: So, really, I mean, you and Jim, both high school students, were helping. Well, of course, you were learning engineering by just trial and error.

Spain: Pretty much, yes.

Ramage: And then the war came about. And how did that affect Tupelo? Much that you remember?

Spain: Well, essentially everyone in my class wound up in the military one place or another. I managed just barely to miss it because I was the youngest one in my class by a year or so. There were three of us that were bosom buddies, Harry Wilson, Bobby Hayes and myself. And the three of us were reasonably decent students, and we decided that—we could see that we were all likely winding up in the military, and we decided to get as much education as we could before that happened, thinking that it might in the long run get us in a better position in the military.

Ramage: A better class.

Spain: You're right. So, the three of us skipped our junior year in high school. We went from sophomore to senior, so, all of us graduated from high school in three years. And Bobby, wanting to be a doctor, went to Ole Miss. And Harry and I went to [Mississippi] State; he wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, and I knew I wanted to be an electronics engineer. Electronics is a joke because even when I graduated down there, the electrical engineering department consisted of two things, power and communications. And communications primarily consisted of telephone. So, it was hardly called electronics, then. You know. So, both Harry and Bobby got called into the service, and me, being younger than either of them, I literally made it all the way through and graduated from State in three years. So, I was a senior at State at eighteen.

Ramage: Now, what year was that? That was in—

Spain: Forty-[seven].

Ramage: And, now, what did you do after you graduated from State?

Spain: Well, I'll give you a little background. In those days and perhaps even to this day, the major corporations would come around and interview seniors beginning, oh, in February or March of the senior year looking for prospective hiring candidates. And the object of going to school in the first place is education. And it struck me as one more bit of education, so, every company that showed up, Westinghouse, General Electric, RCA, those kinds of people, I would go and interview with the man they had down looking for people, having absolutely no intention of taking a job with any of them. But what I was getting out of this was the education of what questions and how they were asked. And you know, basically what I was doing was looking to see what they were looking for, so I would have the right answers at some point.

Ramage: (Inaudible) the right one.

Spain: So, some time in the future it would come in handy.

Ramage: So you were a professional interviewee.

Spain: Exactly. I don't know how many, but it was at least four or five, because I had an uncle in Brazil at that time, and he said that radio was almost nonexistent. And I had planned on when graduating from college, to go to South America where he was and establish a radio station in one of the major cities.

Ramage: Now, did you get a job through your interviewing?

Spain: No, I didn't. Well, let's back up a minute. The war ended about the time my senior year started, and both Bobby and Harry came back to the area. And the spring of '47 when I graduated, Bobby Hayes had had a girlfriend during the war in Washington; he'd been there for quite a while, and he wanted to go up there and see her. And I was waiting to get a passport, so, "Sure, we'll go up to Washington." So, the two of us drove up there, and being in the big city for the first time in my life, I wanted to go and see what the big city radio was like. So, I went to the NBC studios at Fourteenth and New York. And they were very gracious, letting me go into the control room. And I sat there and had a great conversation with the engineer in charge there.

And in the process, he said, "Well, we're in the process of getting ready to build a television station, and the man's name is Howard Graumberg, and he'll be in on Monday. And why don't you go talk to him?"

Well, I had no intention of at all going to work there as I had previously planned to go to South America. So, from force of habit, I went in on Monday morning and met Mr. Graumberg and sat there and talked to him for quite some time, and apparently he thought I had a possible chance of being some help to them, so, he offered me a job. And this must have been—it couldn't have been later than the end of June. And he said, "Well, when can you come to work?"

And I said, real quick-like, thinking it over, "The first of October."

And I'm sure that set him back a bit, but it didn't discourage him enough that he said, "Well, goodbye."

So, after I guess we were there for five days, and we came back home. And I sat down with my parents and said, "Look. I've got this offer of a job with NBC in Washington; they're building a television station." And I said, "Well, who knows what television will amount to, but it really would be nice to know something about it, so, I guess I'll take the job for a couple of years and get some idea. And then I'll go to Brazil." Well, I haven't made it to Brazil, yet. OK? (Laughter.)

Ramage: Now, what year was this that you took the job?

Spain: In the fall of '47.

Ramage: Fall of '47. So, television was really in its very infancy at that point in time?

Spain: There were—actually, in New York there were three stations. NBC and CBS had stations. And Allen B. Dumont had the Dumont Station. In Washington at the time, we were building the station for NBC, and Dumont, I guess, probably got on the air maybe six months before we did. But basically there weren't any other stations.

Ramage: Well, what ever happened to Dumont? Did his station evolve?

Spain: Yes. I'm trying to remember the chain of the events, but actually for the first probably eight years of the television industry, the Dumont station in New York and Washington—and he had some in other parts of the country by then. And he manufactured equipment, his own cameras, his own studio equipment, everything. And actually, in my opinion, his equipment was probably leading edge technology and probably performed better than most of the other folks. I never realized exactly what happened, but he finally sold his operation and his manufacturing operation just kind of disbanded. He manufactured home sets, and at the time the Dumont receivers for the home were the better of the lot. But they have evolved, and Metromedia [owned the Washington station for a number of years, and now] Murdock at Fox owns them and runs them.

Ramage: Now, you were in Washington for how long with NBC?

Spain: Let's see. I got there in ['47]. I think I was there through the election and inauguration in ['48]. And then I went to New York; back in those days, in the case of the networks, at least in the case of NBC and CBS, they had design and development groups who were basically manufacturing their own cameras and equipment and whatever. And then RCA and General Electric would take these designs and modify them somewhat and then sell them commercially. So, the projects we were working on very shortly thereafter [evolved into] color television.

Ramage: And so, you were primarily involved in the electronics of the color television?

Spain: Exactly. In '50, I had the pleasure of putting in two years in the Navy as an electronic officer, and when I came back, the color television operation was up and going reasonably well. And because I had been involved in the microwave transmission between New York and Washington, we were involved in trying to figure out how to get this much more band-width-demanding color signal into intercity communications facilities, telephone company lines, that sort of thing.

Ramage: Now, let me ask you this. When you were in Washington, did you ever see any of our congressmen or senators from Mississippi?

Spain: Really not of any consequence while I was in Washington, but when I got to New York, partially because of our work in color there and partially because I knew Washington, and I knew the people in Washington—I'd worked with all of them—when the FCC started holding hearings as to whether or not to go with the CBS transmission system of color, or the RCA system, I participated in the initial hearings before the FCC which RCA lost. The primary difference was that the RCA system was totally electronic. The CBS system had a big color wheel that spun in front of the tube, and when there was blue in the picture, the kinescope would only show the blue when the blue gelatin was in front of the tube. And then they would switch to red as the red gelatin came by. So, it was one way to get there, as it were, but it was like—we (laughter) used to kid around. We'd go out and build a combination washing machine and color television set since it's got this rotation drum in it anyway, kind of thing. I don't remember exactly how long it was, but within a couple of years by whatever the lawyers managed, there was a rehearing. And I kept screaming at the people involved in programming this thing that the only color anybody knew about other than reality was technicolor. And all of the folks at RCA had this bent on making things look natural, you know, subtle tones, shading, whatever. And one of the inherent things about the CBS system was that they couldn't do that, but everything was extremely high chroma, very high levels of color. And I kept screaming at them that reality is not what we're looking for here. We're trying to make it look like technicolor which is very over-emphasized color. So, the other thing—beside that point, the other point was you would go out in a studio in front of a CBS color wheel [camera] and bounce a tennis ball, and you would see a series of balls going up and down, a red one, a green one, a blue one, a red one, a green one, a blue one because that's when the color wheel happened to be there that's the color it saw. OK? So, between getting highly saturated colors and this breakup of fast movement of the CBS system, the commission finally adopted the RCA totally electronic system, and fortunately, because we're getting ready this day and age to go to all-digital. And the mechanical system certainly wouldn't have lent itself to that at all.

Ramage: To the progression of that.

Spain: Right. Exactly.

Ramage: You'd have had to start back. Now, then, you were still, when you came back out of the Navy for that two years you spent, you went back to NBC?

Spain: Yes, I did.

Ramage: And you worked there how long, then? When did the thought first come into mind of coming back to Mississippi and opening or starting a TV station?

Spain: Well, that goes back a ways. I always wanted to do that, even early on. Actually, the two years I was in the Navy, during that period the FCC came out with the so-called fifth-ordering report which assigned television channels to all the various communities in the United States, unlike AM and FM radio [where] there are no channels assigned. What you do if you want to build a radio station someplace, you get an engineering survey to find out what frequency will not cause interference to anybody else, and you apply for it, and you're granted that. That's not the case in television. In television, the only thing you can apply for are the channels that the FCC has previously assigned to these various places. Well, as is frequently the case, Mississippi came out on the short end of the stick on that. We didn't have anyways near as many VHF channels in Mississippi as the states around us. So, I was a bit perturbed by the fact that this order came out while I was in the Navy, but as things then as now move rather slowly, by the time I got back to NBC, the educational television commission in Alabama wanted to move some channels around or something, so, Alabama and a station in Jackson, Tennessee, were involved in these channel changes things. And I realized that channel nine would fit in Tupelo. It had no VHF channel. I think it had a UHF channel of some kind, but anyway, stupid me, without legal advice or whatever, I was filling out the required twelve copies of everything and sending them to the commission and screaming that the Communications Act says that one of the major mandates to the FCC was to make sure that the various and sundry communications facilities were allocated equally and fairly among the states, and Mississippi was shortchanged. So, to make a long story short, after I don't know how long it took—probably a couple of years—[I] got channel nine assigned to Tupelo.

Ramage: And this was well before the station ever—

Spain: Oh, yes. Yes. This was in the midfifties, early '50s.

Ramage: Early '50s.

Spain: Yes.

Ramage: Now, even then, someone else could have come in and started a station ahead of you and had channel nine. Right?

Spain: No. Not until it was assigned.

Ramage: Not until it was assigned. Right.

Spain: And as soon as it was assigned, we made the commission aware that we were planning on applying for it, but yes, they could have. But the interesting part about the whole thing is, after I did all this, the guys at NBC said, "You know, you're crazy. You're going to a town of"—in those days, probably 8000. I never will forget. (Laughter.)

One of my friends up there says, "Look." He says, "You're going to put every nickel you can beg, borrow, buy, or steal into this thing." And he says, "If you win, what do you win? Nothing." He says, "You can go down here to Philadelphia and apply for one of the UHF channels. It will cost you no more, and it will take the same amount of effort and whatever, and you know, if you win, you win something." Well, in those days, UHF was just a joke. There weren't any. You know.

And I said, "Well, what you say may very well be true, but the problem is I haven't got enough money to ante in a market like Philadelphia." So, Tupelo.

Ramage: What did you have to do to prepare, before? You had to fill out and ask for the station.

Spain: Right.

Ramage: You affiliated with NBC?

Spain: No.

Ramage: You did not?

Spain: No. That's another story. (Laughter.) After channel nine was assigned to Tupelo, we filled out an application for the license for channel nine, and we were going to be over on Saltillo Road, over in those hills, back over in there.

Ramage: The highest point?

Spain: Yeah. Well, it was somewhat high. This part of Mississippi, you know, another fifteen feet is a mountain. You know.

Ramage: Yeah. You're right.

Spain: So, about that time, this building we're in here, now, was originally the school building for the Homestead, which I'm sure you'll get all kinds of information from, from other people around. But basically, it was built as a demonstration project for TVA because Tupelo was the first TVA city, and this was—I don't know how many homes there were over there, but this was supposed to support that. Anyway, about that—

Ramage: What was the school name? Do you know?

Spain: I don't really. I don't really.

Ramage: That would be interesting—

Spain: Probably Homestead. This whole thing has been called Homestead up here. Anyway, the—and I don't know exactly who, the city, the county, whatever—the various school boards decided that this thing didn't make any sense here. That they should take everybody into Tupelo. There were better roads and better buses and all that sort of thing. So, the school board was willing to sell this building. So, we managed to purchase it, and go back to the FCC and get a modification to move from over on Saltillo Road to this location. Then came the question of, you know, how are you going to do this? And I didn't have two nickels to rub together, but I had some engineering talent. And by then, there was a lot of government surplus electronics equipment, especially transformers and that sort of thing that were on the market as government surplus. So, in the basement of my apartment—well, I need to back up a little bit. I had left NBC and gone to work for Meredith Publishing Company who had channel [eight in Syracuse, New York].

(End of tape one, side one. The interview continues on tape one, side two.)

Ramage: All right. Go ahead.

Spain: Well, I'd been designing and building, at first, models of equipment at NBC. So, I decided that the only way this had a prayer of coming into fruition was if I built the equipment to turn the station on. (Laughter.) Strangely enough, in Syracuse which was the home of GE's electronic operation, one of the fellows there was building some stations in Puerto Rico, and he needed an antenna. And I said, "Well, you supply the money for all the materials. I will do the design, construction, and whatever and build you a channel three antenna. And I'll build my own six-bay antenna on channel nine. And for that I want you to supply me with a tower."

And he agreed to that. Well, I'm still waiting on the tower. But at least we got the antenna built for little or nothing because he paid for the materials. So, the only commercial piece of equipment we had was the tower which was outside the building here, now, which we used for the first fifteen years, I guess.

And so, I went to RCA and said, "Look, I've got to have a tower. Would you finance it?" And normally they didn't do such a thing because they didn't build towers. Stainless, and [Ideco], and everyone else built towers, and the only reason they would finance a tower is if you bought a station's total equipment: cameras, transmitters, and all that sort of thing.

Well, because I knew a couple of guys there, they said, "All right. We'll finance the damn tower." So. (Laughter.)

Ramage: That's good.

Spain: But from the antenna on top of the tower and lots of the stuff, there were a lot of UHFs going bankrupt. The transmission line on the tower came from, some of [them], from Asbury Park, some of [them] from Elmira, New York. So, then the transmitter, the studio cameras, all the switching equipment, everything was all built in Syracuse in my basement. Well, the antenna wasn't, obviously. I worked for—as I said, Meredith had—those days their AM / FM was called WHEN. So, they had this big pasture, literally, out there, and I got permission to build these antennas out there in that pasture. Anyway, once we got all that equipment put together, we put it in moving vans and brought it all down here, modified the building somewhat, not terribly. The building had an auditorium and a stage in it, and we just left that as it was. And that was the studio, and actually turned it on in 1957. The (laughter) transmitter I built was selected largely because of the life span and price of the final amplifier tubes which are the most expensive. RCA's transmitter, at the time, the final tube cost something on the order of $1800, and this transmitter, I built everything. All of the tubes in it only cost $1200. (Laughter.) So, that's the choice of the design factors, largely. And as most transmitters, the aural / [visual] are all built in one box and whatever. I didn't like that idea, because if you had trouble with the aural, you had to shut the visual down and everything else. So, I built two separate transmitters, and there was a hall between the two of them, and so, they were totally separate one from the other. And yes, we'd had the visual transmitter on the air, maybe a few hours before we signed the station on. We had never turned the aural transmitter on until the day we signed the station on. Just knew it would work all right. That wasn't complicated.

Ramage: Now, what—did you affiliate with an agency or—

Spain: All right. Back to that, I would go down to New York regularly and beat on all three of the networks. Dumont was basically the forerunner of ABC. Anyway, in a market the size of this at that time, nobody wanted anything to do with it. And the fellow at NBC, I kept beating him over the head. He says, "I'll tell you what." He says, "If you can figure out how to get the signal in there, we will give you permission to carry it, but I don't know you, and you don't know me." (Laughter.) Literally.

So, I went to [W]MC in Memphis, and Maury Greiner I think goes back that far. Anyway, whoever the manager was up there said, "Sure. Yeah. You can pick us up off the air." So, we started out with an antenna on the tower here trying to pick them up, and you know, the signal was atrocious. And I'd been in the microwave business for NBC for quite a while, so, then, we moved up to a wide spot in the road up here called Keownville and picked them up there which worked a lot better. And over the years we extended the other towers and microwave hops until we were actually interconnected to NBC in—

Ramage: Memphis?

Spain: —[W]MC studio. Yes.

Ramage: Now, when you first came down, I mean, had you married then? Or, were you married?

Spain: Yes. Yes, I was, right after the war.

Ramage: Now, was she from Tupelo?

Spain: No, she was from Salt Lake. Yeah.

Ramage: Did she have a hard time? What was her name?

Spain: Margaret. Margaret Green.

Ramage: Margaret Green. And did she come down to Mississippi with you?

Spain: Oh, yes. Yes. And she pretty much ran the office part of the thing, the billing, the traffic, and what accounting we had. (Laughter.)

Ramage: Did you know what you were going to do, like, that first day? I mean, when did you start planning on the programs or how did that work the first week or two?

Spain: Well, we had all that planned long before we left Syracuse. And as a matter of fact, an awful lot of these things on the wall here were done by an artist in Syracuse. And we had that done and brought down here to do this. You might find this interesting. Christ for the Crisis program is the longest-running program on this station.

Ramage: Now that was Brother Digby? Was he—

Spain: Eugene (laughter) I never will forget. We were out here digging the base for this tower, and literally, once a week Eugene would come by and want to know when we were going to get on air.

Ramage: Eugene Digby.

Spain: That's right. Right.

Ramage: From Fulton? Was he from Itawamba County?

Spain: Yes. Exactly. And he has been on here every week since the day we turned this station on. And he is a wonderful, kind, honest gentleman which an awful lot of the evangelistic kind of folks are not, honestly.

Ramage: Mm-hm. And so, all of this was drawn, and so, you had everything ready to go when you first got on the air.

Spain: Well, some of the people who saw it, then, may think differently, but supposedly, yes. (Laughter.)

Ramage: Now, do you remember the first week or so, or the first year? People were really (inaudible). I mean, at that time, were they even able to pick up any station here in Tupelo?

Spain: Yes. The cable company had an antenna on North up here on Birmingham Ridge, and they were picking up the Memphis stations in some fashion. So, yes, you could on occasion.

Ramage: But now, the people out in Lee County?

Spain: No. No. Well, everyone tried to get Memphis, and you'd get it some days, and some days you couldn't get it at all. And most of the days, you could get it, you know, very, very poorly.

Ramage: I bet the TV, like some of Gardner Watson, they were proud to see you come into Tupelo.

Spain: Surely. Absolutely.

Ramage: (Inaudible) more sales for them.

Spain: Absolutely.

Ramage: And so, it was a boost to the economy, I'm sure.

Spain: I would think so. Yes. So, we went along with this being buddies with [W]MC in Memphis to get the signal, and we—when—I'm trying to remember the fellow's name that—and I'm not going to be able to—at NBC station relations that said, "We don't know you, and you don't know us." It was the honest-to-God's-truth because we didn't even know what NBC was running or when they were running it except that we made a deal with the traffic manager at [W]MC and paid her a pittance to let us know what NBC was going to do and when they were going to do it. (Laughter.) And that went on for a number of years. The exact timing on that I don't know. I can look on those two checks over there and tell you what the timing was, but ABC came along, and they wanted us to affiliate with them.

And I said, "Well, you know, we'll give it some thought." I went back to NBC and said, "Look, ABC is willing to pay us."

And they say, "We're not paying you?" This was years later. (Laughter.) You know.

"No." So, that was when we first started getting some money from the network, and those are the first two checks we got over there, and I don't remember exactly, but I think they're something like $25. (Laughter.)

Ramage: But it was something.

Spain: It was the start. Yes. Exactly.

Ramage: And, now, in Tupelo at that time, or in the TV station here, would you have people to call up and want to come up and be on TV? Was it that basic? Or did you ever have people—

Spain: Not just people in general. We had a number of preachers. We had—back in those days it was perfectly reasonable to do so. We had one fellow I remember used to come in town and buy an hour of time to hold an auction. And he'd go around to the various and sundry dealers around here and get merchandise from them and bring it out here and basically auction it off on the air.

Ramage: And people would call him?

Spain: Exactly.

Ramage: That was interesting. Now, were there any other stations? Or, what other stations were in the state of Mississippi at that time, when you first started in '57?

Spain: WCBI was on the air a couple of months before we were in Columbus. And I don't really know when exactly the other ones got on. I'm sure that WTOK in Meridian was on. There was a UHF station there that came on sometime and lasted maybe three years; went bankrupt. In Jackson, there were two stations, [W]JTV and channel three [WLOT]. They'll be very happy that I'm forgetting their call letters. (Laughter.)

Ramage: Now, so, through the years, I mean, some of the shows—did Elvis ever come to the station here?

Spain: No, but the first year that we—we used to do the Fair, live, which was quite a chore considering the size staff we had. You know. But the year he performed at the grandstand down there, we were down there at the Fair at that time.

Ramage: So, you did. Now, how big was your staff in '57?

Spain: In '57, it was fifteen people.

Ramage: And you had a news, weather (inaudible)?

Spain: We did, but in all honesty, it was pretty much rip-and-read. We had a 16 mm camera which I had planned on using to gather news. We couldn't afford the film.

Ramage: Yeah. Now, through the years, this has grown into quite an impressive operation up here. In fact, I think it's the best station in the state. (Laughter.) And the news is, I mean, it's one of the premier newscasts, newscasting stations in the state.

Spain: Well, you know, in all honesty, because you have this plethora of channels doing all kinds of entertainment and sports and whatever, the only thing that's absolutely, totally unique to a local station is its local news. No one else can do that. And that's—we're still—I know a lot of young people are not that plugged into the news and what's going on, but we're still in an area where most people pay more attention to news than they do in the country in general. So, there is much more emphasis, and certainly in our case, on news than there is on any other single aspect of programming. As a matter of fact, we're starting news on the Fox station here in February. So, and, we're in the process now of reworking the whole studio, doubling the size of it and going to all-digital equipment in it. So, that, I think, in the long run is going to be the salvation of broadcast television.

Ramage: Mm-hm. Now, when did you open up the Fox station? Or, when did you—(laughter) I mean, and you don't have to—but it was in about how long?

Spain: Just over five years ago. Right now, it's about five and a half years ago. I will give you some information that no one really particularly cares about. The FCC, because there were failing UHF stations all over the country, came up with what they called a local marketing agreement. You couldn't own two stations in a market, but you could make a deal with a station that was in trouble, and you don't own it, but you basically run it, market it, do its sales for it, that sort of thing. So, when Jimmy Love bought the [W]LOV—that's why the call letters are [W]LOV—I don't know how long he ran that thing, but probably two or three years. And he found out that it just was not a financial success, at all.

I'm down at our station in Meridian, and Mark Ledbetter, the station manager calls me late on Friday and he says, "I just got a call from Jimmy Love's manager, and he wants to do an LMA with us. And not only that, he wants to meet us in Jackson, tomorrow, and he wants this done in a week."

And I laughed, and I said, you know, "You don't do anything in a week." (Laughter.) But nevertheless, Mark came down, and I went over to Jackson, and that's how the local marketing agreement came about. And we did that with Jimmy for a little while, and Jimmy wanted to sell the station. So, I got Jack Lingard to buy it, and he owns it, and we run it as an LMA.

Ramage: Now, do you own the station in Meridian?

Spain: Yes. One of them.

Ramage: Now, when did you buy that?

Spain: That was a long time ago. Probably early '70s.

Ramage: Early '70s.

Spain: Yeah. It went bankrupt, and we bought the station out of bankruptcy.

Ramage: Now, do you use a lot of your news—well, no, because really a lot of your news here is local for here.

Spain: Absolutely.

Ramage: And so, you keep that same philosophy in Meridian.

Spain: Right. They do their own news down there.

Ramage: That's interesting.

Spain: There's an occasional story, Jackson governmental things particularly, that both stations can use, but 90 percent, or more than that, probably 98 percent, of each of the station's news operation is their own and local.

Ramage: Don't you think—and like you said before—that's the success, or will be the continuing success?

Spain: Exactly.

Ramage: Because people want that local news, and they want what's going on at home.

Spain: This is very true, and it is the one thing no one else can compete with. If you're out of the market, you can't do that. The networks have been trying for years to get an hour newscast, and all the affiliates have resisted that totally because all the affiliates have had sense enough to realize that, yes, you could do the national stuff on the network, but what's really important is localism.

Ramage: Now, Tupelo as a whole, and seeing Tupelo as you've seen it since really 1957, since you've been back, how has Tupelo changed? Now, I'll ask two questions. How has it changed the most, and what do you think Tupelo's secret has been? Because it really pulled out—

Spain: Well, there are really two factors. In word one, I think that the single biggest contributor to Tupelo's success is Harry Martin and the CDF personnel-wise, without him and them, it would not have [happened]. The second thing is the fact that unlike an awfully lot of places—and there certainly is a certain amount of fractionalization and people with different interests as you have everywhere—this community, Tupelo, Lee County seems to be able to put all those differences aside and as a group work together for the betterment of the whole community far in excess of what I've seen anyplace in the country. And it's proven by the number of dignitaries from all around the world that come into this town to see how this is done. And until you can get the diverse elements to put their individual whatever aside and move together as a group, you can't have this happen.

Ramage: You're right.

Spain: You know.

Ramage: I'll agree 100 percent. And don't you think that that has led—I think that that trying to reach the goal and just trying to move the community as a whole, you see more volunteerism in Tupelo.

Spain: Truly. Very true.

Ramage: And that led. But going back to Harry Martin; he's a unique individual, and you've seen some of the things he's done. What do you think his secret has been?

Spain: First of all, he has boundless energy. Second of all, he is probably the best salesman I have ever seen in my life. And a salesman with boundless energy, it's hard to keep them down. (Laughter.) I wish I had a houseful of them. (Laughter.)

Ramage: You're exactly right. And don't you think that Harry Martin—do you think that he has led to a lot of this keeping the cohesiveness together?

Spain: Yes. And I'd love to know how he does it. (Laughter.)

Ramage: You're right. You're right. And market it. Because people come from all over the country to see how the Tupelo story—

Spain: Yes.

Ramage: To see the Tupelo story.

Spain: Truly.

Ramage: And to ask questions and things like that. And it is amazing because to me—and I'm going to say a few things, now—me and the bank, how the banks work together.

Spain: Normally, they're at each other's throats. You know? (Laughter.)

Ramage: That's exactly right. But when it comes down to getting, you know, business into Tupelo, they work together, even if they don't get the account of the business or whatever.

Spain: One of my—I was going to say fears, but maybe that's a little strong—concerns is that as Tupelo gets bigger and bigger, maybe this cohesiveness will disappear. I hope not, but that's generally the pattern, but we're pretty well down the road, and it still exists, so, maybe by some hook or crook, we can maintain it.

Ramage: I agree. Now, personally, how many children do you have?

Spain: I have two, and my wife has one.

Ramage: And what are their names?

Spain: One here in Tupelo is Walter D. Spain, named for my father. Kyle Manning Spain who works for Warner Brothers in Pasadena; he has my middle name. Jane, my wife, has one son, Matthew D.

Ramage: And, now, on a personal note, automobiles. (Laughter.)

Spain: Well, I can tell you a lot more than you care to know about that.

Ramage: When did you get interested in collecting automobiles?

Spain: It's like so many things, you know, you take one small step having no direction, object, or whatever, and then that gets another step. I've been married three times, and my second wife had had an MGTD when she was a girl. So, I look around and find her one; that's a long story, but in any event, I get her an MG; paid maybe $6500, maybe $7000 for it; bring it to town, and it ran all right, but it was, cosmetically, it was very shabby. So, I'm taking the fenders off of it, and this, that, and the other thing and refurbishing it and making it a decent-looking thing while she's jumping up and down and stamping her foot because she wants to drive it. So, the ultimate result was that I got it where I thought it should be, and I probably had about $15,000 invested in it. And I look around and the best MG in the world, you couldn't get more than $10,000 or $11,000 for. So, I decided that that was not the smartest move I had ever made, and I decided that if I were going to collect any kind of cars, I needed something that when you invested this time, energy, and money in, that, you know, it would be of some value. It's like A-models today. A-models now are up to $25,000, but nevertheless, if you had a crummy A-model today, you couldn't come close to restoring it for $25,000. OK? So, I got involved in some English cars, Lagondas and Alvises which were—I guess it has to do with my age more than anything else. As far as I'm concerned, the so-called classic cars are the ones I love best, from the mid-twenties to the war. The '30s were when the, oh, you know, the Packards, Pierce Arrows, Cadillacs, Duesenbergs, all that sort of stuff went on. So, put that aside for a moment.

Bill Harrah who owned a casino in Reno and one up at Lake Tahoe, he got into collecting cars a long, long time before I did. And as a matter of fact, he had over 600 when he died, an extremely interesting collection; had strange and unusual cars, whatever. He also had a Packard from every year Packard made a car. Anyway, he dies, and the estate or corporation or whoever decides to sell the two casinos, and Holiday Inns bought [them]. And the car collection was just kind of thrown in. Over a period of three years, they took the hundred, I would think, most valuable cars from a dollar and cents standpoint, and put them aside into another building that was built strictly for an automotive museum in Reno. The other 500 they sold off over a period of three years with auctions. Holiday Inn got more money for the cars they sold off than they paid for the casinos, cars, and all. So, I've got six or eight of the cars out of Harrah's collection, but really, that is the last automotive museum in the country that literally collected cars to display the advancement of the automotive art from Benz's trike in 1886, forward. The country's full of automotive museums, but most all of them have turned into used car dealerships basically. Most all of them have an auction once a year, and they sell off this, that, and the other thing. So, I don't know at what point in time, but somewhere—and it hasn't been that long ago—I decided there needed to be a collection of cars that would be around in perpetuity, that would show the various and sundry approaches that the automotive folks had taken over the years, some of which were ridiculous, some of which were successful. A point in question: you ask anybody when Chevrolet had their first V-8, and everyone will say '55. We have a Chevy V-8 engine from 1918. So, it's just things like that. So, anyway, I decided that I wanted to put together a collection; put it in a foundation, a non-profit, educational foundation, so that, one, it wouldn't be having auctions yearly, two, that the collection wouldn't be broken up. And for no particular reason, I started gathering the really old cars, the cars from the late 1800s. You know. The usual [1902] Oldsmobile, [1903] Cadillac, the first year that they were made, and a bunch of them in the teens and '20s, only because at some point in time, I realized these are very, very scarce, very rare commodities, and you can't replace them. At this point in time, I don't have a T-bird, and the reason is I can go out and get you thirty T-birds tomorrow. You know. [I] will have one at some point, but—

Ramage: Now, how many automobiles do you have now in your collection?

Spain: Approximately 150.

Ramage: They tell me that it is remarkable.

Spain: Oh, it's interesting, to me at least. And the—well, the—I'm trying to think of the name of—the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas has a collection. They have—I forget the number, but it's something [in] the order of twelve or fifteen Duesenbergs, and they are on average are worth a million dollars apiece. I mean, it's a hell of a collection, but, I mean, so what? It's a tremendously impressive pile of riches, but it doesn't—it's not—it's certainly in no way educational. You know.

Ramage: Well, I was going to say, you can't see the progression.

Spain: Exactly. Exactly.

Ramage: And here—

(End of tape one, side two. The interview continues on tape two, side one.)

Ramage: All right. We're back with another side of a tape and with Mr. Spain. Mr. Spain, let me ask you a couple of questions. Your automobile collection, do you continue to buy for that?

Spain: I have about six or eight additional cars, which I think for the thing to be complete need to be in there. Most of them are—I wouldn't say readily, but they are available. And they will wind up in there at some point in time.

Ramage: What do you see for that collection? Or what do you see in the future? Or what's your hopes in the future for that collection?

Spain: Well, as I said, it's in an educational nonprofit foundation so that they will never be broken up, and the goodies picked out of it. And what some people think are goodies, and what I do are probably not always synonymous. But anyway, I expect it to be here in town and go on for years and years and whatever profit it makes will be parceled out as scholarships of one kind and another.

Ramage: All right. Going back to Tupelo, and Lee County, in the next twenty-five, fifty years, what do you see are greatest obstacles to overcome? Where would you like to see Tupelo at that point in time?

Spain: (Laughter.) I would love to see over the next twenty-five, fifty years the same degree of progress and expansion that has occurred in the last ten to go at the same rate, which I think is unrealistic. But I do believe that like a lot of things, once you acquire a certain mass, momentum, whatever, it is far easier for that to keep going than it is to start from scratch and get it up to that point. So, and I suspect that it is—well, the mall and its environs here is a sterling example that there are people coming in here with their businesses that ten years ago would laugh at the idea of coming to Tupelo.

Ramage: Let me ask you; change the subject for just a minute, and ask you this question. What do you think? Tupelo never had, even during the turbulent '60s for the nation, we never had any major racial problems during the '60s. What do you think the secret of that was? Or was the result of?

Spain: Well, this is going to be very biased from my point of view, but I think by and large the rabble rousers, the—largely speaking, the race problem came from those individuals, by and large, who were in competition with the blacks for jobs, whatever. Tupelo and its environs, yes, we had agriculture around here, but it has not been a huge part of the economy, and it never was, and as a consequence, menial jobs have never meant much to Tupelo. Even the, I guess you'd say the lowest strata of income around here is on a higher plane than most places. I think that contributes to the fact that there, if you'll pardon the term, I think there are probably less red necks in Tupelo and environs than there are in most places in the South, and Mississippi in particular. You know. I think that's one of the reasons there has been better race relations in Tupelo than most places.

Ramage: Mm-hm. Now, obstacles that we've got to overcome in the future, or obstacles that you see out there in the future. What would you consider those being for Tupelo, Lee County? Managed growth?

Spain: Yes. I think that—now, you're getting into the word "managed," and as soon as you bring that up, then you get into the factionalization, again, because everyone—(laughter) you can't even agree with your wife all the time, let alone get a whole bunch of folks together. You know. (Laughter.)

Ramage: You're right.

Spain: And expect it to go—I think the biggest problem is, is maintaining the degree of cohesiveness that this community has. And, God, I hope it is sustainable by somebody and somehow. But that, I think, has been the key to—the single most important thing in the success that Tupelo's had. As totally an aside, I forget when Mississippi finally went wet, but the whatever governor it was said that if it's going to be a dry state, it's going to be dry. And we shut down the country clubs and the VFW and all the other [places], and, at which point some of the counties voted it wet. And Lee County did. And I think that was a very key point in time because there are no specific towns, but there are towns all around us in dry counties, and if you're going to get your beer for the weekend, you might as well go to Tupelo and get your groceries along with the beer kind of thing. I don't know how generally recognized that is, but that's a long time ago. And I think that was one of the factors early on that caused Tupelo to grow and be more progressive than any one of the towns around us.

Ramage: Like you say it attracted people.

Spain: Exactly.

Ramage: People were attracted to Tupelo to buy their wine and liquor and whatever. And like you said, they bought other things, too. And Harry Martin's retirement. Do you see for his successor—what do you see for that successor? And what advice would you give that successor?

Spain: I would hope both he and Harry would get along and that he could follow Harry around for no less than six months and preferably a year, and do nothing except learn from him. I don't care how smart the man is, as the saying goes, "Harry knows where every body is buried." (Laughter.) And this man needs to know that sort of thing, you know?

Ramage: And who they're buried next to.

Spain: You've got to, and why. (Laughter.)

Ramage: That's right.

Spain: Yes. I really feel for whoever it is, you know, it is a monumental chore.

Ramage: You're right. Do you think that the person that follows in Harry's footsteps in Lee County, that that person is a person that's going to have to be strong?

Spain: Yes.

Ramage: They're going to have to maintain their neutrality.

Spain: Yes.

Ramage: And those are two monumental things, and Harry does that really—

Spain: —superbly.

Ramage: Superbly. You're right.

Spain: You got it.

Ramage: And—

Spain: Well, I think there are two sides to this thing. As I said previously, I think Tupelo has reached a certain size, economically and population-wise and whatever, that it's over the critical-mass stage, but at the same time, as we have discussed previously, that the factionalism is more likely—it was easier for Harry to keep it unfactionalized than it will be for the next man. He'll have a harder job. And it's going to be a chore.

Ramage: And really, do you think that that person, looking at it from a perspective, needs to come from outside rather than inside? Or—

Spain: I suspect so, because, in all candor, I know of no one in the town who is unbiased, uncommitted to some faction or whatever, to be as independent as he needs to be. So, I would think it needs to be from someplace else. That's the good side. The down side to that is, it's going to take somebody from out of the area considerably more time to get up to speed, but hopefully when he does get up to speed, he'll be going in the right direction.

Ramage: I think the key is to bring him in or bring her in before Harry retires.

Spain: Oh, absolutely.

Ramage: So they can follow in Harry's footsteps. And the man can give wonderful advice.

Spain: And you need somebody who will listen to it, one who does not have all of the answers, as an awful lot of people who are successful seem to always think they have all the answers. You know.

Ramage: Now, do you think that that has been one of the secrets—what has been your secret of success?

Spain: The secret of my success is very simple. I say only slightly in jest, "I've never done a day's work in my life." I am as lucky as anybody can possibly be in that everything I have ever done and been paid for and sometimes not paid for, for that matter (laughter), I would have been doing if I had bread on the table, without pay. You have to love what you're doing or life is—it isn't life. It's just waiting for the grim reaper. The luckiest people in the world are the ones like that who really have been able to make it to a ripe, old age, as we say, and having loved every minute of what they've done.

Ramage: Do you think that people that love what they're doing, they're going to become an expert in what they're doing?

Spain: Well, unless you're totally happy with what you're doing, which means you're interested in what you're doing. If you're not interested in whatever you're doing, you're not going to be successful at it. And it's not going to be fun. But if you are one of those lucky ones that—it bothers me; I think I see less and less of that today than I have in the past. But if you can find a niche—I don't care what it is doing. What you're doing is of no consequence. It's just being happy every day to get up and get to work because it's fun. You know.

Ramage: Well, Mr. Spain, we thank you for this interview. And I want to thank you for what all you've done for not only Tupelo but Lee County as a whole. Because growing up in Nettleton—I grew up in Nettleton. (Laughter.) And you're the only station we could get—

Spain: I understand.

Ramage: —for years and years.

Spain: Well, Marty, thank you very much, and I am very flattered that you would think I had anything to contribute to your history.

Ramage: Well, you do. Thank you.

(End of the interview.)