Retro: Tri-Cities TN/VA Sat, Aug 19, 1995

[Bluenoser]

from TV Guide, Bristol/Kingsport/Johnson City edition
Pledge breaks may affect airtimes on PBS stations

WSJK 2-PBS Sneedville (sister to WKOP Memphis-2 signed on in 1967, with WKOP signing-on in 1990)
8:00 Ghostwriter
8:30 In the Mix
9:00 GED
10:00 Riders of the Silver Screen (bw)
11:30 Computer Chronicles
noon Cooking with Master Chefs
12:30 Victory Garden
1:00 Frugal Gourmet
1:30 This Old House
2:00 New Yankee Workshop
2:30 Hometime
3:00 Oriental Rugs et al
3:30 Sewing with Nancy
4:00 Art of Sewing
4:30 Lawns & Gardens: Houseplants
5:00 Lawns & Gardens: Fall Cleanup
6:00 Tennessee Crossroads
7:00 Lawrence Welk (Tribute to Glenn Miller)
8:00 Bob Dylan Unplugged (extended version of his 1994 MTV appearance)
10:00 Movie "A Hard Day's Night" (bw)
11:30 (approx. depending on pledge breaks) sign-off

WCYB 5-NBC Bristol
5:00 NBC News Nightside
7:00 Real News for Kids
7:30 News
8:00 Saturday Today (Andy Pargh reports on home dishes at a Nashville trade show)
10:00 Name Your Adventure (a California teen hangs out with Ben and Jerry, and another teen spends the day with some docs)
10:30 Saved by the Bell (x2)
11:30 Smoky Mountain Wrestling (Knoxville and Hazard aired SMW on Sundays; WTNZ at 11am and WYMT at 12:30pm)
12:30 On Scene: Emergency Response
1:00 Summer Stuntmaster Spectacular
2:00 Bicycling: US Track Cycling Championships
4:00 Tennis: RCA Championships semifinals
6:00 News
6:30 NBC Nightly News
7:00 Wheel of Fortune
7:30 Jeopardy!
8:00 US Gymnastics Championships: women's finalss
9:00 Movie "Danielle Steele's 'Secrets'"
11:00 News
11:20 Highlights Tonight
11:30 Saturday Night Live (host Bob Saget/music by TLC)
1:00 Showtime at the Apollo
2:00 NBC News Nightside

WATE 6-ABC Knoxville
5:00 High Tide
6:00 Feed Your Mind!
6:30 New at the Zoo
7:00 Phantom 2040
7:30 Captain Planet
8:00 Free Willy
8:30 Bump in the Night
9:30 ReBoot
10:30 Bill Nye the Science Guy
11:00 New at the Zoo
11:30 Gladiators 2000
noon Bugs Bunny & Tweety
12:30 ABC Weekend Special "The Joke's on Mr. Little" (WKRP's Richard Sanders is the victim of a couple of student pranksters who want their old teacher back)
1:00 Cosby Show
1:30 Infomercial
2:00 Siskel & Ebert (looks at favorite summer flicks)
2:30 National Georgraphic: On Assignment
3:30 College Football Preview
4:30 ABC Wide World of Sports: Travers Stakes horse race/WBC super-welterweight champ Luis Santana (40-15-2, 29 KO) in his second rematch (the first ended in a DQ) against former champ "Terrible" Terry Norris (38-6, 23 KO)
6:00 News
6:30 ABC World News Saturday
7:00 American Gladiators
8:00 Baseball: Atlanta-St. Louis
11:00 News
11:35 A Current Affair: Extra
12:35 Highlander
1:35 News
2:10 Robin's Hoods
3:05 World of National Geographic
4:00 Movie "Two on a Guillotine" (bw)

WKXT 8-CBS Knoxville
5:00 Home Shopping Network
5:50 Farm Digest
6:00 Mask (premiere)
6:30 Garfield & Friends
7:00 CBS StoryBreak
7:30 Beakman's World
8:00 Little Mermaid
8:30 Wonderland
9:00 Aladdin
9:30 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
10:00 Not Just News
10:30 UCTV Shopping Network
11:00 WWF Wrestling
noon WCW Wrestling
1:00 Infomercials
2:00 Movie "Full Exposure: The Sex Tapes Scandal"
4:00 Golf: The International
6:00 Baywatch
7:00 Lonesome Dove: The Series (George Kennedy guest stars as a hangin' judge)
8:00 Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
9:00 Touched by an Angel
10:00 Walker. Texas Ranger
11:00 News
11:30 Hot, Hip & Country (look at Wynonna's latest projects/interview with Blackhawk)
mid. Baywatch
1:00 BeachClash
2:00 Home Shopping Network

WBIR 10-NBC Knoxville
5:00 NBC News Nightside
6:00 Home Again
6:30 Martha Stewart Living
7:00 Saturday Today
8:00 News (were there many NBC stations that sandwiched local news between the first and second hours of Saturday Today?)
9:00 Saturday Today
10:00 Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures
10:30 Nick News
11:00 Saved by the Bell
11:30 Name Your Adventure
noon NBA Inside Stuff
12:30 Championship
1:00 Southern College Football Preview
2:00 Bicycling: US Track Cycling Championships
4:00 Tennis: RCA Championships semifinals
6:00 News
6:30 NBC Nightly News
7:00 Wheel of Fortune
7:30 Jeopardy!
8:00 US Gymnastics Championships: women's finals
9:00 Movie "Danielle Steele's 'Secrets'"
11:00 News
11:30 Saturday Night Live
1:00 Comedy Showcase
2:00 NBC News Nightside

WJHL 11-CBS Johnson City
6:30 Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
7:00 DuckTales
7:30 Nick News
8:00 Little Mermaid
8:30 Beethoven
9:00 Aladdin
9:30 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
10:00 Mask
10:30 Garfield & Friends
11:00 WildCATS
11:30 Skeleton Warriors
noon Beakman's World
12:30 CBS StoryBreak
1:00 ACC Football '95: The Season Ahead
2:00 Martha Stewart Living
2:30 Roseanne
3:00 Sirens
4:00 Golf: The International
6:00 News
6:30 CBS Evening News
7:00 Baywatch
8:00 Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
9:00 Touched by an Angel
10:00 Walker, Texas Ranger
11:00 News
11:35 Lonesome Dove: The Series
12:35 Murphy Brown
1:05 sign-off

WLOS 13-ABC Asheville
6:00 Bump in the Night
7:00 ReBoot
8:00 News
10:00 Monster Force
10:30 Fudge (season premiere #2, followed by another ep at 11)
11:30 Bugs Bunny & Tweety
noon Bill Nye the Science Guy
12:30 Edison Adventures
1:00 Southern College Football Preview
2:00 Infomercial
2:30 Movie "Gremlins"
4:30 ABC Wide World of Sports
6:00 News
6:30 ABC World News Saturday
7:00 Baywatch
8:00 Baseball: Atlanta-St. Louis
11:00 News
11:35 Movie "Airport '77" (pt 1, conclusion next Sat night)
1:35 Trauma Center
2:05 sign-off

WKPT 19-ABC Kingsport
5:00 Home Shopping Spree
5:30 Infomercial
6:00 Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures
6:30 Phantom 2040
7:00 Captain Planet
7:30 Gladiators 2000
8:00 Free Willy
8:30 Bump in the Night
9:30 ReBoot
10:30 Fudge (season premiere #2, followed by another ep)
11:30 Bugs Bunny & Tweety
noon American Gladiators
1:00 Movie "Cheetah"
3:00 A Current Affair: Extra
4:00 Mike Tyson: The Road Back (the Tyson-McNeely "fight" aired that night on PPV)
4:30 ABC Wide World of Sports
6:00 Movie "Hercules in the Underworld" (Kevin Sorbo in the title role)
8:00 Baseball: Atlanta-St. Louis
11:00 The Extraordinary
mid. Movie "Full Exposure: The Sex Tapes Scandal"
2:00 Beverly Hills 90210
3:00 Space Precinct
4:00 Court TV: Inside America's Courts
4:30 Home Shopping Spree

WAP(K) 30-UPN Kingsport (WKPT's sister station)
5:00 Home Shopping Spree
9:00 Johnson City Committee Meeting
12:30 Home Shopping Spree
1:30 24/Seven
2:30 Infomercial
3:00 Space Precinct
4:00 Forever Knight
5:00 California Dreams
5:30 Computer Man
6:00 This Week in Baseball
6:30 Court TV: Inside America's Courts
7:00 World of National Geographic "Treasures from the Past"
8:00 Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards (honors black women who've distinguished themselves in R&B, rap, hip-hop, jazz and gospel music; performances by Anita Baker, Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature, Brandy, CeCe Winans, and Da Brat)
10:00 Entertainers (includes profiles of Will Smith and Jimmy Smits)
11:00 Soul Train (guests Branford Marsalis and Changing Faces)
mid. Home Shopping Spree

WEMT 39-Fox Johnson City
5:30 US Farm Report
6:00 Monster Force
6:30 VR Troopers
7:00 Iron Man
7:30 Fantastic Four
8:00 Animaniacs
8:30 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
9:00 Eek! the Cat/Terrible Thunderlizards
9:30 Batman & Robin
10:00 Spider-Man
10:30 The Tick
11:00 X-Men
11:30 Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
noon Movie "Dead Heat"
2:00 Movie "Amazing Stories: The Movie"
4:00 Movie "Amazing Stories: The Movie II"
6:00 Simpsons (Jackie Mason plays Krusty's estranged father)
6:30 NASCAR Weekly
7:00 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
8:00 Cops (NYPD/LAPD)
9:00 America's Most Wanted
10:00 Sightings
11:00 Tales from the Crypt (x2)
mid. High Tide
1:00 Super Dave (x2, WATE ran him Friday latenights)
2:00 Movie "Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun"
4:00 21 Jump Street

WTNZ 43-Fox Knoxville
6:00 BattleTech
6:30 Baby Huey
7:00 Iron Man
7:30 Fantastic Four
8:00 Animaniacs
8:30 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
9:00 Eek! the Cat/Terrible Thunderlizards
9:30 Batman & Robin
10:00 Spider-Man
10:30 The Tick
11:00 X-Men
11:30 Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
noon Movie "Police Academy 3: Back in Training"
2:00 Movie "Running Cool"
4:00 Movie "Hercules in the Underworld"
6:00 Simpsons (Jackie Mason plays Krusty's estranged father, another ep at 6:30)
7:00 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
8:00 Cops (NYPD/LAPD)
9:00 America's Most Wanted
10:00 Sightings
11:00 Tales from the Crypt (x2)
mid. Forever Knight
1:00 Movie "Talk Radio"
3:00 sign-off

WSBN 47-Norton/WMSY 52-Marion (PBS) (Blue Ridge Public TV, relays WBRA Roanoke)
8:00 Dudley the Dragon
8:30 Sesame Street
9:30 Shining Time Station
10:00 Nova
11:00 Nature
noon Lawns & Gardens: Fall Cleanup
12:30 Victory Garden
1:00 Frugal Gourmet
1:30 This Old House
2:00 American Woodshop
2:30 Hometime
3:00 P is for Picnic (Cookin' Cheap special)
5:30 Storytime
6:00 Ghostwriter
7:00 All Creatures Great & Small
8:00 Lawrence Welk (Miller tribute)
9:00 Waiting for God
9:30 As Times Go By
10:00 One Foot in the Grave
10:30 So Haunt Me
11:00 (approx.) sign-off

WYMT 57-CBS Hazard
7:00 Skeleton Warriors
7:30 What's Up Network
8:00 Little Mermaid
8:30 Beethoven
9:00 Aladdin
9:30 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
10:00 Beakman's World
10:30 Scott's Place
11:00 Classifieds
noon Outdoors with Dean Durham
1:00 Inside Kentucky Golf
1:30 Fishing Diary
2:00 Infomercial
2:30 Extremists
3:00 Lifestyles with Leach & Belafonte
4:00 Movie "Notorious"
6:00 News
6:30 CBS Evening News
7:00 Lonesome Dove: The Series
8:00 Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
9:00 Touched by an Angel
10:00 Walker, Texas Ranger
11:00 News
11:20 Sports Spectrum
11:40 Renegade
12:40 Extremists
1:10 Infomercial
1:40 sign-off

 

[gregg75]

At my grandmother's house in the late 60's in eastern Kentucky, there are lots of mountains and most people lived on the flater bottom lands. You had to put an antenna on top of the mountain and run a long wire down to your tv. Even with that, she could only get WCYB 5 and it was snowy at times. Considering Bristol was about 100 miles away, it's a wonder she even got that.

My uncle had a taller mountain and he could get channel 11 also. Some folks attached a booster to their line and their reception was almost normal......but the line was electrified and if you touched it you'd get a really big shock.

Then came cable (with about 10 stations) which included a couple from Knoxville. We finally got a local channel when WYMT 57 Hazard came on in the early 70's.

 

[azumanga]

WSJK 2-PBS Sneedville (sister to WKOP Memphis...)

Actually, WKOP was in Knoxville, as a repeater of WSJK (now WETP).

 

[Bluenoser]

WSJK 2-PBS Sneedville (sister to WKOP Memphis...)

Actually, WKOP was in Knoxville, as a repeater of WSJK (now WETP).

You're right...must have gotten it confused with WKNO Memphis

 

[radiorob2.0]

At my grandmother's house in the late 60's in eastern Kentucky, there are lots of mountains and most people lived on the flater bottom lands. You had to put an antenna on top of the mountain and run a long wire down to your tv. Even with that, she could only get WCYB 5 and it was snowy at times. Considering Bristol was about 100 miles away, it's a wonder she even got that.

My uncle had a taller mountain and he could get channel 11 also. Some folks attached a booster to their line and their reception was almost normal......but the line was electrified and if you touched it you'd get a really big shock.

Then came cable (with about 10 stations) which included a couple from Knoxville. We finally got a local channel when WYMT 57 Hazard came on in the early 70's.

WYMT's predecessor WKYH signed on in 1968. It was low budget television but it was all Southeastern Kentucky had for the very reason stated above. The closest Kentucky city with television service was Lexington. It was a UHF market and the billions* of cable systems across that part of the state focused on VHF signals from Huntington/Charleston, Tri-cities, Knoxville, Bluefield, and Asheville. WKYH did news focused on the mountains. Kentucky Central Television purchased WKYH and changed the call letters to WYMT. It became a satellite station of WKYT Lexington.

As mentioned, there is little over the air reception in Southeastern Kentucky, unless you're atop a mountain.



* Billions is an exaggeration but each county had dozens of cable systems back then.

 

[gregg75]

I had forgotten WYMT's old WKYH call name. They had a local music show featuring mountain music and we often enjoyed watching that. Folks always thought they were channel 57 because of the big flood of '57.

I was wrong about the cable......we only got 1 station from Knoxville WBIR 10 NBC. For ABC they gave us WLOS Asheville, N.C. (which was a really long way off). Seems like ABC in Knoxville would have been more logical.

Hazard had one of the first FM radio stations in KY (WSGS) which could be heard in a large area of Kentucky, Tennesse and Virginia, but TV was much slower to arrive. WSGS played country when it was a new radio format.

Odd they even have WYMT today. The city limit population is only about 5,000 and Perry County only has about 30,000.

 

[radiorob2.0]

I had forgotten WYMT's old WKYH call name. They had a local music show featuring mountain music and we often enjoyed watching that. Folks always thought they were channel 57 because of the big flood of '57.

I was wrong about the cable......we only got 1 station from Knoxville WBIR 10 NBC. For ABC they gave us WLOS Asheville, N.C. (which was a really long way off). Seems like ABC in Knoxville would have been more logical.

Hazard had one of the first FM radio stations in KY (WSGS) which could be heard in a large area of Kentucky, Tennesse and Virginia, but TV was much slower to arrive. WSGS played country when it was a new radio format.

Odd they even have WYMT today. The city limit population is only about 5,000 and Perry County only has about 30,000.

One of the groups featured on WKYH for years was The Goins Brothers. Ray Goins passed away three years ago. His brother Melvin still performs leading the bluegrass band "Windy Mountain".

It was long time Hazard mayor Bill Gorman who signed on WKYH. He wanted to give that part of the country TV instead of relying on far away markets. Gorman also ran Hazard's cable TV system.

WTVK, as well as WKPT Kingsport, didn't have much cable coverage due to the UHF issue. Many cable systems back then focused on VHF. My background is Whitesburg, KY where for years ABC on cable was WOWK (then WHTN) Huntington and occasionally WLOS even though WKPT was much closer. Yes, both were channel 13 and both clobbered each other with co-channel interference. It wasn't until the eighties that they finally settled on WKPT.

WTVK (while ABC) and WKPT competed with WLOS for viewers in East Tennessee due to Channel 13's antenna location atop Mt. Pisgah. The antenna elevation was over a mile above and provided usable coverage just east of Knoxville and over most of the Tri-cities market.

If you do a You Tube search for "WKYH" you'll find several videos from the last days of Channel 57 prior to the switch to WYMT.