Retro; New York City, Wednesday, October 31, 1945

[Bob1370]

Source; New York Times

Channels;

1-WNBT (NBC, now WNBC ch. 4)
2-WCBW (CBS, now WCBS-TV)
4-WABD (DuMont, now WNYW-Fox, ch. 5)

EVENING

8:00
1-Herald-Tribune Forum; Secretary of State James Byrne, Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenberger, Dr. Vannevar Bush, panelists
2-Dwight Cooke, news & comment
8:10
2-Laughtime (comedy)
8:30
2-Films
8:50
2-Amateur Boxing Bouts

No programs scheduled on ch. 4 on this date

Programming was still sparse in the weeks following V-J day--with TV schedules briefer than they had been in the fall of 1941 at the dawn of commercial TV. First, there were still only a few thousand operating sets in New York and a few thousand more in a handful of cities with operating stations across the U.S. at the end of 1945, as manufacture and sale of sets came to a halt because of the war almost before they began. Second, a significant re-allocation of the VHF television and FM band was in progress at the FCC which would force suspension of TV broadcasts for several weeks in the late winter of 1945-46 while the few operating TV stations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Albany/Schenectady and Los Angeles retuned their transmitters to fit their new channels, and set owners prepared to book service calls to adjust their sets to receive them. It was inevitable that program development would be slowed until the situation settled, old sets re-adjusted and new sets able to pick up the newly assigned channels were available. All three New York stations would move. WNBT was moved from Channel 1 to the new Channel 4 (66-72 mHz, the pre-war channel 3); WCBW from the old Channel 2 (60-66 mHz, which would be renumbered Channel 3) to a new Channel 2 on the 54-60 mHz band; and WABD from the old prewar Channel 4 (78-84 mHz) down 2 mHz to the new Channel 5 (76-82 mHz). When WCBW moved to the new channel 2 early in 1946 it also changed callsign to WCBS-TV. The other stations changed calls later. Once the re-allocation of the band was complete stations began to increase their schedules gradually over the next few years, first filling up the evening hours, then into the afternoons, then mornings, finally late nights, as more sets were installed--and at the same time, more stations in more cities signed on (including four more stations in New York, channels 7, 9, 11, and 13, making their debuts in 1948 and 1949).

 

[Mike Stroud]

Those were the days, weren't they? As a little kid one of the things that I was so curious about, but never got an answer to, was why there was no channel 1. And, at the other end of the dial, I was frustrated about not knowing why UHF stopped at 83 (as it did prior to the 1990s). Nowadays, the kids look at you with amazement when you tell them that there was a time when most people only got four channels, instead of the 500-750 we have these days.

 

[Bob1370]

"As a little kid one of the things that I was so curious about, but never got an answer to, was why there was no channel 1."

In the first (1946) rewrite of the VHF band, there was a Channel 1, at 44-50 mHz. It was supposed to be for lower powered small-town "local" stations with 1/5 the authorized power of the "metropolitan" class stations licensed to larger cities and surrounding suburbs. Some "local" stations were also allocated on other channels 2-13 as well, and they actually got on the air and later became full-power stations--but no one ever signed on using the new Channel 1. All the FMs that started in 1940 and 1941 on the 42-50 mHz band had to be moved up to 88-108 mHz first, and that wasn't fully accomplished until the end of 1948. By then, TV construction had been frozen as part of the same second-stage realignment of the VHF band that produced a four year freeze on new TV stations, an eventual re-assignment of operating stations to different channels between 2 and 13, and creation of hundreds of new VHF and UHF stations after 1952. The FCC rethought things, determined that 44-50 was no good for TV (too much skip and tropospheric ducting) and better suited to lower-power police and fire emergency calls) and killed Channel 1 for good...meanwhile also deciding that all TV stations should be high power stations, a policy they wouldn't reverse until LPTV came along in the '80s.


"And, at the other end of the dial, I was frustrated about not knowing why UHF stopped at 83 (as it did prior to the 1990 s)."

The feds were stretching it by extending things to near 900 mHz back in 1952 and they knew it. Receiver and transmitter technology was borderline that high up the UHF band; both sensitvity and stability were iffy then, and UHF in 1952, especially above 600 mHz (approximately channel 36) was a gamble that technology would improve beyond the 1952 state of the art.