Worst TV stations ever

[K.M. Richards]

I am sure that this one qualifies, only because likely their money was low:

WAJA 23 Miami FL (now WLTV).

That station went on the air under the ownership of then-prominent George B. Storer, as the NBC station for Miami. And he pulled off quite a trick in swapping CPs and allocations in 1953 to make it happen.

It all fell apart when VHFs started operation; Storer lost the NBC affiliation only three years in, to newcomer WCKT/7. It was dark for a decade before being sold and returning to the air as WAJA.

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

I'm somewhat surprised no one has mentioned KXGN-5 the CBS affiliate in Glendive, MT (the nations smallest media market).

Do I recall correctly that KXGN also cleared some NBC and ABC programs, being the only game in town, and a lot of it "out of pattern"?

 

[K.M. Richards]

I recall seeing a list of translators in a 1983 "Television and Cable Factbook", and I noticed that KUSK practically had translators nationwide; I read somewhere else that their intent was to build a nationwide subscription LPTV network, but no doubt the expansion of cable and the offerings of HBO and Showtime via microwave scotched that idea.

Backstory is in this article. Spanish International Network (today's Univision) was the mosca en la sopa.

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

KNEW-TV, KQEC-TV and KMTP San Francisco all on TV 32 were considered worst TV Stations in the Bay area due to constant budgeting issues.

Another situation where the backstory tells the reason:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

Is it true that the final broadcast of KHOF-30 before it was forced off the aur consisted of Dr. Gene Scott making a tirade against the FCC and showing a bunch of mechanical and battery powered monkeys that he called "The FCC Monkey Band"?

Since no one mentioned it in their replies a couple of years back, here's the KHOF article at UHF History:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

And here's WHCT/18 in Hartford, which Faith Center also owned for a while:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

The worst I have seen is WJAN-TV 17 in Canton, Ohio (1967-77) which also has been written up quite a bit here on the boards..Only 5 days a week broadcasting at the start.No color till around 1969-70..Very old, obscure movies and when they did get Syndicated product it was considered 3rd-4th rate programming.

Even though Tim Lones no longer is active here, I would be remiss if I didn't post a link to the article he wrote on WJAN:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

The Dayton situation may also have been a case where the two established VHF stations were willing to give up the stability of being the exclusive sources of NBC and CBS in exchange for keeping a full-time ABC affiliation away from WKEF (or the other new U, WKTR). And ABC was complicit, preferring to put its bigger shows on WLWD or WHIO than to give a full-time affiliation to WKEF or WKTR.

Scott, my friend, you are the master of understatement. Yes, here is another UHF History article:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

BTW, have I mentioned that since founder Clarke Ingram's passing, the site has been hosted by David (Eduardo) Gleason on the World Radio History servers?

 

[K.M. Richards]

What kind of ratings and viewership does TBD have anyway? Looking at their programming, it's just one step up from AMG TV.

You stopped watching a few months too soon. Their schedule was recently improved to include blocks of the old CourtTV/truTV "World's Dumbest" (minus references to former sponsor The Smoking Gun) and reruns of the CW's "Whose Line Is It Anyway?".

 

[K.M. Richards]

Well I got a repeat problem once again in wichita falls tx lawton ok TEXOMA market, only a good SIX months after me moving back to wichita falls from Fort worth two unrelated stations along with their subchannels have temporarily ate the pavement like Panama jack, for a week and a half KJTL 18.1 TEXOMA'S FOX [ a.k.a. i.e. FOX 18 ] and it's subchannels [ 18.2 grit, 18.3 BOUncE tv, 18.4 ion mystery] have been off the air other than via YouTube TV, Hulu, and spectrum. And since Sunday may 5 2024 the same PRECISE DISTINCT problem with KAUZ 6.1 CBS " NEWS CHANNEL 6 " AND their subchannels [ 6.2 the CW, 6.3 ION TV, 6.4 NEWS CHANNEL 6 24/7, 6.5 court tv, and 6.6 defy ]. The TWIST here is nexstar media group and mission broadcasting Inc own KJTL FOX [ in the same building with KFDX NBC AND KJBO MY NETWORK TV since 1999] and one has nothing to do with the other because KAUZ cbs news channel 6 is owned by GRAY TELEVISION AND American spirit media. Additionally KSWO ABC 7 lawton Oklahoma is coming in real weak, and problems picking up pbs KERA dallas tx, OETA Oklahoma, CFNT wichita falls lp familynet/cbn, and KJBO used to be UPN. so at this point the only channels I get are KFDX 3.1 NBC, 3.2 KJBO, 3.3 LAFF, AND 3.4 ANTENNA TV.

I cannot make heads or tails of this. Could the OP learn how to end sentences, stop SHOUTING (that's what bold is for) and format paragraphs and try again?

 

[Mr Tony]

Do I recall correctly that KXGN also cleared some NBC and ABC programs, being the only game in town, and a lot of it "out of pattern"?

ABC was off the schedule in the 60s. It is CBS (6-9pm) and NBC from 9-10 until 2009.
When digital was required NBC moved to 5-2 and CBS still is from 6-9.
FOX was for NFL when CBS lost the NFL for those few years.

KXGN-TV - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[K.M. Richards]

ABC was off the schedule in the 60s. It is CBS (6-9pm) and NBC from 9-10 until 2009.
When digital was required NBC moved to 5-2 and CBS still is from 6-9.
FOX was for NFL when CBS lost the NFL for those few years.

Thanks. I knew it was something like that but didn't know the details.

 

[IM42A]

Since no one mentioned it in their replies a couple of years back, here's the KHOF article at UHF History:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

And here's WHCT/18 in Hartford, which Faith Center also owned for a while:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com

Just out of curiosity, how did they collect the coins that viewers put in the decoder boxes? Did they have someone to go from door to door, kind of like how insurance companies had collectors who would call upon policyholders and take their payments?

And along somewhat the same lines, has anybody else here ever heard of the pay-TV boxes that they had in hotels in the 1970s, where you would buy a plastic key from (I want to say) the desk clerk, insert it into a notch at the top of the box, and the tip would break off and activate the converter, to allow you to see the movie? I once used a box like this at the Gillette Motel (they're still in business) in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as a teenager, the movie was Dog Day Afternoon.

 

[IM42A]

A follow-up to the above post of mine from nearly 20 (!) years ago. I finally pulled together stuff from my archives* and put together a tribute site of sorts:

KKOG-TV: An experiment in local, live television

kmrichards.com

I realized not too long ago that station founder Julian Myers and I were literally the only two people who were there on day one and were still there on the final day. Channel 16 was my introduction to broadcasting; I went from there to local cable origination and then from there to radio. Counting those years in television, I have been in the business for just under 55 years.

Anybody else notice that the cog in the station's logo had 16 teeth on it?

I just had to count them, to see if my suspicions were correct.

 

[Sammi Brie]

Just out of curiosity, how did they collect the coins that viewers put in the decoder boxes? Did they have someone to go from door to door, kind of like how insurance companies had collectors who would call upon policyholders and take their payments?

The decoder had a receipt printer in it and would keep a monthly tab of the programs you selected (each program had a code, e.g. "000D"). Every month, it would spit out a receipt to mail in your payment.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Anybody else notice that the cog in the station's logo had 16 teeth on it?

I just had to count them, to see if my suspicions were correct.

Yes. Typical Julian Myers. I miss him; we remained friends after KKOG went dark, up until his death at age 93 about a decade ago and he was every bit as sharp mentally the last time we spoke as he had been in 1968. I have plenty of channel 16 stories and it was a great experience for me, even as we struggled to stay on the air.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Just out of curiosity, how did they collect the coins that viewers put in the decoder boxes? Did they have someone to go from door to door, kind of like how insurance companies had collectors who would call upon policyholders and take their payments?

The decoder had a receipt printer in it and would keep a monthly tab of the programs you selected (each program had a code, e.g. "000D"). Every month, it would spit out a receipt to mail in your payment.

And that was explained in the Broadcasting article, shown as a graphic, describing the decoder.

 

[vchimpanzee]

The Central Virginia edition was kind of strange in that it listed major Triad and Raleigh-Durham stations (WFMY, WSJS/WXII, WRAL, WTVD, not sure about WGHP) and its coverage area actually plunged down into North Carolina between the Triad and RDU markets, IIRC Alamance County was Central Virginia. The only thing I could ever figure out, it was roughly between Triad and RDU and may also have received Roanoke stations OTA. Triad and Roanoke were not impossible to receive in each other markets' core cities, I recall getting WXII (and may also have gotten WFMY) with a rabbit ear at the Days Inn in downtown Roanoke. Greensboro and Durham can also get each others' stations with any kind of halfway decent antenna.

I lived south of Danville in the early 70s and the Central Virginia edition is what we got. WDBJ, which had a perfect signal, was shown as 7-4, and WSLS, which was watchable, was shown as 10-2. WFMY had Oral Roberts so I had to watch "Tom and Jerry" on WDBJ. I had an interesting experience when I got curious about "The Partridge Family" after seeing them on the cover. WGHP didn't show it but WLVA did. I could hear but not see, so it was interesting to actually see what I had missed when WGHP showed the reruns. Harrisonburg was listed and had mostly ABC but sometimes NBC.

Bluefield, WV had an NBC affiliate listed and I could actually pick it up.

 

[IM42A]

And that was explained in the Broadcasting article, shown as a graphic, describing the decoder.

Yes, I know, I saw that, and it didn't make sense to me. Given this scenario, it looks as though the decoder acted as a kind of piggy bank, with insertion of the coins both activating the decoder, and allowing the viewer to collect enough money to pay the bill. At the risk of sounding like more of an idiot than I have already sounded like so far, did the decoder have some kind of mechanism (like a jack-in-the-box, no pun intended) to open up once a month and allow the viewer to retrieve the coins?

Primitive to modern eyes, but no more primitive than those plastic keys like I described at the motel in Gatlinburg. As I recall, they were kind of T-shaped (that is, they fit into a T-shaped slot), you pressed them in, the end broke off, and that activated the decoder. The decoder actually stayed activated longer than the run time for Dog Day Afternoon, so I got to see another one. Don't recall which one it was. That's been almost 50 years ago. I just know I thought it was pretty cool for Gatlinburg cable to carry Knoxville 6/10/26, and also 5/11 from the Tri-Cities and WLOS-13 from Asheville to provide two affiliates of each network, and WSJK-2 on top of that. (The original idea was to have WSJK in Sneedville, which was the only location where you could have a channel 2 transmitter that wouldn't be short-spaced to Dayton, Greensboro, and Atlanta, to cover both the Tri-Cities and Knoxville, but the latter was ultimately unworkable, so they added WKOP-15 as a simulcast of WSJK.) Back in those days, carrying duplicate affiliates from adjacent markets allowed for more program diversity than you would have under similar circumstances nowadays, as stations varied widely in their carriage of syndicated programs and even pre-emptions of network offerings. The Big Four don't tolerate the latter much anymore.

 

[IM42A]

I lived south of Danville in the early 70s and the Central Virginia edition is what we got. WDBJ, which had a perfect signal, was shown as 7-4, and WSLS, which was watchable, was shown as 10-2. WFMY had Oral Roberts so I had to watch "Tom and Jerry" on WDBJ. I had an interesting experience when I got curious about "The Partridge Family" after seeing them on the cover. WGHP didn't show it but WLVA did. I could hear but not see, so it was interesting to actually see what I had missed when WGHP showed the reruns. Harrisonburg was listed and had mostly ABC but sometimes NBC.

Bluefield, WV had an NBC affiliate listed and I could actually pick it up.

Do you mean that they converted 7 to 4, and 10 to 2, or did they have some kind of subchannel setup, similar to what we have with digital TV today? That would have been very odd in the analog era, not sure how they'd have done that.

And do you mean that you were only able to get audio from WLVA? Was this OTA or on cable?

 

[Ma “Contrarian” Gee]

I just know I thought it was pretty cool for Gatlinburg cable to carry Knoxville 6/10/26, and also 5/11 from the Tri-Cities and WLOS-13 from Asheville to provide two affiliates of each network, and WSJK-2 on top of that.

My introduction to cable TV was August 1966 in Gatlinburg. I was seven years old. For some reason I always found that local cable access channel with the "weather wheel" fascinating. Grainy black and white picture. Moving left to right and then back right to left. An analog thermometer for the temps ... a card with a local ad ... then the barometer ... another ad ... finally the wind speed. All with the music of WLOS-FM Ashville NC for sound. At night they had pre-recorded video full of local ads and an interview show where some old character with a plaid woolen shirt and a bolo tie would interview local merchants. It seemed like one interview in particular aired for years. A husband and wife who operated the "Paintin' Place." Get it? A play off of "Peyton Place" the novel / movie / TV series.