Retro; New York City, Thursday, July 30, 1959

[Bob1370]

"Amazing that, less than 15 years after the war, NYC already had 7 over the air stations."

New York actually had all those stations on the air by the fall of 1949. It wasn't the only market to max out the VHF dial within only a few years after the war...Los Angeles also had seven stations on the air before New Year's Day 1950.

 

[SfanGoch]

I recall that Freed used to rook performers out of royalties by demanding co-writer credit on their songs, or he would not play them on his show. This was the case with Chuck Berry's "Maybelline."

...this is not entirely true. Freed was a musician prior to his broadcasting career, and he legitimately composed songs as a hobby (Harvey Fuqua of The Moonglows swore until the day he died that Freed actually co-wrote "Sincerely" with him, and Freed pointedly refused to play the McGuire Sisters version of that song, even though it was a better seller than the Moonglows original).

I respectfully disagree, rnigma.

Years ago (1977-79), I had the fortune to meet Harvey, through ace recording engineer Tom Collins, when he was in charge of A&R at RCA Records. He regularly visited RCA's offices and recording studios, at 1133 Sixth Ave. (no self-respecting NY'er calls it "Avenue of the Americas" ;D) when I worked there. Anywho, I used to talk with Harvey about the early days of Doo Wop; and, I asked him about the story concerning Freed and "Sincerely". He scrunched his face and said, "He had as much to do with writing my song as I did writing the Old Testament, Joe. He wasn't anybody's fool. Alan had himself added to the writing credits for one reason...royalties. He could smell a hit and had the ability to predict how well a particular record will do, in terms of sales. It also was the only way to get our record airtime." Harvey also compared him with Morris Levy, saying that the only difference was Levy had better connections with the Mob.

 

[rnigma1]

Well, thanks for clearing that up... so, Freed did demand a piece of the writing credit on certain songs he played, though the division of credits on "Maybellene" was the Chess brothers' idea.

 

[MCarney]

Bandstand was available for 90 minutes a day via the ABC Network. However, WABC-TV (Channel 7) did have some autonomy with the network and as you can see they decided to only run 60 minutes at the time. WFIL-TV (Channel 6) in Philadelphia ran it the entire 90 minutes and the affiliates had the option to either run 60 or 90 minutes a day. Many of them chose to do the 60 minute version and dump the last half hour for local availability.

According to a May 1961 Television Week, WNAC channel 7 in Boston (which became the ABC affiliate at the start of the year) only aired 30 minutes of Bandstand, running movies at 4:30p. They dropped the show altogether by the end of the year.

 

[BMR]

"Amazing that, less than 15 years after the war, NYC already had 7 over the air stations."

New York actually had all those stations on the air by the fall of 1949. It wasn't the only market to max out the VHF dial within only a few years after the war...Los Angeles also had seven stations on the air before New Year's Day 1950.

Really. That was early. I think we (the UK) were just switching our single channel back on at that point.

It would be really interesting to see what cities got how many stations at what point- obviously quite a big question, so I don't expect an answer here, but if anyone knows of any good web links I'd love to read them.

 

[Tim L]

Most of the then largest cities had 3 VHF Network Affiliates before January 1, 1950. For example, in Cleveland, Ohio:

5 WEWS-December 17, 1947 (First in Ohio) CBS
4 WNBK-October 31, 1948 NBC
9 WXEL-December 19, 1949 DuMont/ABC..

I believe Cincinnati and Columbus had their 3 Network stations before 1950 as well..