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Channel 29 WTAF-TV Philadelphia

E

eyg2181

Guest
i popped in this old VHS tape my grandfather had in his VHS collection of things he recorded off the TV back in the day. i put in "North By Northwest", and a commercial came on (sort of). he was good at cutting out the commercials but the screen came on that said "The Movie On 29" you can tell the tape was stopped there until the commercials were over. when the movie continues it says "29 WTAF-TV Philadelphia" at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds.

obviously this station no longer exists, but does anyone know anything about it or remember the station? years it existed? sing on and sign off dates? general format of the station? etc...

this makes me want to pop in all of his old VHS tapes and see what station they were recorded from. he has a lot of great movies that were recorded back in the day. North By Northwest is one of my favorite movies, i always knew these tapes were around, but i never thought of putting one in, until now.
 
eyg2181 said:
obviously this station no longer exists, but does anyone know anything about it or remember the station? years it existed? sing on and sign off dates? general format of the station? etc...
Click to expand...

Actually it does still exist. The call letters were changed to WTXF. http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/call_hist.pl?Facility_id=51568&Callsign=WTXF-TV suggests it happened in April 1988 though it's a bit hard to tell. (apparently the WTAF calls were issued so far back that the FCC has not been able to digitize the records)
 
Yes. It's Fox29. WTAF was owned by Taft broadcasting. Someone else bought it and changed the call letters to WTXF and now Fox owns it. Fox has never changed the call letters. Channel 57 has changed call letters a couple of times. Even channel 6 changed call letters once.
 
According to Wikipedia, 29's calls were changed in 1988 to the current WTXF, possibly to reflect the name of then-owner TVX Broadcast Group. It was then owned by Paramount (29 was a Fox affiliate by then) and later by Fox.
 
judging by what i have seen, this station looks like its the best thing ever in the area as far as TV goes. now, the only local channels i watch are that PHL 17 for family, and ABC for Lost.

Thanks for the replies, and im gonna pop in more of those old VHS tapes.
 
For what it's worth:
WIBF stood for Irv and Bill Fox.
They also owned WIBF-FM 103.9 at the Benson East.
Former Congressman Jon Fox is Bill's son and Irv's nephew.
I vaguely remember that ch.29 ran a lot of stock market reports before the six o'clcok movie.
 
Early WIBF-TV newscasts featured Alan Scott reading a newspaper! Sports was handled by Don Henderson - all in glorious black & white. The only color capabilities they had was whenever they picked up leftover feeds from ABC-TV that Channel 6 didn't run - which incidentally included the first months of a new soap opera called: DARK SHADOWS! (also in glorious black & white).
 
eyg2181 said:
judging by what i have seen, this station looks like its the best thing ever in the area as far as TV goes. now, the only local channels i watch are that PHL 17 for family, and ABC for Lost.

Thanks for the replies, and im gonna pop in more of those old VHS tapes.
Click to expand...

All of the Philly UHF's had some great programming back in the day. You had WPHL 17, WTAF 29, and, my favorite back then WKBS 48. I still have the old UHF converter I used to use to view these stations! This was WAY before CATV ;)
 
wkbs !!! i liked it a lot , too !!! owned and operated by kaiser broadcasting , hence wkbs . licensed out of burlington , new jersey . their theme tune was "that happy feeling" , by bert kaemfert .
 
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