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Can You Remember When Your Market Got Its First Educational TV Station?

G

Gregg

Responders to my previous thread about the first Independent stations got me thinking about the early days of Educational TV.

I'm really not certain about how Educational TV stations started, later to be part of PBS. I know that in NYC, Channel 13 was struggling as an Independent, broadcasting in Italian several hours a day. It also signed on late and was off the air earlier than other NYC stations. So I suppose when a non-commercial group was formed, it figured it could buy Channel 13 rather than having to put an inferior signal UHF station on the air, which is what happened in many cities, the largest of which was Los Angeles.

w9wi discusses that the FCC did allocate some channels for non-commercial use, but I'm not sure how that process worked. We know the FCC allocated the FM dial below 92 for non-commercial stations. But in the early days of TV, only a few cities developed non-commercial VHF stations. In some cases, a university decided to get involved in TV and got a VHF station on the air before the available channels were all used up by commercial broadcasters. Did the FCC allocate some non-commercial channels in some markets? Or was it left up to local non-commercial groups to find a frequency and build a station on their own?

In three large cities, Boston, Miami and Minneapolis, some groups had the foresight to reserve Channel 2, the most coveted dial position, for non-commercial outlets. Yet looking at some old TV Guides, Boston had Channels 4 and 7 well before Educational Channel 2 got on the air.

I was too young to remember first hand when Channel 13 in NYC went non-commercial. But I remember some early shows aimed at kids on 13: Misteroger's Neighborhood (at the time, Misteroger's was all one word), What's New (a science show for kids, similar to Mr. Wizard) and The Friendly Giant, a 15 minute import from Canada.

I remember even now that production values for Channel 13 were primitive. Sometimes they'd just have a clock with the call letters and channel number show you how long it would be before the next program would air. And it included the NET Owl. The early forerunner to PBS, called NET, National Educational Television, used a line drawing of an owl as its symbol. No doubt because owls are supposed to be wise.

I remember when my family got its first UHF equiped TV, it was interesting to watch WNYC-TV 31, which had a loose affiliation with NET and later PBS. (I beileve 31 was the first UHF on NYC TV.) Again, production values were limited. They'd produce a few shows oriented to NYC government, such as a weekly firefighter show and a weekly cop show. Most of the time, they'd run whatever non-commercial films they could get their hands on, showing tourism to Taiwan or films put out by the Army or eating a better diet put out by the FDA. I'm sure hardly anyone watched... but still it was TV.



Gregg
[email protected]
 
I was born in Cincinnati, and remember watched WCET-TV, Channel 48, in Kindergarten in 1955-56. In our own home we didn't get a UHF converter until 1961, and since we had no outside antenna Channel 48 came in very fuzzy (favorite WCET programs amongst my siblings at the time included FRIENDLY GIANT, DANNY DEE and Fred Rogers' CHILDREN'S CORNER). That same year we moved to Milwaukee, which had had a VHF educational outlet (WMVS-10) since 1957. We used the converter to pick up Milwaukee's independent Channel 18--and beginning in 1963, WMVS's sister education station WMVT (Channel 36), which wasn't listed in our local TV GUIDE edition until 1977!
 
I don't know about Miami or Minneapolis but the Boston channel 2 allocation was originally commercial. Raytheon held the licence for WRTB but never put it on the air, despite interest from CBS to affiliate and possibly take part ownership (they owned 590 WEEI in Boston). When the license was returned (and the channel 5 allocation was moved from Worcester to Boston) in the early 50s it became available for non-com uses. Likewise WGBX 44 was also a commercial allocation that didn't make the air.
 
Chicago

WTTW/11 grew out of the ashes of the ill-fated Zenith pay-TV experimental station W9XZV/KS2XBS Channel 2, when that station was bounced to make room for WBBM-TV, which had to move from Channel 4 in 1953. Zenith donated their equipment to the owners of WTTW, who put it on the air in 1955.

Sister-station WXXW/20 had been a long-dormant CP for a commercial station, Westinghouse's WIND-TV. Westinghouse had received the CP in 1953 or '54 but never built it, and donated it to WTTW, who put it on the air in 1965. That station went dark in 1974, but the current WYCC (on the air since 1983) is operating under the same license as WXXW.
 
The noncomm allocations were FCC Commissioner Frieda Hennock's idea, and they were all set aside as part of the 1952 Sixth Report and Order, which (with some modifications here and there, particularly in New York State in the late 1950s) became the basic allocation plan for analog TV right to the end in 2009. Many of the biggest markets were filled up to the max on VHF by 1950 before all that happened, and it was decided not to force anyone off VHF unless every station in a market could be moved as well, so the allocations in many big cities were all in the UHF band, and went unclaimed by anyone for many years. That was initially true in NYC, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, as well as a number of other larger cities, although they found a way to set aside Channel 11 in Chicago, Channel 2 in Boston, Miami and Minneapolis/St. Paul, 10 in Milwaukee and Las Vegas, and 9 in San Francisco. Those stations for the most part got an early start, while most current PBS outlets trace their start to 1959 or later. The State University of New York planned a statewide network of UHF stations in 1952 covering all the large markets, but none of those CPs were ever built and the channels were eventually occupied by independently funded community groups during the late 1950s and 1960s. Upstate New York's first noncomm was WNED on Channel 17 in Buffalo, which got started in 1959 because NBC donated the license and some facilities from its failed WBUF, which had closed the year before (driven out of business by the arrival of WKBW-TV Channel 7).

Later, of course, some independent V's financially floundered, so 13 in New York and 12 in Philladelphia/Wilmington became available for pubcasters who got up and running in the early 1960s. The LA market, conversely, always supported 7 commercial VHF outlets well enough to allow them all to survive from their start in the late 1940s until today, so they didn't get a noncomm until KCET came along on channel 28 in the 60s.

The all-channel legislation of 1964 which put UHF tuners in all new sets sold in the United States really made a difference, which is why our city (Rochester, NY) got its first and still only noncomm on Channel 21 in 1966 and nearby Syracuse got one on Channel 24 at about the same time.
 
Gregg said:
w9wi discusses that the FCC did allocate some channels for non-commercial use, but I'm not sure how that process worked. We know the FCC allocated the FM dial below 92 for non-commercial stations. But in the early days of TV, only a few cities developed non-commercial VHF stations. In some cases, a university decided to get involved in TV and got a VHF station on the air before the available channels were all used up by commercial broadcasters. Did the FCC allocate some non-commercial channels in some markets? Or was it left up to local non-commercial groups to find a frequency and build a station on their own?
Click to expand...

Beginning at some point not long after the TV freeze was lifted in 1952, the FCC's table of allocations included channels in some markets that were designated specifically for noncommercial use. In most cities, these were UHF channels believed to be of little or no value; in larger markets with more than three channels allotted to them, they were sometimes Vs that had been dropped in when allocations were shuffled at the end of the freeze. (For instance, Pittsburgh's channel 13 noncommercial allocation was made possible by the shift of Johnstown's WJAC from 13 tp 6.) In a few cities such as Boston, VHF channels that hadn't yet been activated by commercial operators were changed to noncommercial status.

In most of the communities where VHF noncommercial channels were allocated, community groups or local educational institutions came together fairly quickly to fill them, creating the early ETV boom of the mid-1950s. Stations such as WGBH, KQED, WQED, WTTW and WMVS all trace their histories to this era.

In cities that didn't get VHF noncommercial channels, there were still sometimes local ETV groups trying to make something happen. Here in Rochester, for instance, the Rochester Area Educational Television Association (RAETA) was founded in 1958, spending its first few years producing shows that aired on local commercial stations during non-prime hours and lobbying to try to get channel 13 when that channel was designated for Rochester as part of the 1962 allocations shuffle in upstate NY.

RAETA didn't get channel 13 outright, but it ended up as one of the many (nine, IIRC) competing licensees who banded together to form an interim joint licensee so 13 could get on the air in 1962 instead of being tied up for years of comparative hearings. Those hearings were still going on in 1966 when RAETA pulled out of the joint licensee to launch its own signal on channel 21.

That's another thread of the history of ETV in New York State: in the late 1950s, SUNY applied for licenses for each of the UHF channels that had been reserved for noncommercial use around the state. SUNY was granted CPs for a slew of channels - 23 Buffalo, 21 Rochester, 14 Ithaca, 46 Binghamton, 43 Syracuse (shifted to 24 when WTVE 24 Elmira went away), 29 Albany and, if memory serves, 25 New York City. SUNY never activated any of those CPs itself, but transferred most of them to local groups like RAETA when they were ready to launch. 14 Ithaca was never built, 23 Buffalo was abandoned when the local ETV group there got an existing commercial station, WBUF-TV 17, donated to it, and 29 Albany was shifted to 17 somewhere along the way.

Most of New York's ETV stations were activated in the 1960s or very early 1970s. I think the two up north, WNPE/WNPI from Watertown and WCFE from Plattsburgh, were the last in the early 1970s; they were new CPs that hadn't been part of SUNY's never-built network.
 
I'm not sure about Bridgeport, New Haven and Norwich, but I do know that WEDH-TV (PBS) channel 24 of Hartford signed on in 1962. At that time, the market had two VHF stations: WTIC-TV (CBS) channel 3 of Hartford (now WFSB-TV) and WNHC-TV (ABC) channel 8 of New Haven (now WTNH-TV).

If my memory serves me right about the other commercial stations here:

WHCT-TV channel 18 of Hartford had been CBS, until that affiliation went to the new VHF channel 3 in or near 1960. NBC was on channel 30 with a far weaker signal than today. It was for that reason that the old WATR-TV channel 20 of Waterbury was also an NBC station. Channel 30 covered Hartford and New Britain (their city of license then and now) while channel 20 covered much of the Naugatuck River Valley and New Haven. Later arrivals in the market included channels 61 of Hartford (1984...IND to FOX), 26 of New London (1986...IND to PAX to ION) and 59 of New Haven (1995...WB to UPN to MY).
 
Raleigh-Durham got educational TV very early, in 1955, when the University of North Carolina signed on WUNC-TV in Chapel Hill, on a VHF channel (4). The now-statewide UNC-TV network began in 1965 with another VHF channel in the Greenville-New Bern-Washington market, WUNB-TV 2 (now WUND) in Columbia (now licensed to Edenton, just across the Albermarle Sound, to be a Norfolk-Portmouth-Newport News market signal). That same year, Charlotte got educational TV via non-UNC-TV station WTVI-TV 42.
 
WQED-13, Pittsburgh, 1954. That channel was vacated by WJAC in Johnstown when it moved to Channel 6. Channel 13 could have wound up a commercial channel in McKeesport before it became the first community-supported educational station a few miles up the road. Around that same time there also was the competition for what would be the second and third commercial Vs in the market (after WDTV/KDKA), with Channel 11 assigned to Pittsburgh and Channel 4 initially to the McKeesport-Irwin area.
 
While Chicago got its first ETV station in 1955, one specifically serving nearby NW Indiana didn't happen until 1967 with WCAE 50 (then a non-commercial allocation). The station then & now is licensed to Gary, IN, but their studios were at Lake Central High School in St. John, Indiana. Wikipedia for WYIN claimed WCAE went off the air in 1984, but I remember channel 50 going off the air in 1983, & not going back on the air until 1987, when the 2 Gary Indiana allocations were swapped. Channel 50 went from non-commercial to commercial (in order for WPWR-TV to locate the station's antenna on the Sears Tower), while 56 (which didn't sign on until 11 months after WPWR-TV moved from 60 - 50) went from commercial to non-commercial. WCAE was primarily being supported by the Lake Central School System, & couldn't afford to keep WCAE on the air, & sold off the license. The owners of WYIN had intended to acquire the channel 50 license, when Newsweb Corp. acquired it, & swapped the allocations, & the owners of WYIN got the channel 56 license. NW Indiana has been served by WYIN since 1987. If it hadn't been for a grant to upgrade to digital, WYIN would have gone off the air on June 12th 2009.
 
RadioDaze said:
Raleigh-Durham got educational TV very early, in 1955, when the University of North Carolina signed on WUNC-TV in Chapel Hill, on a VHF channel (4). The now-statewide UNC-TV network began in 1965 with another VHF channel in the Greenville-New Bern-Washington market, WUNB-TV 2 (now WUND) in Columbia (now licensed to Edenton, just across the Albermarle Sound, to be a Norfolk-Portmouth-Newport News market signal). That same year, Charlotte got educational TV via non-UNC-TV station WTVI-TV 42.
Click to expand...


It is important to note here that the establishment of WUNC-TV would have been impossible without the generosity of Joseph Bryan, then President of Jefferson Standard Broadcasting. He planned to apply for the license for Channel 4 to extend Jefferson Standard’s presence into the Triangle. But when he learned the University was interested in acquiring Channel 4, he not only withdrew his request but turned all the paperwork connected with the application over to the University, saving thousands of dollars in research, engineering and legal fees.

http://www.unctv.org/aboutus/history/index.html
 
No, because it was five days before I was born;
WUNC Ch. 4 Chapel Hill signed on Jan. 8, 1955.
Its first program, I believe, was a basketball game
involving UNC.
 
I always remember WKNO in Memphis being on. According to Wikipedia they started on June 25th, 1956. WLJT in Lexington/Jackson, TN started on Feb. 13, 1968. They simulcast WKNO until 1981, and have been separate from WKNO since then.
 
WVIZ Cleveland Channel 25 signed on in February 1965..WNEO-45 signed on licensed to Alliance, Ohio in 1973 and WEAO-49 Akron in 1975..Both 45 and 49 had been ABC affiliates in the 1950's (45 in New Castle, Pa.-Youngstown, Ohio)
 
Beyond quasi-educational WOI-TV in the 50s (they did a lot of educational programs during the daytime outside of network hours) Iowa's first educational was KDPS-TV, channel 11 in Des Moines. KDPS went from the DM school board to the state of Iowa about '68 as KDIN. One of the last V's to hit the air in the midwest was KDIN's first satellite, KIIN channel 12 in Iowa City in early 1970. Iowa Public Television eventually expanded to 9 transmitters, all on UHF except for 11 and 12, which are still on RF 11 and 12.

And while legally Fort Dodge's KTIN channel 21 was a new license for IPTV in the mid 70s, it took over the facilities of KVFD-TV, the NBC affiliate there since 1953. KVFD's owner bulit a 1200' tower in the early 70s, but ad revenues from the expanded service area weren't enough to make the larger tower cash flow. So, when IPTV announced plans to build a new station on channel 46, the owner of KVFD proposed a swap. IPTV paid KVFD for the 1200' ch 21 plant, which allowed KVFD to move back to its original 500' tower in Fort Dodge proper with a used transmitter and antenna on channel 50. But in the spring of '77, a tornado made a direct strike on KVFD's channel 50 tower and KVFD-TV became eligible (but is not yet) a member of the UHF morgue (if Peter Q. George is still maintaining it?)
 
San Francisco's KQED, channel 9, signed on in April, 1954. It was not successful, and was about to shut down a year later, when the station's trustees decided to hold an on-air auction. This saved the station, and became an annual event, long before PBS and its pledge drives.
KQED also had a 'sister station', KQEC (The former KSAN-TV, channel 32), beginning in 1970. KQEC operated only sporadically during the '70s, and only part-time on a daily basis in the '80s. The FCC eventually took the station away from KQED's board, and 32 is now KMTP, a minority-owned channel that is not carried on many cable systems.

KCSM, located at the College of San Mateo, in a southern suburb of San Francisco, signed on in October, 1964, as channel 14. The station broadcast in black and white until 1979, when it swapped transmitter sites, and channel numbers, with Spanish-language station KDTV. KCSM subsequently became channel 60. Along with KMTP, KCSM is today one of a handful of non-commercial stations not affiliated with PBS, having left in 2009. Even in its earlier days, KCSM did not carry a full range of PBS programming; because of their college background, they relied more on instructional/'how to' shows rather than on children's programming, slthough they eventually ran British dramas.

KTEH, channel 54 in San Jose, also signed on in October 1964. In 2011, a few years after an informal 'merger' with KQED, the call letters became KQEH.
 
It's been noted elsewhere - and I guess one more time won't hurt - Alabama was the first state to implement a networked system for educational television. WTIQ (now WCIQ) Ch. 7 atop Mt. Cheaha (state's highest point) ... WBIQ Ch. 10 in Birmingham ... and WAIQ (now WDIQ) Ch. 2 in Dozier. This dates back to 1955.

Oddly enough, Mississippi - in 1970 - was the last state east of its namesake river to get into public broadcasting. WMAA 29/Jackson (now WMPN) in 1970, and most of the outlying stations were online by 1972. One final repeater signed on in the Fall of 1974: WMAE 12 in the northeast Miss. town of Booneville, just north of Tupelo, where I lived at the time. So I do remember that pretty well. I even have (somewhere) the full-page advert Miss. ETV had in TV GUIDE for the grand opening ceremony.

A curious fact about what is now MPB: in addition to its basic legislative appropriation, Mississippi ETV soon had another "sugar daddy" of sorts as the result of the WLBT 3/Jackson license forfeiture in 1971. At that point, the non-profit interim operator (Communications Improvement, Inc.) that took over Channel 3 deeded half of the station's profits to Mississippi ETV, playing a big role in funding the incredible -- for its time and place -- in-house programs the network would produce. "B.B.s Cover the Globe" comes to mind ... also "Clyde Frog" ... and what might be among their best-remembered shows in the '70s, "The Metric System" (think "Electric Company", except with measurements!)

anotherguy said:
I always remember WKNO in Memphis being on. According to Wikipedia they started on June 25th, 1956. WLJT in Lexington/Jackson, TN started on Feb. 13, 1968. They simulcast WKNO until 1981, and have been separate from WKNO since then.
Click to expand...

In the '70s, WKNO was carried on Tupelo's cable system (and remained after WMAE was launched). The grade school I attended had TVs in all the classrooms -- impressive, especially for Mississippi ;D -- so we were force-fed various stuff like "Electric Company." I do recall their station IDs at the time -- involving two slides, the first reading "Tennessee Public Television" with a voiceover repeating those words, then cutting to the legal ID slide, same font and same background. V/O: "You're watching channel 10, WKNO-TV in Memphis." Made me wonder if there were other stations in that "network" ... I suppose WLJT had a local engineer on hand to do their V/Os.

Another memory from those days: WKNO had slides counting down to the next program. "5 MINUTES TO NEXT PROGRAM"; "4 MINUTES....", and so on. An instrumental would play ... it seemed a muzak rendition for "Pretty Woman" played more often than others. It's strange what the mind recalls. :D

--Russell
 
I couldn't receive it here in New Britain, CT, but yet I seem to remember WEDW-TV (PBS) channel 49 of Bridgeport being programmed separately from the rest of the Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) stations in Hartford (24), Norwich (53) and New Haven (65). Maybe because Bridgeport (part of Fairfield County) is a portion of the New York City DMA?
 
Although Louisville had WFPK (now WKPC) by 1967 at the
latest, I don't think the statewide network, Kentucky Educational
Television, started until 1969. I remember an article in TV Guide
that spring that talked about kids in different Kentucky towns urging
their fellow citizens to "WATCH IT! Kentucky Educational Television!"
And I also believe the KET station in Hazard (WKHA) was the only one
there before Bill Gorman put WKYH (now WYMT) on the air there in 1969.
 
KCTS-9 here in Seattle, signed on in December 1954. Most if not all programming was in B&W until the 1970s. Most programming in the 50s/60s was K-12 and NET programs.

-crainbebo
 
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