A few brief lines about Utah history to set the stage, then on to the Church story: The first demonstration of television in Utah took place in 1939, in The Paris, a downtown Salt Lake City department store. Radio enthusiast Sid Fox had purchased a demonstration unit from NBC consisting of a single camera, a central unit (think of it as the CPU of your desktop computer), six receivers (primitive television sets), and a small closed-circuit transmitter. The receivers were set up in different parts of the store where shoppers could watch a pale black and white image of a man addressing them from some makeshift studio in another part of the store. The unit was moved to the State Fair Grounds where visitors could experience the same kind of primitive “reality show,” including occasional talks by church president Heber J. Grant. But until 1948, television was an experimental gimmick, broadcasting nothing but test patterns and music.

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