WUSA9's longest-serving employee preserves 75-year history

WASHINGTON — All this year, we’re celebrating WUSA9's 75th anniversary, and exploring our 75 years of serving the community.

But much of our three-quarters of a century history would be lost, if not for the painstaking work of a satellite microwave technician, Tom Buckley, who worked at the station until he retired in July 2023. 

TV broadcasts are by definition ephemeral, blasting out into the ether and disappearing. Buckley has made it his life’s work to save what he can.

“Oh God, it’s just been so much fun,” said Buckley, 68.

Outside his Brightwood rowhouse, he's got the big stone Channel 9 logo that hung for decades over Broadcast House, Channel 9’s old headquarters on Brandywine Street NW. 

Inside his home, he has a veritable museum dedicated to local broadcasting and the 75-year history of Channel 9.

"I had to fight and scream to get these things. I unscrewed that from the set the last night of 1992," he says, pointing out a 9 that used to decorate the anchor set.

Channel 9 first went on the air in 1949. And Buckley has artifacts dating back to the beginning. 

"This goes back to the earliest days of Channel 9, this is the WOIC ID clock," he says, gingerly handling a 75-year-old Bulova clock that was filmed live and sent out over the air with an announcer saying something like, "10-o'clock, Bulova watch time, WOIC, Washington."

WOIC were Channel 9's first call letters. Then it became WTOP, when the Washington Post company and CBS purchased the station. Next, it was WDVM when it was purchased by the Detroit News. And finally, WUSA under Gannett and Tegna ownership.

The station's first broadcast was in 1949 just four days before President Harry Truman's inauguration. 

"That was the first big show we did," said Buckley. It was the first televised presidential inauguration."

Buckley started at Channel 9 just 26 years later, in 1975. He was 20 years old. He retired last year after nearly half a century, all the while collecting stuff for his archive.

"To me, that’s art," Buckley said, holding up a luminous plexiglass logo from 30 or more years ago. "That’s the gorgeous one," he said pointing out a glowing copper 9. "When it’s backlit, it really looks nice."

Buckley has video of Pick Temple, one of Channel 9’s early kids’ shows, which aired seven days a week and was so popular, ministers complained families were skipping church to watch it. The host, Pick Temple, made about $250,000 a year, making him the highest paid local television talent in the business.

But much of what we broadcast in the 50s and 60s is just gone, unrecoverable. The earliest videotape formats were so expensive, the station just recorded over earlier shows that were on them.

If you lived in the D.C. area between 1971 and 1978, you were probably remember the ratings king anchors, Max Robinson and Gordon Peterson, and who could forget sportscaster Glenn Brenner.

"Local television is very important to me, the history of local television, because nobody is documenting that," Buckley said.

We have two big archive rooms at Channel 9, filled with tapes. But it would probably take years of labor to digitize what’s on them, and the machines that play the old tape formats are failing.

"It’s like, what was America like in those days? What was the news business like in the early days of television news?" Buckley said, contemplating all that's been lost.

Thanks to Tom Buckley, at least some of that history has been saved.

"Oh, god, it's so much fun," he said, laughing. "And that's why I couldn't wait. You couldn't pull me away from it."