Roy Bliss

Voices of Oklahoma

Roy Bliss grew up in Worland, Wyoming where his father was in the Culligan Soft Water business. A neighbor, Tom Mitchell, read about cable television in a magazine. Roy’s father owned an airplane and Tom asked if Roy’s father would “fly around to see if they could find a TV signal, line-of-sight”, which they found coming from Billings, Montana. And that was the beginning of the cable TV business for the Bliss family.
Roy was very young when he helped his father bring cable to Worland. In time, Wayne Swearingen, an oilman who saw the potential for cable television, asked Roy to join him in Tulsa. Wayne was part owner of Tulsa Cable, which bought a microwave company, United Video. Becoming president of United Video, Roy distributed Chicago’s WGN TV via satellite nationwide. Roy was with United Video for 26 years before retiring from the cable business.
Listen to Roy’s oral history as he describes how his father captured a TV signal from a Billings, Montana station, and how the cable business became Roy’s profession on the podcast and website of VoicesOfOklahoma.com.