How did live network TV work in the early days?

[BMR]

Hi, apologies if this is a silly question. In the early days of network telly, how were the live broadcasts shipped around the country?

Was it simply a case of CBS Philadelphia rebroadcasting CBS New York, CBS Washington rebroadcasting CBS Philly and so on?

Or was there a dedicated coax network, literally a physical network?

 

[KeithE4]

The original (pre-1946) NBC network hookup was WRGB Schenectady and WPTZ Philly picking up WNBT New York directly off-air. IIRC, coax cable started to be used after the war ended, but some stations still had to set up their own microwave links or use off-air pickup.

The coax cables between the East and Midwest networks were connected in 1949, and coast-to-coast network connections were completed in 1951.

 

[fybush]

Not a silly question at all! Yes, it was mostly coaxial cable, but only to key cities. A lot of smaller markets had to find their own ways to get network programming at first. Well into the 1970s (and even the 1980s in a few cases), some small-market affiliates still depended on off-air pickup of network programming from larger affiliates (sometimes as much as 100 miles away) that were directly connected to the network. The advent of satellite delivery in the late 1970s finally ended the era of off-air pickups.

(And it wasn't just in the wide-open spaces out west, either - WUTR in Utica, N.Y., which signed on as an ABC affiliate in 1970, didn't have a direct coax connection from ABC, if memory serves. It had to pick up WNYS-TV from Syracuse, 50 miles away.)

 

[newsmark]

And those over-the-air pickups could make for some awkwardness. You could lose your signal because of signal propogation/interference, technical problems at the station you're relying on, breaking news or weather on that station, or because that station pre-empted a program you normally run. And something as simple as a station ID could pop up on the screen at any time.

The stations that relied on another station for their network signal had to keep a "stand by" slide easily accessible.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Wasn't New York and Los Angeles Network owned stations used as centers that contained the master network sent to other affiliates. I remember stuff that a phone line or other tech at the time was used to transmit video and Audio to other stations around the nation.

 

[installLSC]

The original (pre-1946) NBC network hookup was WRGB Schenectady and WPTZ Philly picking up WNBT New York directly off-air. IIRC, coax cable started to be used after the war ended, but some stations still had to set up their own microwave links or use off-air pickup.

The coax cables between the East and Midwest networks were connected in 1949, and coast-to-coast network connections were completed in 1951.

I looked up "long lines" on the excellent American Radio History website. According to Broadcasting Magazine, the first coaxial cables used for TV networking started in 1946 on the NYC-DC route. Just a year later, microwave links were used to link Boston with New York. (For those who don't know, "long lines" were a unit of AT&T that was the primary provider of network linkage.

 

[BMR]

I expect a lot depended on how well affiliates in neighbouring cities got on with each other.

Did say the CBS affiliate in one city regard the CBS affiliate in a city 50 miles away as their friend or rival? I suspect it varied enormously?