[Description by Steve Eberhart]

It begins at 11:30 am as KLIF interrupts programming for news director Joe Long and his pool coverage from Love Field (which was featured on all the other DFW stations. They allowed only one pool reporter). This goes to a little before noon when DJ on duty Larry Wilson resumes his show. Gary Delaune does the normal noon five minute newscast and then it's on to The Rex Jones show. He started at KLIF the previous Monday, so this was his fifth show. Talk about a welcome! Everything is still normal till 12:30, Delaune does the half hour headlines and Jones continues his dj show.

As we all know, the shooting occurred at exactly 12:30 ...the first bulletin of any kind cleared on UPI's "A-wire". (there was an "A" wire and "UPR - UPI for radio" wire service at the time). KLIF had UPR. Usually only networks, TV and newspapers had both the "A" wire and "UPR".

The first bulletin phoned in from Merriman Smith from the motorcade press car radio-telephone went out at 12:34 pm. The first bulletin on UPR cleared at 12:38, mainly because they had difficulty getting on the wire. The UPR national wire service was on a "split" - meaning Chicago headquarters split the national feed to regional offices for feeding of regional stories - to reclaim it was not an easy task. Once it was accomplished, KLIF and other broadcast outlets saw the first bulletin and moments later the FLASH (used only in cases of extreme newsworthiness).

Gary Delaune tells me that he finished his headlines at 12:30 and the first he heard of anything was a newsroom hotline call from an unknown someone who asked "What do you know about shots being fired at the president's motorcade?" Delaune said "I haven't heard anything"...the caller hung up.

With that Delaune rolled tape and called Dallas police dispatch, where the spokeperson, Mrs. Tripton, informed him, "Yes, we have reports". Delaune signalled the control room for a bulletin and put on the first KLIF bulletin at 12:38 of "reports of shots fired at the motorcade".

From there, Joe Long, who was by now stuck in downtown traffic left over from the motorcade and commotion, began doing two way reports from his newscruiser and after several bulletins interrupting Jones' dj show, KLIF went to non-stop breaking news coverage.

The exhibit currently on REELRADIO begins with Delaune's first bulletin, and concludes shortly after the FLASH of JFK's death officially being announced.

From there, the tapes continue with Joe Long and Gordon McLendon co-anchoring coverage on KLIF throughout the afternoon and evening. The tapes go till after 10pm non-stop.

The tapes are fair-to-good quality, but certainly listenable. There is some ghosting from the tape sitting on a spool for years but again, it's only a minor distraction occasionally.

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