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Layman, Jayroe and a true story about the whereabouts of KXAS-TV's old "Action News" logo

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Way back in KXAS-TV's "Action News" days, Dave Layman and Jane Jayroe reigned as the Fort Worth-based station's featured news anchors.

Layman, who long ago relocated to Providence, R.I., recently wrote a commentary on NBC5 anchor Jane McGarry's DWI arrest. Jayroe, the former Miss America 1967, currently resides in Oklahoma City and is enshrined in the Oklahoma Hall of fame.

True story. The late news director Bill Vance, who both hired and fired Layman, inherited the "Action News" format and the day-glo logo visible behind the anchor desk in the video below. Your friendly content provider regularly twitted the format, prompting Vance to send the entire logo to me when KXAS retitled its newscasts. They arrived in black crepe paper and are now proudly displayed at unclebarky.com central in Garland, TX. And they've aged well as artifacts from ancient news times.

The brief video finds Layman and Jayroe introducing a story on a local trucking company's sudden shutdown, with reporter Kevyn Burger on the scene. Also included are the opening visuals and theme song. And yes, when KXAS (now billed as NBC5) opens its new state-of-the-art facility sometime late next year, it is welcome to have the old "Action News" logo as long as management solemnly swears not to burn it or throw it in a closet.

For better or worse, some things are worth preserving.