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Retro: New York City, Monday, October 27, 1941

KeithE4 said:
I thought the 525/30 standard was mandated as of July 1941 in order to get a commercial license.
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You're right, Keith ... the 525-line standard was approved by the FCC April 30, 1941. My mind was confusing the issue with the decision to rescind the February 28, 1940 441-line standard (less than three months later, on May 27) and returning television to experimental status, because RCA jumped the gun in promoting commercial television and angered the FCC in the process.

DuMont wanted a 625-line standard from the very start and the FCC called the 525-line system a "compromise" between the RCA and DuMont systems.
 
The FCC, wanting to be fair to both NBC and CBS, granted commercial licenses to their NYC stations starting the same day, July 1, 1941. Apparently NBC got a leg up on CBS by signing on an hour before normal on that day. So we can say that WNBT was the first commercially licensed TV station in America. And it also broadcast the first TV commercial, a ticking watch with the words "Bulova Watch Time" seen on the screen as we could read the time from the watch.

NBC's NYC station already had a daily schedule in 1939, even as an experimental station, to coincide with the RCA exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair. But CBS had already done some TV shows as early as 1931, featuring Kate Smith and George Gershwin, although that was using an older TV system. And General Electric, on the station that became WRGB Schenectady, is credited with broadcasting the first TV drama, when it televised a community theater play in 1928. That was only a few years after WGY Radio got its commercial license.

So TV really wasn't that far behind radio. But WWII really slowed down the development of television. Lots of people were buying radios in the 1920s but it wasn't till 1950, or at least the late 40s, before some families had a TV in the home. My dad says he and his friends would go to a bar to watch sporting events on TV several years before his family had a TV of their own.
 
Gregg. said:
The FCC, wanting to be fair to both NBC and CBS, granted commercial licenses to their NYC stations starting the same day, July 1, 1941. Apparently NBC got a leg up on CBS by signing on an hour before normal on that day.
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Actually, CBS had announced a week before that their sign-on time was going to be 2:30pm and NBC, 2:00pm. So even though NBC did sign on a half-hour earlier, the CBS sign-on time was not "before normal".
 
Wikipedia has another version of how NBC beat CBS on the air on July 1, 1941. It says CBS was having trouble getting on the air on that day...

>>>The NBC and CBS stations were licensed and instructed to sign on simultaneously on July 1 so that neither of the major broadcast companies could claim exclusively to be "first." However, WCBW did not manage to sign on the air until 2:30 p.m., one full hour after WNBT. As a result, WNBC inadvertently holds the distinction as the oldest continuously operating commercial television station in the United States.<<<

But then Wikipedia gets confused by saying WNBT started with the Star Spangled Banner at 1pm. So that would mean WNBC had a 90 minute head start on WCBS-TV.
 
Gregg. said:
Wikipedia has another version of how NBC beat CBS on the air on July 1, 1941. It says CBS was having trouble getting on the air on that day...

>>>The NBC and CBS stations were licensed and instructed to sign on simultaneously on July 1 so that neither of the major broadcast companies could claim exclusively to be "first." However, WCBW did not manage to sign on the air until 2:30 p.m., one full hour after WNBT. As a result, WNBC inadvertently holds the distinction as the oldest continuously operating commercial television station in the United States.<<<

But then Wikipedia gets confused by saying WNBT started with the Star Spangled Banner at 1pm. So that would mean WNBC had a 90 minute head start on WCBS-TV.
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It's Wikipedia, known for in many cases almost (but not quite) getting the facts straight. This is what happens when you create an encyclopedia that the users can edit if they think they know better than the facts.

You have no idea how many Wikipedia entries I have fixed for various radio stations and for defunct UHF stations. One entry I had to clean up had an "edit" from someone listing the titles of newscasts a station would have used if it hadn't gone dark. That's a fact?

The announcement of sign-on times was published in Broadcasting the last week of June, 1941. I base my statement on that and will not stand down for a Wikipedia quote.
 
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