Rondo Thirst

In the summer of 1979, I started seeing commercials for a new soft drink called Rondo that strongly appealed to my adolescent male self. In the commercial, we'd see guys engaging in extreme sports or other vigorous activity as a macho-sounding voiceover said, "This man is working up a Rondo Thirst. And when he gets done, he's doesn't want a soda that he has to sip. He's gonna want a Rondo!"

Next we'd see one of the dudes swigging one down from an aluminum can, with sweat dripping off his face and droplets of soda-pop coming off the side of his mouth, while the voiceover continued, "Rondo is lightly carbonated so you can slam it down fast! Rondo has a clean citrus taste that's never sticky!" Finally, the dude in the commercial would crush the aluminum can he just slammed down in his fist and the voiceover said, "Rondo! The thirst crusher!" The label even looked like a beer can with the word "premium" and the slogan "blended from fine essences."

The commercial inspired lots of young guys like myself to drink Rondo, and even challenge our friends to Rondo-slamming contests, where we'd see who could slam one down the fastest, with the winner being determined by who would crush the emptied can first in his bare hand, just like in the commercial. (Try impressing the girls with THAT. "Hey babe, I'm a champion Rondo slammer!") In my area, Rondo was also available in 16 oz. returnable glass bottles, which would be a lot more difficult (not to mention dangerous) to crush in your bare hand. 

Rondo, marketed by Cadbury-Schweppes, originated in Australia as a soft drink called Solo, with a nearly identical label and commercials (with an Aussie-accented macho voiceover). The name was changed to Rondo in the U.S. because at the time, there was a brand of dog food called Solo. A Cadbury-Schweppes spokesman said in a July 1979 article for the Washington Post-LA Times wire service, "The word Rondo really has no meaning. It's just a computer name...but it sounds familiar and macho, doesn't it?" 

The product was test marketed in 1977 and 1978, rolled out nationally in 1979 and was "aimed at the 14-to-25-year-old active male segment because they are the single biggest consumers of soft drinks. And these heavy users are seeking a thirst-quenching, lower carbonated drink with less sugar," according to an industry spokesman in the Post-Times article. In 1980, sugar-free Rondo was introduced with a softer ad campaign.

By about 1981, the marketers decided those Rondo commercials were a little too macho, that they were actively turning off female consumers (who do most of the grocery buying). New commercials featured people relaxing in various outdoor settings while an adult contemporary-style jingle sang, "Sippin' a Rondo is laid-back and easy." (I can tell you, those commercials actively turned ME off. I didn't want something to sip, I wanted something to slam down fast! Whiskey is for sippin'.) 

Sales plummeted further, and the macho dude commercials made a brief comeback, but by 1984, Rondo was no longer available, at least in my area. 

Fred is Dead: Recalling Flintstones Bedrock City

You've seen them on TV and in comic books. Now -- visit the Flintstones in their own Bedrock City at Custer, South Dakota, on highways U.S. 16 and 385.

You'll see Fred and Wilma - Barney and Betty and, of course, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Visit the firehouse, the Bedrock bank, city jail, oodles of stores and The Bedrock Theatre, where you'll enjoy Flintstone films showing continuously. Dino is twenty feet high, perched on one of the many rocky ledges that add to the fabulous beauty of the sixty acres that comprise Bedrock City and camping area. Modern bath houses and rest rooms add to the comfort of campers and travelers and a drive-in and souvenir shop add to the enchantment of Bedrock. The cool dry nights and balmy days assure you a delightful vacation in the heart of the beautiful Black Hills, just a short distance from Mt. Rushmore and the buffalo herds. Remember!! There is only one Bedrock City in America!

--1967 Flintstones Bedrock City brochure

Soon there would be another Bedrock City, in Arizona, plus two in Canada, making a total of four Bedrock City theme parks in North America. All of them are gone now, victims of changing times, licensing issues and new generations of kids disinterested in such schmaltz.

I never did make it out to Flintstones Bedrock City. It's a shame too. The original Flintstones-themed park in Custer, South Dakota was in a state that bordered my home state of Minnesota. But when my family went on a trip, at least when I was in tow, we either went up north or out to Wisconsin. Never west. Come to think of it, I never saw nearby Mount Rushmore in person either.

Being enamored with Fred and Barney from age five on, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it as a kid, and would have still gotten a kick out of seeing it as an adult. I heard about it when I was a kid. I knew some kids who had been there, some telling me it was pretty neat, others saying it wasn't all that good and I wasn't missing anything. Certainly it was no Disneyland. It was a roadside attraction, not a destination. It had cement "Stone Age" buildings and cement statues of Flintstones characters that weren't exactly to Hanna-Barbera's specs. Postcards feature employees posing in character costumes that look rather hideous, or shall we say, primitive.

The first Bedrock City park in Custer, SD opened in 1966, the year the Flintstones left prime time network television after six seasons. But the show became even more popular in syndicated reruns, usually running in late weekday afternoons to the delight of millions of children coming home from school. Myself included. In my home town of Minneapolis, for a time in the early 1970s, it was shown twice a day by independent station WTCN-TV Channel 11, mornings and afternoons, plus two back-to-back episodes on Sunday mornings. I wanted to hang out with Fred and Barney, and be their pal. In a way, I was kind of able to do that when I watched the show. But if I had been able to go to the Bedrock City theme park, I'd be able to walk into their homes, stroll down their main street and ride in their cars. I could have acquired inexpensive Flintstones merchandise at the souvenir shop, and I could have enjoyed the local cuisine, Bronto Burgers and Dino Dogs. Truly a three dimensional version of a one dimensional cartoon.

Here's a few postcards from the park in South Dakota, circa 1969.

"In front of a skyscraper under construction stand Barney and Fred waiting for their families to take a ride in their sports job (sic). They stand on the main street of Bedrock City, Custer, South Dakota."

"Stopping in front of the Souvenir Shop, Fred and Barney chat awhile before leaving for work."

"Pebbles rides the saber-toothed tiger to visit Bamm-Bamm at Barney Rubble's home."

A second Flintstones park opened in Arizona in 1972. It was smaller, but some say it was better. Two more eventually popped up in Canada, but they were fairly short lived. Over time, the parks were updated, but not too much. The twenty-foot Dino statue at the South Dakota park was repainted in different colors over the years. The cement character statues were replaced with fiberglass ones that were more to specifications, at the demand of the current owners of the Flintstones intellectual properties of the time.  The franchise had changed corporate hands a number of times over the years, eventually ending up under the auspices of Warner Bros, originator of the Looney Tunes cartoons.

The Flintstones continued to be seen in perpetual reruns on local stations, including WGN in Chicago and its vast cable network, well into the 1990s. Eventually, the show would become an exclusive of Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network, later being shuffled over to the Boomerang channel, which is seen on far fewer cable and satellite outlets. As this happened, the Flintstones began to fade from the public consciousness. Recent generations of kids have little clue and no curiosity about the Flintstones. There are still Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles cereals featuring Fred and Barney on the box, and Flintstones Vitamins remain the best-selling children's chewable, but that has more to do with the buying decisions of the parents than the demand of the kids, as had been the case when those products came out decades ago.

The Bedrock City parks in South Dakota and Arizona finally closed in 2015, and perhaps it's amazing they lasted that long. People lost interest, kids no longer care, and the current owner of the Flintstones intellectual properties, Warner Bros, had no interest in renewing the licenses to use the characters. The Stepford Children of today don't give a damn about such things. Same reason why Toys R Us and most other toy stores went out of business. If it's not an app they are completely lost and clueless. They're not even kids anymore, they are mutants.

An interesting and in depth history of the Flintstones theme parks can be found here:  https://www.theawl.com/2016/03/amidst-of-the-rubble-of-bedrock-city/

The Squirt Soft Drink Subjective Color Acid Test

On July 25, 1967, television viewers with black-and-white TV sets were startled to see flashes of color on their monochrome screens for about ten seconds during a 60-second soda-pop commercial. A letter to a columnist in the September 14, 1967 Detroit Free Press asked, "Before I see an eye doctor, let me ask Action Line: Is it possible to pick up color TV on a black and white set? I SWEAR I saw a Squirt soft-drink commercial in color. Not pink elephants Green Squirt!" The image was described in the newspaper column as a red, green and blue sign that had flashed on the screen.

A viewer in Chicago told Popular Photography magazine (July 1968), "I saw pink! It knocked me for a loop...the letters S-Q-U-I-R-T looked greenish or light turquoise...and it kept up for maybe 10 seconds." (Meanwhile a viewer in San Francisco claimed he didn't see anything colorful.)

   

It was the national debut of an experimental television commercial using a special production process that would give the optical illusion of color. The commercial first aired a few months earlier locally on KNXT, the CBS-owned television station in Los Angeles, and viewers there were just as stunned. Squirt and its advertising partner Color-Tel Corporation of Los Angeles, at the time decided to make no prior announcement of this experimental commercial, preferring to see just how viewers would respond. And respond they did. Within hours, thousands of viewers were asking if they really saw what they thought they did, color on their black-and-white TV screens, according to Popular Electronics magazine (October 1968).

The burst of color was not "living color" (as NBC frequently touted in the 1960s), but something called "subjective color." The process was developed by James F. Butterfield of Color-Tel, a corporation founded in Los Angeles in early 1966. It gave the illusion of color by pulsating white light in a particular sequence for each color with a rotating device attached to a regular black and white TV camera lens. Butterfield had found in his many years of research that the human brain perceives colors through complex electronic codes. Butterfield was able to figure out the individual codes for the colors red, green and blue, and by pulsating white light in predetermined patterns with the device on the camera lens, could induce the brain of the television viewer to perceive color. Beyond that, ordinary monochrome equipment could be used in filming or taping, broadcasting and viewing.

There were a few drawbacks. The images were nothing at all like true color TV. It didn't have the intensity or range of colors. As the technology currently stood, the effect could only be used on still images. The "subjective color" could only be seen in about one-fourth of the TV screen area, and, because it relied on flickering light, there was a lot of flickering. It was also found that some people could not perceive the colors at all, yet some people diagnosed as color-blind could see the colors.

Nonetheless, Popular Science, in its August 1968 issue, saw many possibilities for the technology, particularly for special effects. "Color will appear in cartoons, commercials and special presentations. Polka-dots on a clown's suit will be seen as red flashing dots. You'll see the designs and lettering on a cereal box in pulsating green and blue. A girl will plant a kiss on a boy's cheek--and a red lipstick print will appear on your screen."

Popular Electronics (October 1968) went on to report, "Right now, Color-Tel engineers are checking into the possibility of using electronic color for such things as color radar displays, color computer readouts, and perhaps even color sonar pictures. It may be true that, in its present stage of development, Butterfield's process is nothing but a scientific curiosity — however, 25 years ago, so was television."

Popular Science predicted, "You can expect color on your black-and-white TV by this fall [1968]." But there was one giant flaw in that rosy prediction. By 1968, black-and-white TV was well on the way out. The vast majority of programming (outside of old movies and TV shows) were being broadcast in "living" color by then, and while most U.S. households still had black-and-white TV sets (color sets were big, bulky and expensive in those days), more and more homes were purchasing color television sets every year. Had James F. Butterfield perfected the process ten or fifteen years earlier, in the 1950s when 90 percent of television broadcasts were black and white, it might have had more of a serious impact.

Although James F. Butterfield had many patents to his credit before his death in 2013, it appears this experiment didn't go as far as the press of the time might have suggested it could. Color-Tel last renewed as a corporation in 1972, and we can not find any evidence of other "subjective color" broadcasts beyond the Squirt commercial.

When Cincinnati pulled the plug on Alice Cooper

When shock rocker Alice Cooper was introduced to television audiences on a late night rock concert show, his outrageous stage presence proved to be way too cool for TV.

It happened on on November 24, 1972 on the first of a series of ABC late night specials called "In Concert." Alice Cooper was billed as "special guest" in a program that would also include concert performances by Curtis Mayfield, Seals & Crofts and Bo Diddley. Cooper's performance, taped a few weeks earlier at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, kicked off the television special. It was far beyond standard TV musical fare, more shocking to the average viewer of the time than the mop-topped Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show or even the destructive, explosive performance of the Who on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

The show opened with the roar of highly amplified electric guitars and slamming drums in an arena full of charged-up college students, and a heavily intoxicated Alice Cooper, wearing ghoulish black makeup around his eyes, glitter pants and a cotton shirt that gets torn to shreds by fans grabbing at him as he is escorted to the stage by security officers. He stumbles up on stage, and while swigging from a bottle of Budweiser, grabs a microphone and completely forgets the first verse of his hit song, "I'm Eighteen," singing, "MYYYYYY, my, my, my, my, yeah..." in place of the lyrics. He later sings the chorus and improvises other lyrics for the song.

When that highly-charged performance was over, the show broke for commercials, then came back with Alice performing a "West Side Story"-inspired number called "Gutter Cat Vs. the Jets." In this performance, he essentially molests a metal garbage can and pulls out a switch-blade knife on camera.

It was all too much for Lawrence H. Rogers II, owner of the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati at the time, WKRC-TV Channel 12. He was so mortified by what he saw he ordered the engineer on duty at his station to yank the show off the air immediately. But Channel 12's decision to protect and shield its viewers from Alice Cooper's violent theatrics sparked an immediate backlash from Cincinnati rock fans watching the show. They responded within minutes, inundating the station with phoned-in bomb threats. Meanwhile, carloads of youths showed up, picketing the station. Some 4,000 letters of protest, many profane, poured in over the next few days, the biggest mail load that station officials could remember.

WKRC station manager Ro Grignon told TV Guide magazine that he wasn't opposed to rock concerts. "In fact, we think they're going to be a smashing success. We simply found Alice Cooper a little tense."

Meanwhile, the ABC affiliate in Kingsport, Tennessee complained to the network about the performance, but ran it in its entirety nonetheless. WPVI-TV in Philadelphia ran the show on tape delay at 1:30 a.m. Channel 12 in Cincinnati later televised an edited version of the show, sans Alice, to give viewers a chance to enjoy the other, less offensive acts on the bill. The next "In Concert" special was sent to affiliate managers via closed-circuit for approval before broadcast.

When the Grinch First Stole Christmas

On Sunday, December 18, 1966, the Dr. Seuss TV special "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was shown for the first time on the CBS Television Network. The Grinch was so mean, he preempted "Lassie," although young fans of the beloved collie probably didn't mind. The half-hour animated special has been shown every year since and has been seen by countless millions, most of whom at this point in time were born decades after its original broadcast.

The issue of TV Guide from that week (December 17-23, 1966) featured a "close-up" of the special along with an ad for the soundtrack album in its local programming pages, plus a three-page article about it in the national section, with some interesting insights.

"How the Grinch Stole Christmas" had already been a best-selling children's book, first published in 1957. When Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) teamed up with Chuck Jones, head of MGM's animation department to adapt it for television, a few details had to be worked out. For instance, what color is the Grinch, actually? In the book he was drawn in black and white with red eyes. It looked good on paper, but in the TV special, where things had to be in fuller color, it was decided the Grinch was green.

Also, according to the TV Guide article, "In studying the 'Who's,' whose village the Grinch invades on Christmas Eve, Jones discovered that 'Lady Who's don't have high-heeled shoes--they have high-heeled feet,' and the little girl, Cindy-Lou, 'is not a regular little girl--she has antennas.'"

Production of the special took nearly a year, was made up of more than 25,000 individual drawings, or cells, and according to TV Guide it was at the time "the most expensive half-hour animated cartoon ever created for television." Well-known monster movie actor Boris Karloff narrated the special, virsitle voice actor June Foray ("Rocky the Squirrel" among many others) voiced Cindy Lou, and Thurl Ravenscroft (voice of "Tony the Tiger" of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes fame) sang, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch."

Theodor Geisel was 62 at the time, and although he had been married for 39 years, they had no children. "Kids frighten him," an unnamed friend is quoted in the TV Guide article. The article went on to tell an interesting story about Geisel and his relations with kids. "Once, in Cleveland, autographing his books at a department store, Ted found himself facing a hostile group of children, who finally told him that one of their number could draw better than he could. Geisel invited the boy to join him at the blackboard.

"'By God, he could draw better!' Geisel recalls."

Theodor Geisel died in 1991 at the age of 87. But it was predicted, even back in 1966, that Dr. Seuss would live on. "I predict that Dr. Seuss will emerge as one of the great classics of this era. In 2059, children will hoot for joy when they come across Seuss books," said Rudolph Flesch, author of "Why Johnny Can't Read" in TV Guide. Added Bennet Cerf, head of Random House, which published the Dr. Seuss books, "We have some great names on our list--Faulkner, O'Hara, Capote. But Ted Geisel is the only real genius among them."

Television Listings--November 22, 1963

Banner headline on the November 22, 1963 edition of the Minneapolis Star evening newspaper read, "PRESIDENT SLAIN Sniper Cuts Down Kennedy, Texas Governor in Dallas Parade". It had news and photos about the infamous day in history when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Meanwhile on television, all of the networks broke into programming as soon as the story hit, and presented wall-to-wall news coverage for the next several days.

But the television program listings carried in the paper were submitted in advance, and on page 23A we see what would have been on had the President not been slain. In those days in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, WCCO-4 was CBS (as it is now), KSTP-5 was NBC, KMSP-9 was ABC and WTCN-11 was independent. Since the Star was an evening paper, the listings start at 4 p.m. Friday and go through 3 p.m. Saturday. Everything listed was preempted that day (although we are not entirely clear what WTCN did that day, as it had no network affiliation at that time).

In addition to the listings, ads on the page promote Lee J. Cobb, Harry Guardino and Gena Rowlands in John O'Hara's "It's Mental Work" on "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater" on NBC that night, and local late night movies on Channels 9 and 11.

Programs highlighted by the newspaper included:

6:30--77 SUNSET STRIP. "Lover's Lane," a drama featuring guest Preston Foster.--ch. 9.

7:30--ROUTE 66. "Kiss the Monster, Make Him Sleep." James Coburn and Barbara Mattes appear in drama filmed in Minneapolis.--ch. 4.

7:30--MOVIE. "Goliath Against the Giants." Brad Harris stars in drama shown for the first time on TV in this area. --ch. 11.

8:30--TWILIGHT ZONE. "Night Call." Gladys Cooper is splendid in a weird little story about an elderly invalid who gets phone calls without the aid of the phone company.--ch. 4.

9:00--ALFRED HITCHCOCK. "Body in the Barn." A suspicious woman is positive that her neighbor has been murdered by his wife, and she wants justice done. The story is well paced and cast. Lillian Gish, Peter Lind Hays and Maggie McNamara have the leads.--ch. 4.

9:00--JACK PAAR. Guests: Liberace, Milt Kamen, Cassius Clay and Mary McCarthy.--ch. 5.

10:30--STEVE ALLEN. Guests: Joe Flynn, Janice Baker, Jack Carter and comedienna Gina Wilson. --ch. 4.

10:30--TONIGHT. Guests: Kirk Douglas, Dave King, Henny Youngman and the Willis Sisters.--ch. 5.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

12:30--SPORTS SPECTACULAR presents charity basketball game between the Harlem Globetrotters and Prince Phillip's Taverners.--ch. 4.

12:30--AMERICAN BANDSTAND. Guests: Johnny Mathis, Connie Stevens, Johnny Crawford and Annette.--ch. 9.

1:15--FOOTBALL. Minnesota vs. Wisconsin.--ch. 4.

Cops vs. reporters, 1970s style

   Dennis Anderson had a long and storied career at WDIO-TV Channel 10 in Duluth, Minnesota and satellite station WIRT Channel 13 in Hibbing that spanned from when the stations first went on the air in the volatile mid-1960s until his retirement in May 2011. Spending most of his years as the lead anchor on the station’s newscasts he was known for his signature sign-off, “Good night everybody, and be kind.” But as a reporter-photographer for the station in 1971, he was caught in a tangle between the TV station and city police, resulting in a confiscated camera, allegations and counter-allegations of harassment and a lawsuit that determined the rights journalists have in the face of police power.

   When WDIO came on the air in January 1966, it was the scrappy newcomer in a small city with two well-established TV stations; CBS affiliate KDAL-TV Channel 3 and NBC affiliate WDSM-TV Channel 6. WDIO was the area’s first full-time ABC affiliate and it was clear from the get-go that the station came to shake things up in the Duluth media establishment.

  The approach to news was hard-hitting, with an emphasis on exposés and investigative reporting. Critics variously called it bombastic, sensationalistic and muckraking, but the approach grabbed the public’s attention, the solid journalism behind it kept that attention, and by March 1971, the upstart television station in Duluth was number one at 10 p.m., with an astounding 56 percent audience share.

   After working for the station early on as a reporter, Dennis Anderson left WDIO in 1968 to accept a job as news director and lead anchor at another ABC affiliate, KTHI-TV Channel 11 in Fargo. But the departure didn’t last and in 1969 he returned to WDIO to anchor a new consumer watchdog segment on the newscasts called Action Line.

   As the lead investigator for Action Line, Anderson looked into, and attempted to resolve complaints written in by viewers. But in 1971, the mild-mannered reporter was caught in the middle of a sometimes intense, sometimes bizarre feud between the TV station and Duluth police.

   It started with a couple of different Action Line segments uncovering alleged misconduct within the ranks of the Duluth Police Department. The first involved a viewer complaint about a used car dealership. The subsequent investigation found a few police officers were repairing and selling used cars to an unlicensed dealership in their spare time, and were allegedly circumventing state law by falsifying title transfers. The City of Duluth had also been investigating the case, but WDIO-TV brought it to the public’s attention and it eventually resulted in the conviction of one officer.

   A second Action Line investigation turned up police documents, provided by a confidential source, that were found to have been tampered with to protect a prominent local citizen who had been arrested for drunken driving.

   Then just after midnight on March 29, 1971, there was a report of a break-in at the Ski Hut sporting goods store in Duluth. Serving as both reporter and cameraman, Dennis Anderson hustled to the location, armed with a portable film camera and a Sylvania Sun Gun lamp.

   Police were on the scene and soon captured two suspects inside the building while Anderson at first kept his distance, staying behind the building. When he got word that the suspects had been captured, he went to the front of the building and began filming through a store window.

   As the arresting officers lead the two suspects out of the building in handcuffs, Anderson stood about eight to ten feet away on a public sidewalk and began filming, using the Sun Gun lamp to provide light. Sgt. Richard Gunnarson, who was holding the door open as officers walked out the suspects, shouted “No pictures!” twice at Anderson, who then turned off the lamp. The police sergeant then demanded the WDIO camera from Anderson, and he handed it over.

   Lt. Alexander Lukovsky, who was also at the scene, talked to Anderson and offered to give back the camera under the condition that Anderson check with the Detective Bureau to determine that the film he had shot did not contain information that could possibly harm the case, and that the suspects were not juveniles (which state law prohibited being identified) before going on the air with it. When Anderson told the police lieutenant that he couldn’t guarantee any of that, the camera was taken down to police headquarters.

   WDIO news director Richard Gottschald was furious. He went to police headquarters and demanded to know why the camera was confiscated. Police claimed that the bright lights being used by Anderson were impeding the officers in their line of duty but Anderson claimed they said nothing to him about the lights and that an officer in fact had asked him to turn the light on to aid the police.

   WDIO reported on the controversy in its newscasts and the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union got involved on the station’s behalf, while a police union president accused the station of conducting a “subtle, continuing campaign to deride, humiliate and persecute us,” in a lengthy article that appeared in the November 13, 1971 national section of TV Guide titled “Hassle In Duluth.” The union called for a sponsor boycott of WDIO newscasts, which proved to be largely unsuccessful.

   The camera was returned to the station within days, unopened and the film inside unprocessed, but that wasn’t the end of the controversy. The station (then not owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc.) filed suit in US District Court (with Dennis Anderson also named as a plaintiff) and the feud between the station and the police only escalated.

   According to the TV Guide article, employees of the station were claiming police were engaged in a “campaign of petty harassment” against them, with radar speed checks set up on the road leading to WDIO’s hilltop studios on 10 Observation Road, and near the home of news director Richard Gottschald. Station employees said they were stopped and ticketed for minor infractions on a regular basis, and the news director, who made an extra effort to watch his speed knowing police were laying in wait, happened to let down his guard one night and sure enough was nailed for going a few miles over the limit.

   Police in turn complained the TV station was harassing them with reporters tailing squad cars in hopes of catching police committing some small infraction. “For a while, the squad cars and TV cars were chasing each other’s tails around Duluth in kind of a Marx Brothers game of tag,” according to the article in TV Guide.

   Finally on February 7, 1972, United States District Court Fifth Division ruled in favor of WDIO and Dennis Anderson, saying that the seizure of the camera “was wrongful, and in violation of plaintiffs' rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, because [it was] not made pursuant to a valid warrant or arrest. Also, despite defendants' argument, it is clear to this court that the seizure and holding of the camera and undeveloped film was an unlawful ‘prior restraint’ whether or not the film was ever reviewed.”

   The Court went on to rule that “Plaintiffs' right to use a light in the taking of photographs at night should not be restricted except, and unless and until so ordered to the contrary by police in their reasonable belief that such is interfering with or endangering them in their work…There was no evidence of such interference by plaintiff Anderson here.”