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Retro: New York City, Monday, October 27, 1941

B

Bob1370

Guest
Source; New York Times

TELEVISION

WNBT Channel 1 (NBC)

Evening

8-9 P. M.Test Pattern
9:00-Weather Forecast
9:01-11-Boxing, Jamaica Arena

WCBW Channel 2 (CBS)

Afternoon

2:00-Test Pattern
2:30-News Reports
2:45-Boys in the Back Room
3:15Children's Story; Around The World in 80 Days

Evening

7:30Test Pattern
8:00-News Reports
8:15-Joan Edwards, Songs
8:30-9:30-Variety Show; John Hoyaradt. Songs; Sue Hastings, Marionettes;
Indian Dances; Burl Ives, Songs

W2XWB Channel 4 (DuMont)

Afternoon

12-6 P. M.Tests and Selected Films

Commercial TV was still in its infancy, operating limited daily schedules (which remained limited for several years to come because of World War II) and for the most part depending on young and relatively little known performers. Joan Edwards married an extremely wealthy man and became a major philanthropist before her passing at the age of 88 in 2006. BurlIves. of course, became a recordig star and successful actor after the Second World War.
 
Joan Edwards would make her everlasting mark a couple of years
later, but on radio; she was the featured female singer on "Your Hit
Parade" during Frank Sinatra's first tenure on that show (1943). The
hysterical screaming for Ol' Blue Eyes by teenage girls in the audience
launched a wave of male-only (mostly guys in the military) "Moan and
Groan For Joan Clubs," probably meant more as sarcasm as anything else.

She had two television shows: "Girl About Town," which may be the
show you have listed under "Joan Edwards," in 1941, and a 15-minute
early-evening musical show on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:45 on
DuMont in 1950. ("Girl About Town" became a network show on NBC
in 1948 but without Ms. Edwards.) Ironically, she once wrote a song
called "Television's Tough On Love"; given her short-lived television career
it could have been called "Television's Tough On Me."

If you can find it, there's a picture of her rehearsing for a "Your Hit Parade"
broadcast in Irving Settel's pictorial history of radio.
 
In 1941, experimental calls may still have been assigned to TV broadcasters in New York City. W2XBS, W2XBC and W2XBT for NBC. W2XAB and W2XCB for CBS.
 
I once knew someone who owned an old RCA TV with a channel 1 (his mother owned an antiques shop). He said it was originally owned by an army officer who bought it during WW2. It still worked (this was 30 years ago), though the lights dimmed a bit when it was turned on.
 
"In 1941, experimental calls may still have been assigned to TV broadcasters in New York City. W2XBS, W2XBC and W2XBT for NBC. W2XAB and W2XCB for CBS."

Definitely so until July 1 of that year. That was the day the FCC started handing out commercial licenses to TV stations, and WNBT and WCBW got the first ones, with a few more (WPTZ in Philly, WRGB in the Capital District) getting their commercial tickets in the months to come. DuMont got its transmitter up and running in the spring of 1941 along with CBS and NBC, but wasn't given a full commercial license (as WABD) until 1944.

The old Channel 1 running from 50 to 56 mHz disappeared from the airwaves in the spring of 1946 when the original channel was re-assigned to police and amateur services and WNBT (its only commercially licensed occupant anywhere) was re-assigned to the new Channel 4 and WABD got moved upstairs to channel 5.. Another Channel 1 at 44-50 mHz was put in the assignment tables by the FCC for small town, lower power community stations, like an early version of LPTV, but it was scrapped in 1948 without any such community station ever signing on.
 
I think the only FCC license ever granted for Channel 1 in the post-war years was to KARO in Riverside, California but never reached the air, so it was not reassigned to one of the other VHF channels (KARO probably would have been reassigned to Channel 3 had it gone on the air, given that Los Angeles was assigned Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 and San Diego/Tijuana eventually got Channels 6, 8, 10, and 12).
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
I think the only FCC license ever granted for Channel 1 in the post-war years was to KARO in Riverside, California but never reached the air, so it was not reassigned to one of the other VHF channels (KARO probably would have been reassigned to Channel 3 had it gone on the air, given that Los Angeles was assigned Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 and San Diego/Tijuana eventually got Channels 6, 8, 10, and 12).
Click to expand...

IIRC, KARO and WSBE South Bend were granted CPs for Channel 1, but neither went on the air. WSBE eventually became WSBT-TV Channel 22.

And Riverside is too close to LA to have been assigned Channel 3. I think it was reserved for the Tijuana area back in the early '50s as well.
 
"Santa Barbara ended up with 3 (KEYT), although that market
also has 6 (KSBY) and 12 (KCOY)."

Given that all the San Diego stations operate with antennae conforming to a Zone 1 station, wouldn't there have been room to assign Channel 3 to the San Diego market as well? Any transmitter would have been a good 90=100 miles from Mt. Wilson, and 190 miles from Santa Barbara...
 
bpatrick said:
I thought the same thing, since 6 and 12 are actually in Tijuana.
Anybody know why San Diego didn't get 3?
Click to expand...

Because Tijuana did, though it took many years before the station finally signed on (late 1990s, if memory serves.)

The problem was real-world propagation: KEYT's Broadcast Peak site, on the coast just west of Santa Barbara, is a good 70 miles closer to SD/Tijuana than the KSBY and KCOY sites. And while the KSBY/KCOY sites are fairly well terrain-blocked from the South Coast, KEYT has a monster line-of-sight signal down the coast that's usually heavily augmented by the near-constant tropo ducting that runs from Santa Barbara down to San Diego. It's not unusual at all to hear Santa Barbara signals (especially the monsters on 103.3 and 97.5) blowing down the coast into San Diego, and my understanding is that KEYT was regularly seen in Orange and San Diego counties in the analog era, too.

Even if 3 San Diego could have been fully-spaced on paper to KEYT, it would have been a real-world disaster, with San Diego wiping out KEYT on its home turf and vice-versa.
 
KeithE4 said:
IIRC, KARO and WSBE South Bend were granted CPs for Channel 1, but neither went on the air. WSBE eventually became WSBT-TV Channel 22.
Click to expand...

Hate to bump an old thread, but upon further review, WSBE on Channel 1 may be an urban legend. The only pre-freeze South Bend station I can find (courtesy of the Old Gringo's basement) is one from WSBT on Channel 13 on 12/22/1947. No call letters were assigned that I can see, but it was unofficially called WSBT-TV in articles mentioning that a relay facility between Toledo and Chicago would have also been located at that facility. This relay was desired (and maybe financed -- Balaban & Katz/WBKB and Tribune/WGN-TV are specifically mentioned) by the Chicago stations so they could get network access. Listings into 1949 show it as an application, rather than a granted CP, for Channel 13.

The 8/13/51 issue of Broadcasting Magazine shows that an application from WSBT to change from Channel 13 to 34 (that was allowed during the freeze? I didn't even know the UHF channels had even been allocated yet). No call letters as yet, but of course it went on the air as WSBT-TV. So as far as I can see, no CP for Channel 1 was ever applied for by the South Bend Tribune or anyone else in that city.

And Riverside is too close to LA to have been assigned Channel 3. I think it was reserved for the Tijuana area back in the early '50s as well.
Click to expand...

This is apparently the only commercial CP for Channel 1 ever assigned, and even then, the FCC tried to get them to apply for the LA allocations 9 or 13, which they never did AFAIK. The CP for KARO Channel 1 was cancelled in 1949.
 
TVCOOL said:
Where is ch. 7, 9, 11and 13?
Click to expand...

This is a pre-war listing. There were no commercial stations above Channel 4 before 1946. The 1945 Broadcasting Yearbook shows the following commercial stations, along with another dozen and a half experimental stations:

New York: WNBT (1), WCBW (2), WABD (4) -- moved to current Channels 4, 2, and 5, respectively, in 1946.

Chicago: WTZR (1 - CP), WBKB (2) -- moved to current Channels 2 and 4, respectively in 1946. WTZR never operated commercially (it was always W9XZV on-air), and Ch. 4 (as WBBM-TV) took over Channel 2 in 1953.

Los Angeles: KTSL (1 - CP) -- moved to current Channel 2 in 1946, and received its commercial license in 1948. At the time, it was W6XAO.

Philadelphia: WPTZ (3) -- moved to current Channel 3 in 1946.

Milwaukee: WMJT (3 - CP) -- signed on current Channel 3 in 1947 as WTMJ-TV, and moved to Channel 4 in 1953.

Schenectady: WRGB (3) -- stayed put, but channel number changed from 3 to 4 in 1946, and moved to Channel 6 in 1954.

The only thing close to a real network at the time was NBC, with WNBT NYC, WPTZ Philly, and WRGB Schenectady airing what little network programming there was during the war. Dumont did some experimental networking between WABD New York and then-W3XWT Washington as well.

As for New York's other channels...
WJZ-TV (WABC-TV) Channel 7 signed on 8/10/1948.
WOR-TV (WWOR-TV) Channel 9 signed on 10/11/1949.
WPIX Channel 11 Signed on 6/15/1948.
WATV (WNTA-TV/WNDT/WNET) Channel 13 signed on 5/15/1948.
 
Ultimajock said:
...are there any known surviving kinescopes of WNBT on Channel 1 or W2XWB on Channel 4, or did kinescopes not even exist that early?...
Click to expand...

There wasn't even a television transmission standard, much less kinescopes. And kinnies were "invented" to allow the networks to grow without waiting for AT&T to interconnect every station via microwave; the nets weren't even thinking in terms of that yet, given how few stations were on the air, period, in 1941.
 
K.M. Richards said:
There wasn't even a television transmission standard, much less kinescopes. And kinnies were "invented" to allow the networks to grow without waiting for AT&T to interconnect every station via microwave; the nets weren't even thinking in terms of that yet, given how few stations were on the air, period, in 1941.
Click to expand...

I thought the 525/30 standard was mandated as of July 1941 in order to get a commercial license.
 
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