Biography | Donn Tatum — The Prospect Lot Where He Ran KABC-TV Before Disney

Before Walt Disney recruited him, Donn Tatum already ran a television station on this lot.

4151 Prospect Avenue, at Talmadge Street in Los Feliz, was ABC's West Coast television center.

KABC-TV had taken those call letters in 1954 after starting life as KECA-TV in 1949.

Tatum served as general manager of KABC-TV and as ABC's Western television director.

The Los Angeles Times and Variety both recorded those titles in the obituaries published after his death.

He had reached them through entertainment law.

After the California bar in 1938 he practiced at Lillick, Geary and McHose.

He then served as counsel for RCA, NBC and ABC, the three letters that defined American broadcasting before he ever sat in a Disney office.

D23, the company's official archive, states that Walt Disney recruited him in 1956 as production business manager.

The move took him from this gate to 500 South Buena Vista.

The Prospect lot is still a working studio.

ABC used it as West Coast headquarters for decades after Tatum left.

KABC-TV itself later moved to Glendale.

The original television center remains at Prospect and Talmadge.

A lawyer who had learned radio and television statute on this side of the Hollywood hills was the man Roy O. Disney later trusted with the company.

The pin is the public gate, not a private office.

No current home or daily workplace of a living person is marked here.

Tatum has been dead since 1993.

The lot is the last broadcasting address that can be named before the Disney years begin.

From this gate the next pin is Burbank.

The man who walked out in 1956 would, fifteen years later, succeed Roy O. Disney as chairman.

Photo: gate of The Prospect Studios, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons