CITIES WHERE THE 1ST TV STATION WAS A UHF

[fybush]

I'm not sure those apps were even entertained a decade later. The only cases I can cite with any certainty where a station in the pre-deregulatory era was allowed to change bands were the three Vs that were ordered by the FCC to go to UHF around 1960 as part of deintermixture. (That would be WTVH Peoria from 8 to 19, KFRE-TV Fresno from 12 to 30 and KERO-TV Bakersfield from 10 to 23.)

I am less certain about some early U-to-V moves, in particular the shift of WJPB-TV Weston WV from 35 to 5 in 1959. It appears that the FCC issued a new CP for channel 5 to the owner of WJPB, conditioned on the surrender of the existing channel 35 license, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

 

[Ultimajock]

I believe WMTV (then on 33, later on 15) and WKOW 27 were on the air in Madison, Wisconsin before WISC-TV on 3.

Indeed, WISC-TV was the last station to sign on in Madison until WMSN-TV (47) showed up in the mid-1980s.

...in fact, WHA-TV/21 was also on the air before WISC-TV/3...

There were other markets where a VHF station may have been first, but one or more UHFs signed on before the next VHF(s). Milwaukee, for example. WTMJ-TV 4 was first, but WCAN-TV 25 and WOKY-TV 19 showed up before WISN-TV 12 and WITI-TV 6. (I will concede my timing may not be 100% accurate with regard to WISN. It is accurate, with regard to WITI.)

...you're accurate about WCAN-TV and WOKY-TV pre-dating WTVW/12. In fact, WTVW took WOKY-TV's ABC affiliation in October 1954, which, combined with DuMont's crumbling status as a network, forced WOKY to sell itself to CBS (which was looking for a UHF to purchase after the FCC forced them to divest themselves of their partial ownership of WTOP-TV/9 Washington and WCCO-TV/4 Minneapolis). This, in turn, led Lou Poller to sell WCAN-TV's physical facilities to CBS to merge with Channel 19, as it was obvious that CBS intended to move their own network from WCAN-TV to their own license...

 

[Limp73]

WLOK-TV (later WIMA-TV now WLIO) in Lima, Ohio is Lima's first TV station...Lima had no VHF's but some stations out of Toledo (the former WSPD 13 and WTOL 11) reached into northern Lima and Findlay (somewhat) also all of Ft. Wayne's TV stations which are all UHFs also reached into the western part of Limaland. When Lima Cablevision opened up in the mid 60s Lima,Ft. Wayne and Dayton's stations were also watchable there.

 

[Smittian]

Corpus Christi, TX---KVDO, channel 22. Signed on in 1954, went dark in 1957. I wasn't around then, but some say this was the forerunner of KIII-TV, Channel 3 which signed on in 1964

 

[easttxtv]

Tyler/Longview:
The first 2 stations were UHFs, KETX/19 and KTVE/32. I don't know which station debuted first. Sometime after October 1954, when KLTV/7 first went on the air, both stations ended up fading with little early UHF support, financial issues, and KLTV was able to cherry-pick shows from all the nets from the start. The Chalk Hill Media website (http://www.chalkhillmedia.org/Museum/KTVE.htm) shows more info and pix about KTVE.

(PS:::: The KTVE calls would be used again, now at a station in El Dorado, AR; while the use of Ch. 19 in the Tyler/Longview market would return over 30 years later, at KLSB in Nacogdoches, then in 2004, moved to Tyler as the current KYTX.)

 

[gbranch]

From the 1954-1955 Telecasting Yearbook:

KETX-19 went on the air on 8/24/53 with an ERP of 270kW visual from a 900' HAAT tower.
KTVE-32 went on the air on 10/25/53 with an ERP of 20kW visual from a 290' HAAT tower.

KTVE was a low power station by today's standards, and it's service area was most likely confined to Longview and Kilgore, even though they claimed that their signal "covered east Texas like the dew." Their transmitter was also in a very sparsely populated area of the Sabine River floodplain between Longview and Kilgore, so much of the signal covered nobody.

I don't know when KETX went dark, but I believe that KTVE signed off sometime in December 1955.

 

[easttxtv]

From the 1954-1955 Telecasting Yearbook:

KETX-19 went on the air on 8/24/53 with an ERP of 270kW visual from a 900' HAAT tower.
KTVE-32 went on the air on 10/25/53 with an ERP of 20kW visual from a 290' HAAT tower.

KTVE was a low power station by today's standards, and it's service area was most likely confined to Longview and Kilgore, even though they claimed that their signal "covered east Texas like the dew." Their transmitter was also in a very sparsely populated area of the Sabine River floodplain between Longview and Kilgore, so much of the signal covered nobody.

I don't know when KETX went dark, but I believe that KTVE signed off sometime in December 1955.

290' ?? How did that signal even get anywhere? Amazing.

Thanx Greg for the extra clarification, I haven't tried to find one of the old Yearbooks in a while.

 

[gbranch]

Thanx Greg for the extra clarification, I haven't tried to find one of the old Yearbooks in a while.

David Gleason, aka David Eduardo, has scans of old Broadcasting and Telecasting yearbooks on his site http://www.davidgleason.com. These are great resources when researching the histories of old stations.