We tried our best to keep the lid on the project while working with WTVT's station promotions to design a teaser on-air and billboard campaign to take maximum advantage of this new newsgathering tool. The billboards were to tease: “A new star is coming to WTVT” or something similar. Thinking that this applied to a personality, it would be sniped in later weeks with an update: “Newstar” in place of “new star”, to pique the interest of the community.  We planned to roll the service out early in 1985 when the truck was fully equipped. But our well-made plans came to a screeching halt.

          1984 being an election year, the annual News Director’s Convention (RTNDA) was held in San Antonio after the election in November rather than its usual September date. Hubcom wanted to showcase our truck at the show as an example of the new technology. By then, it was probably the fifth or sixth SNG truck ever built. This was to be my first RTNDA, so I was primed for taking in all the seminars, studying the equipment on the exhibit floor and making the most of the experience as a rookie.  Boy, would that change.

          Day one, as I was enjoying my first News Director’s convention I received a call from the newsroom that Channel 8 had debuted their new SNG truck on the noon news.  We later learned they “borrowed” or leased a truck from Dalsat in Dallas and made a big splash about it.  Immediately I thought of our well-intended promotional campaign-now up in smoke.  Well, I thought, “I’d better find a way to debut ours on the 6pm news!”

          Since I had traveled to San Antonio alone without any equipment, and our showcase truck was not yet fully equipped...no communications equipment- -but it did have the satellite transmitter.  

    I started surveying the convention floor for equipment. I borrowed a camera and deck from some friends at Midwest Communications or Hubcom, some editing equipment elsewhere, and put together something of a package on the truck and its capability.  We then prepared for a live shot in the 6pm news.

          Not to be deterred and with a great deal of help from the Hubcom folks we pulled something off.  We pre-fed the package and I did something resembling a live shot with absolutely no IFB or audio from the studio. All I had was a visual cue to start talking.  A helpful techie stood in the door of the truck and pointed a finger in my direction when it was time to start talking. Obviously with those limitations I couldn’t engage in any Q&A with Hugh on the set, so I tried to cover all the bases before throwing it back to him. It was a semi-ugly debut particularly considering what we had planned, but it served notice that we not only were in the SNG business but were showing off the truck at the national convention and were members of a news cooperative with other pioneers in this new technology.

       Over the next couple of days I did little more than generate stories and live shots about the truck.  I don’t remember attending much of the convention that year. Jule McGee hopped on a plane to render assistance in San Antonio, which made life easier in putting together the stories and doing the live bits.

(Editor's note: Jim West related the story of how a lack of hotel space in San Antonio forced him and Jule to share a single-bed room.  Nothing happened, of course, but this 'secret' was kept until West told the story to an appreciative audience at the 2005 WTVT reunion.  So far, no other employees admit to having slept with Jule.  So far.) 

On one of the newscasts we interviewed veteran CBS newsman Douglas Edwards in front of our truck.  The topic: new satellite technology.