The Wonderful Voice of Joe Murnick

We will be adding a lot of sound clips to this blog (and over at the Mid-Atlantic Gateway), but we wanted to remind you we had a page over at SoundCloud with lots of great audio content there as well.

If I had to pick one ring announcer that was my favorite of all time (TV and arena), it would be Joe Murnick. Murnick was the local promoter in Raleigh and Norfolk and other towns for Jim Crockett. He was a pioneer event promoter in the Raleigh area. His two sons, Carl and Elliot, were also integral  parts of that business.

But he was so well suited to his on-air role as ring announcer on the WRAL broadcasts. Talk about old-school. And just the smoothest southern delivery of a ring intro you'll ever hear. The best!

Keeping those memories alive....

Theme Music: Mid-Atlantic Wrestling - Raleigh Intro (1973)

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the wrestling show taped in Raleigh was taped using a "dual" audio-track system. While the video was being taped of the weekly program, two separate audio tracks were being recorded. The first was specifically for the Raleigh market, the second was for syndication to the other affiliate TV markets in the Crockett wrestling network.

Bob Caudle was the voice of the program that went out to the stations around the territory, in cities like Richmond, Roanoke, Wilmington, Charleston, Columbia, Greenville SC, etc. These were markets that didn't have their own local wrestling broadcasts. Throughout this time, Charlotte and High Point (Greensboro market), NC, had their own local wrestling broadcast taped at local television stations.

Nick Pond was the man who called the action for the Raleigh show throughout the 1960s, with his co-host Raleigh promoter Joe Murnick. But sometime in late 1972 or early 1973, Elliot Murnick, one of Joe's sons, took over the job as voice of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling for Raleigh.

When Elliot took over the Raleigh taping, there was a custom open for his show, and extended version of the Mid-Atlantic theme music with a separate studio announcer introducing Elliot Murnick.

Here is a rare, low-fidelity recording of that open:

"It's Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, an hour of excitement and thrills..."

Ed Capral in Atlanta (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of Wrestling Revue magazine. Ed Capral is at the broadcast desk with Bob Armstrong at the studios of WQXI-11 (now WXIA) in Atlanta. The photo was taken by Gene Gordon.

Capral came to Jim Crockett Promotions in 1975 to host the new program "Wide World Wrestling", and stayed there until 1978.

Thanks to Carroll Hall at All-Star Championship Wrestling for sending us these photos from his Wrestling Revue collection.

Man Behind the Mike: Scott Clark (1970)

Here is another great entry into our series of "Man Behind the Mike" features from Wrestling Revue magazine in the 1960s and 1970s. This one appears to reference a TV show and host that very little is known about. WKTR was the call sign for a station in Dayton, Ohio from 1967-1971. It was broadcast on UHF channel 16 and was a part-time affiliate for the ABC TV network.

For at least some of that time, wrestling was taped and/or broadcast from there at the local studios. It's not clear if this local Dayton, OH, show was affiliated with one of the major pro-wrestling offices at that time. A quick Google search led to no further information about the show or Scott Clark. So we're glad this little piece of wrestling history survives.

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MEET SCOTT CLARK - MAN BEHIND THE MIKE
Wrestling Revue - August 1970

Scott Clark, the man who comes up with all the exciting commentary on the Live TV wrestling over station WKTR-TV in Dayton, Ohio, is just as avid a wrestling fan as are the thousands of viewers who watch his show each week. This is one reason that he has become such a favorite with the listeners. He is more one of them than he is a broadcaster.

"I love wrestling," Scott is proud to say, and this comes across in his commentary on the matches. Not only does he love wrestling but he knows it, as he was an outstanding amateur and collegiate wrestler.

Scott Clark conducts an interview on WKTR in Dayton, OH

Born some 34 years ago in Long Beach, Calif., Scott grew up in Medford, Oklahoma, and went on to Oklahoma State, a hotbed of college wrestling where this 6 ft.-1 200-pounder was a member of the wrestling team. He later transferred to the University of Southern California, and upon his graduation returned to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he became a radio announcer at KSPI.

Clark moved on to Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles as an announcer and then served two years with the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1961. Upon his discharge Lt. Clark switched over to television with station KRLD in Dallas, and moved on as a producer to KPHO-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1962.

In 1963 Clark became program director for a number of local stations that hooked up to form their own network in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Scott left there in 1965 to join station KARD-TV in Wichita, Kansas, as a producer-director of talent and in January, 1968 he became production manager of WKTR in Dayton. A few months ago, when live wrestling came to WKTR, it didn't take Scott long to find a perfect man to handle the job behind the mike — who else but wrestling "nut" Scott Clark.

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Thanks to Carroll Hall at the All-Star Championship Wrestling website for providing these great articles about the wrestling broadcasters to us.

Earlier "Man Behind the Mike" features:
Bob Caudle - Mid-Atlantic Wrestling (1965)
George Abel - St. Louis Wrestling (1965)

TV Station reference.

The Local Promos on Briarbend Drive

Magnum T.A. and Tony Schiavone at the Briarbend Drive studio.
(Woody Smith Photo / Retro Charlotte / Charlotte Observer)

One of the studio locations rarely discussed here or anywhere else for that matter is the small makeshift studio on Briarbend Drive in Charlotte. Briarbend Drive is the fabled location of the offices of Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s.  It is also the scene of an infamous angle where the Four Horsemen jumped Dusty Rhodes in a parking lot in the months leading up to Starrcade '86.

But the office was also home to a small studio where the local promotional spots were taped each Tuesday. The spots were inserted into the syndicated "Mid-Atlantic/NWA Pro Wrestling" and "World Wide Wrestling" programs that were sent to markets across the territory, and later across the country.

Earlier, during the years these shows were taped at WRAL in Raleigh and WPCQ in Charlotte, the local promos were taped there in those same studios. But once Crockett moved his TV tapings out into the arenas in July of 1983 with the mobile production unit known as NEMO, they set up the small studio at Briarbend to do the marathon promo sessions there.

Tony Schiavone was the primary host of these promo sessions, but others hosted as well including David Crockett, Jackie Crockett, Big Bill Ward, and others. 

George Scott & Andre the Giant at WRAL

Click to enlarge.

This photo made the rounds online after George Scott's death. I think it was originally posted by his wife. it is a great photo of George with Andre the Giant on the set of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling in WRAL TV studios in Raleigh, circa 1976.

Prior to the switch to the larger, nicer sets in 1978, Crockett used simple back-drops for each of their TV shows. You can see here that the back-drop is on wheels and would be turned around for the Wide World Wrestling show which would tape right after Mid-Atlantic.

The Jerry Lawler Show Postcard

The Championship Wrestling show in Memphis, taped in the cozy confines of WMC-TV channel 5 studios, was one of the highest-rated local TV wrestling shows ever.

Not only was the wrestling show taped at WMC, but Jerry Lawler's talk show was taped there, too, for its relatively short run in the mid-1980s.

If you wrote in to the studio, they would send you a postcard with a picture of Jerry on the set on the front of the card, and the WMC-TV5 logo on the back. Notice the cancellation date of September 16, 1985.

Les Thatcher Schools Us on WRAL Local Promo Tapings

From the Mid-Atlantic Gateway archives, we take you to one of our conversations with the great Les Thatcher who told us all about those marathon local-promo taping sessions at WRAL.

Conversations with Les Thatcher:
The WRAL Local Promo Tapings

Just as an aside, this interview was conducted in 1999, and was a part of the original material posted on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway when it launched in 2000. Les has always been a friend to the Gateway and we can't say enough good things about him.

And in this photograph, he is sporting our WRAL Studio Crew sweatshirt we gave him!