KOAM-TV EARLY DAYS IN PITTSBURG, KANSAS
by Bryce Martin

Programs didn’t necessarily conform to 30-minute and one-hour formats. That was obvious when KOAM sometimes used various shorts and clips to fill in airtime, much the same as the way newspapers fitted small fillers to eliminate white space on a page. A common method was to insert “visual records.” These were short pieces showcasing singers warbling ballads or folk or novelty songs. They were originally produced by the film world in Hollywood and later utilized as television cameos. An entertaining one was “You Get No Bread with (One Meat Ball).” It was performed by a dark-haired man who looked Italian and possessed a fat and expressive face. He was convincing as he sang about a down-on-his-luck oaf who enters a restaurant and after looking at the menu realizes he has just enough money for one meatball. That’s bad enough he groans but he really emotes when he finds that you get, well, no bread with one meatball.
Another was “The Little White Duck.” The singer was a younger Burl Ives. I recognized Ives from seeing him occasionally on live television. It was obvious this segment was done a few years back. It was a little corny: “there’s a little white duck sittin’ on the water/a little white duck doin’ what he oughter.” Then there was the obnoxious song, “The Cat Came Back.” The words -- about dumping off a cat and having it return “the very next day” – were not so bad. It was the creepy and deliberate way the guy sang the song that was grating. *

(*Between 1941 and 1947, more than 2000 “soundies” were produced by the Mills Novelty Company for coin-operated machines, mostly jazz and ballad shorts. Early TV stations later used them to fill airtime. In addition, between 1950 and 1952, some 700 similar film shorts were produced in the Hollywood studios of Louis Snader. The three mentioned above likely were done by Snader.)
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