Growing up With an Industry

Radio and news broadcasts have changed as quickly as the seasons with each passing

decade. Not many people have been able to experience and witness firsthand the expansion and

growth of these industries behind the scenes, but Ulman McMullen isn’t your average Joe.

Getting in to the Business

After majoring in forestry at Stephen F. Austin State University, McMullen spent four

years teaching and coaching for junior high school in a small town in East Texas. During his

third summer break in 1957, he was offered an audition for a job at a radio station.

“I don’t know if I had ever even been in a radio station so I thought ‘you’re kidding’,”

McMullen said.

After reading a script, McMullen was offered the job and accepted it. The next day, he

started working as the announcer for their morning show.

At the end of the summer, McMullen was still committed to go back to teach at the junior

high school, but wanted to continue at the radio station. At 5:30 a.m. he would sign in at the

radio station to do the show and then leave by 8:00 a.m. to go to class.

After doing this for a few months, McMullen resigned from teaching in 1958 and began

working full time for the radio station.

By 1960, the afternoon show at the radio station began playing more rock ‘n’ roll music,

much different from the jazz and swing music played in McMullen’s morning show. It was

obvious the radio station was making the switch to rock ‘n’ roll and McMullen decided to leave.

Television was new at that time and McMullen was interested in the idea of working in

that industry.
 McMullen’s first interview was with KBTX in Bryan, Texas, but unfortunately there

were not any positions available. His second interview was with KXII in Sherman, Texas.

“They put a mic on me and took me in the studio in front of the weather board and gave

me a copy and told me to read about the weather,” McMullen said. “The weather board was a

chalkboard back then.”

President John F. Kennedy Assasination

While working at the station in 1963, McMullen covered the news about President John

F. Kennedy coming to Texas. After finishing his segments over Kennedy, McMullen joined his

co-workers in the control room for a short break.

“I walked back into the control room, just visiting there, and in a little bit one of the

employees came in and had a piece of wire copy in his hand he handed it to me and said ‘I just

don’t believe this’,” McMullen said. “So I read it and it said that shots had been fired into the

caravan and that Kennedy probably had been hit.”

McMullen told the director of the station and immediately began putting together a

bulletin slide to report the occurrence. He is believed to have been one of the first to report the

news. The announcement on national television was made about 30 minutes after McMullen’s

airing.

Following the national tragedy, there were no local shows aired for four days.

Watching the Industry Grow

McMullen did the weather reports at the station for four years before moving into news

broadcasts. He explained that back then it was “whoever was in the hall who got to do the news.”
 In 1965, McMullen received a call from the station manager at KBTX who offered him a

job to be in charge of operations. He accepted and moved to Bryan.

At the time, it was much smaller than it is today with a population of about 20,000 to

25,000 people. In order for a television station to operate in a town like Bryan, it had to be a

satellite of the station, KWTX, in Waco, Texas. This meant that they carried programming and

commercials that were fed from Waco to Bryan.

The station had to wait for certain times of the day to do the local news and the local

sports. For weather, they took the weather report and put it in with the other news coming in

from the Waco satellite.

“Nobody ever thought it would get to be what it is today,” McMullen said.

In 1976, McMullen hired Sylvia Lowe to work in continuity. Lowe’s job was to put

together a script of information that McMullen would then read on air.

Lowe was able to watch alongside McMullen as the industry grew over the years. When

Lowe started there were only three people in the news department, one sports person and one

weather person.

“We watched it change from him standing in front of a chalkboard doing the weather to

the rapid development of video and then digital media,” Lowe said.

A Leap of Faith

According to the article “KBTX at 60: View From the Top” published in 2017 by KBTX,

McMullen was promoted to station manager for KBTX in 1986.

station. Some of the students went on to work for NBC, CBS, and one student became the

president of CNN South America.

“All these kids say they owe their careers to Mr. Mac hiring them,” Lowe said. “He was a

very good manager of people. He had this kind of natural instinct about a kid who had never set

foot in a T.V. station and had the potential to be a good employee in television.”

One of his hires, Kim Meanor, said that McMullen gave her her first start in her career in

sales.

Meanor began working for McMullen in the late 80’s as an account executive for the

station. Her job was to find clients to run the television ads. Although Meanor no longer works

for McMullen, she considers it her first step in her career.

“He gave me the confidence and tools I needed to make it in the sales industry,” Meanor

said.

McMullen turns 90 this month after spending half a century in broadcasting. It is nothing

like when he began 70 years ago and has changed rapidly to a source for multiple outlets of

information.

In the beginning, there were only broadcast channels with the arrival of cable, digital, and

the internet. Now, you have many competing sources in an industry that would be considered

young. So where will it go from here? McMullen will be watching from a different perspective

this time.

Sources

KBTX at 60: View from the top

Sylvia Lowe: 713-962-4520

Kim Meanor: 817-932-5067