James C. Leake

Voices of Oklahoma

James C. Leake was a Television pioneer along with his wife Marjory Griffin Lake and brother-in-law John “J.T.” Griffin. In the 1940s, they applied to the FCC for licenses to put television stations in Little Rock, Arkansas (KATV), Tulsa, Oklahoma (KTUL) and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (KWTV). They put these three stations on the air in nine months.
What you are about to hear is James Leake describing the process from application time, their competition, money issues, to building studios, and to when they went on the air, December 1953.It was February 3, 1998, when Mr. Leake recorded this oral history account of Oklahoma and Arkansas television. He was 83 years old when he talked for an hour without an interviewer or notes as he recalled in interesting detail the many challenges they faced in constructing these stations “put on by folks who had never seen it.”
We are grateful to Nancy and Richard Sevenoaks (daughter and son-in-law) of Jimmy Leake for providing this recording. James C. Leake was 86 when he died July 3, 2001.