Dick Nitelinger said:
It's been years in the making, but my book:
Milwaukee Television History: The Analog Years is at the printer, and should be available later this month.
You can downlaod a flyer (in PDF format) at:
http://www.milwaukee-horror-hosts.com/DGTV_flyer_web.pdf. Ordering information can be found therein. You can also go directly to the Marquette University Press website at:
http://www.marquette.edu/mupress/
- Dick
I got my copy on Thursday. Was hoping it would last until Wednesday. (as the weather is going to suck down here for the next three days -- and I'm on vacation...) But I couldn't wait that long... finished it a few minutes ago.
The pictures are of course fascinating. Lots of namedropping, many of which I recognize.
But the text is better. My interests are more on the technical side than on the programming/administrative, and I was not disappointed. (I will say, if you've read Randall Davidson's book
9XM Calling: WHA Radio and the Wisconsin Idea, Davidson's work is more technical)
Oh, if you really don't care about TV -- do note that this book does more than touch on how many of Milwaukee's radio stations got launched. For example, explaining where the mystery WEXT-1430 Milwaukee that appears in a small number of early 1950s listings came from and went to.
If we thought the industry was cutthroat today, well, some of the maneuvering to try to get VHF channels in the 1950s was downright nasty. Likewise the attempts to prevent the creation of Channel 10. (at least as a public TV station!)
Dick, on the first page of Chapter 15 you mention WSM-TV's experimental Lawrenceburg, Tenn. booster. It happens I work for what was WSM-TV -- and have a copy of a report on the operation of the booster. (IIRC it even includes a schematic?) This thing was fed off-air! - it picked up the station's signal on channel 4 and rebroadcast it on the same channel. WSM-TV may have led experiments on the subject, but once the FCC enacted regulations allowing routine use of these things, we never pursued it. To my knowledge neither did anyone else -- on-channel TV boosters remain few and far between. (they're MUCH more common for FM; WKKV-100.7 had one for awhile) I suspect the feedback issues were worse than the report suggests.
As an ex-WISC-TV employee I also found the comments on page 163 about the disposition of channels 3 and 27 in Madison quite interesting. (and the fact that WFOX -- now WNOV -- basically lost a shot at TV by somehow concluding that Madison was in the Milwaukee market!)
Oh, and the explanation of the "Vitascan" color system! I'd seen ads for it but had no idea how it worked. (if I *had* seen it explained in an ad I would have never believed it could work!)
I've been working on compiling a technical history of radio statewide - pretty much entirely a numbers thing - still have a bunch of work to do with the 1960s & 1970s.
