• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

1965 Cleveland/Philly Radio/TV swap..

T

Tim L

In my Cleveland Classic Media Blog I have been writing about the KYW/WKYC Radio/TV swap, which was forced by the FCC. It occured on June 19, 1965..KYW-AM/TV relocated to Philly while WRCV-AM/TV Philadelphia became WKYC-AM/TV. The last few blog articles use Cleveland Press TV/Radio writer's Bill Barrett's thoughts as a basis for understanding how the swap went through as it was happening..In future articles NBC's original plans for programming Cleveland locally will be put forth in a Plain Dealer article..and Finally, One or two articles on a long-forgotten local Cleveland TV Talk show that might not have happened (my opinion) if Westinghouse had stayed in Philly..

http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/
 
Interesting site, Tim. I knew KYW radio was originally in Chicago, but had forgotten about the Cleveland connection. Why did the FCC order NBC and Westinghouse swap stations?
 
The original swap happened in 1956:

to Westinghouse:
AM 1100 (KYW)
FM 105.7 (KYW-FM)
TV Channel 3 (KYW-TV)
$3,000,000

To NBC
AM 1060 (WRCV)
TV Channel 3 Philadelphia (WRCV)

NBC wanted to have an O&O in Philly to concentrate its O&O's in the east (with NY and Washington) plus, Philly was a bigger market..There were rumblings immediately after the original deal that Westinghouse wasnt happy..They complained to the Justice Dept. and the FCC-The investigaion took 9 years...Finally, things were ordered reversed, with NBC not allowing to profit from the reverse swap..It was found NBC threated to pull their network affiliation from Westinghouse Stations if they (Westinghouse) didnt go through with it..
 
Of course, much later NBC wound up with a
completely different o&o: WCAU/10, previously
a CBS o&o, when Westinghouse bought CBS and
switched Channel 3 (now KYW). ABC also got
an o&o when Capital Cities bought that network:
WPVI/6. In fact, Philadelphia is one of only four
markets where ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC all have
o&os; the others are New York, Los Angeles, and
Chicago.
 
When the 1965 reversal of the 1956 NBC/Westinghouse swap was effected, apparently the respective owners took their sign-on and sign-off scripts with them. If you heard WRCV-TV's 1964 sign-off (by J.B. Lee) on the 'DXPhotos' site, and then saw the 1976 sign-off of WKYC-TV (by legendary station announcer Jay Miltner), you will find that the sign-off script is almost exactly alike, with the usual variations of call letters, city of license, and studio location. As for KYW-TV, it would appear that the script they used post-1965 in Philly (which started off with "This is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, home of KYW-TV 3 . . . ") had been molded in its final years in Cleveland (I presume the opening words up to 1965 would've been "This is Cleveland, Ohio, home of . . . " with the transmitter in Parma rather than "Umbria Street near Domino Lane in Philadelphia").
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom