MY AREA FINALLY HAD ALL 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) WHEN ____ SIGNED ON IN 19??

[landtuna]

Tucson
CBS - KOPO 13 (1953); NBC - KVOA 4 (1953); ABC - KDWI 9 (1956)

I lived in Tucson in the 50's but don't remember channel 9 as having been anything but KGUN. When did they change their call from KDWI? Was it an ownership change as well or just branding?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

...but don't remember channel 9 as having been anything but KGUN. When did they change their call from KDWI?
Was it an ownership change as well or just branding?

Original owner D.W. Ingram (hence KDWI) sold the station in 1957 and the subsequent
owner changed the calls to KGUN.

I stumbled upon an article about Ingram as a Cochise County rancher in the 1960s and his
efforts to establish telephone service in that (rural) area, balking at what Ma Bell wanted to
charge the residents:

http://m.willcoxrangenews.com/articles/2010/10/22/news/news05.txt

 

[landtuna]

Original owner D.W. Ingram (hence KDWI) sold the station in 1957 and the subsequent
owner changed the calls to KGUN.

That must explain why I've always thought KGUN fired up in '57 instead of '56.

 

[cwf1701]

Detroit was another area to get all three networks early. the original NBC-ABC-CBS lineup as of 1-1-1949
WJBK-2 (CBS) signed on 10-24-1948
WWJ(WDIV)-4 (NBC) Singed on 6-3-1947
WXYZ-7 (ABC) signed on 10-9-1948

 

[RadioDaze]

Re: MY AREA FINALLY HAD ALL 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) WHEN ____ SIGNED ON IN

I'd forgotten about this, but Fayetteville had a TV station from 1955-58, WFLB-TV 18. With UHF power levels what they were at the time, it was almost certainly a non-issue in the northern, Raleigh-Durham portion of the market (probably akin to Fayetteville's present-day WFPX, channel 62). I don't know with what network, if any, WFLB-TV was affiliated.

In the Raleigh-Durham market, that would have been, on a permanent basis, between 1968 and 1971. Let me explain: When WRDU-TV 28 in Durham signed on in 1968, it was officially the market's NBC affiliate, though Durham's WTVD, channel 11, then the market's CBS affiliate, was also affiliated with NBC and had cherry-picked stronger programmingto work into its schedule since WRAL-TV, channel 5 in Raleigh, dropped NBC for ABC in 1962. The FCC had to get involved so that WTVD went with CBS fulltime and WRDU with NBC in 1971.

Delving even further back into our market's unique history, we actually had all three networks for a brief period from 1956-1959: The first station to sign on here, in 1953, was WNAO-TV, channel 28 in Raleigh, a CBS affiliate. In 1954, Durham's WTVD signed on as an NBC affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliation. In 1956, Raleigh's second station, WRAL-TV, signed on as an NBC affiliate, with CBS shifting to WTVD and ABC, to WNAO. With the major disadvantages of UHF at that time, especially in a vast market such as this one going up against two VHFs, WNAO went out of business in 1959, with WRAL and WTVD splitting ABC until 1962.

Except for operating on the same channel, the 1968 Durham-licensed WRDU-TV is in no way connected to the 1953 Raleigh-licensed WNAO-TV. NBC would stick with channel 28 as WRDU (1968-1978), WPTF-TV (1978-1991) and WRDC (1991-1995) before moving to a 1988 sign-on, Goldsboro-licensed WNCN, channel 17, which has an interesting history all its own (but perhaps one for another thread). As one can imagine with all the changes, NBC is traditionally not very strong in this market.

Actually, I have a North Carolina edition of TV Guide from 1957 that shows WTVD as ABC and WNAO as CBS; I think somebody got it wrong on wikipedia.

I lived in Raleigh/Durham during the WRAL/WTVD/WNAO years; the next time I lived in a market with three stations was 1965:
Greenville/New Bern/Washington, with WITN (NBC), WNCT (CBS), and WNBE (now WCTI) (ABC).

 

[johnnya2k6]

In Anchorage, KENI-TV (now KTUU) became a full-time NBC station with KIMO taking ABC. KTVA, of course, remained with CBS.

Fairbanks would finally have all four network stations themselves when K13XD (CBS) signed on in the summer of 1996.

 

[bpatrick]

Re: MY AREA FINALLY HAD ALL 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) WHEN ____ SIGNED ON IN

WFLB was a CBS primary, probably filling in the gaps
where WNAO didn't reach.

A couple of things I've failed to mention about WNAO:
first, that 1957 issue of TV Guide I mentioned lists
WNAO as CBS and ABC, yet Lawrence Welk is the only
ABC program I've been able to find listed on the station.

Second of all, we once had a poster who lived about five
blocks from me in Raleigh in 1957 (I was two years old and
didn't know him), and he said he had difficulty picking up
WNAO--in the part of town most likely to pick it up!
Actually, we watched WNAO quite a bit, probably because
we moved to Raleigh from Greensboro, where we'd developed
the CBS habit through WFMY.

The News and Observer, owners of WNAO, got a little revenge
after WRAL came in and took away most of the station's advertising,
forcing 28 off the air. In 1962 WRAL switched from NBC to ABC; the
next year WGHP signed on as an ABC affiliate with coverage in the
Triangle (I used to get a snowy but acceptable picture on Ch. 8).
The N&O went out of its way to advertise WGHP's programming.

(Personal note: WGHP was less pre-emption happy than WRAL in
those days, and I watched it every chance I got. I would have watched
it even more if I'd known it was borrowing its schedule heavily from Ch. 11
in Atlanta, which it did until the ABC/NBC switch in Atlanta in 1980.)

 

[oburn]

mobile alabama april 1960 wear abc wkrg cbs wala nbc wear came on in 1954 but was hard to get without a cha

nnel 3 yagi antenna i believe pensacola could get all 3 in sept 1959 at one time in 1954-55 jackson miss had wjtv cbs wlbt nbc wsli abc for a time in 1954 pensacola had wala nbc wpfa cbs wear abc

 

[KeyTimes950]

I think OMW meant WKST-TV ...

http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/2007/11/wkstwytv-4533youngstowns-abc-tv.html

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

I think OMW meant WKST-TV ...

Of course I did. I have no idea where "WXTV" came from in my head.

Oh, here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYTV

WYTV was replaced on channel 45 by independent station WXTV which moved from channel 73 and remained on-the-air until late-1962.

Anyone want to take a bet on the third set of calls I screw up in this thread?

 

[RyanHoward]

I think OMW meant WKST-TV ...

Of course I did. I have no idea where "WXTV" came from in my head.

Oh, here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYTV

WYTV was replaced on channel 45 by independent station WXTV which moved from channel 73 and remained on-the-air until late-1962.

Anyone want to take a bet on the third set of calls I screw up in this thread?

Channel 45 was later reallocated to nearby Alliance, OH as an educational allotment.
In the early 70's, WNEO-TV came on the air as the PBS station for Youngstown.