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Shortest Regular Daily Broadcast Schedule?

S

Stanislav

In the course of all the retro schedules and general historic TV chit-chat over the years, mention has occasionally been made of a TV station that had an unusually short daily schedule for its era. Usually, these are financially impoverished UHFs, or educationals that signed on for only a few hours per day when school was out for the summer (and there was, consequently, no instructional programming).

One example of the former that has been mentioned here is KFIZ (channel 34) in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. I have a 1969 TVG that shows them not signing on weekdays until 5 p.m., and signing off after their 10 p.m. newscast. 5 and 1/2 hours is pretty slim, but I'm sure there have been other examples of an even shorter schedule. I await your input.

Let's limit this to short schedules that were regularly adhered to for a reasonable length of time (at least several weeks to a few months) and not include the late 40's and early-mid 50's era when a short broadcast day was far more common. Maybe 1960 and beyond, by which time for a commercial station a schedule of 6-8 a.m. until at least 11 p.m. was more or less standard practice.

As a secondary question, historically how many hours a week was a station expected to broadcast in order to keep their license?
 
Two come to mind: WWOR/WJZB 14 Worcester, MA, which was on for only an hour or 90 minutes a day for many years in the sixties (Huntley-Brinkley and a local filmed program, and that was it) - and WOPC 38 Altoona, PA, which as late as the early 80s was on the air only for ABC prime-time.
 
Scott Fybush said:
WWOR/WJZB 14 Worcester, MA, which was on for only an hour or 90 minutes a day for many years in the sixties (Huntley-Brinkley and a local filmed program, and that was it)...
Click to expand...

Just reread their entry at the UHF Morgue* and, yeah, just 6-7:30 daily from 1967-69. And in answer to my second question in the original post, apparently 90 minutes a day was (at least at the time) the minimum required to hold on to a license.

Makes you wonder why they even bothered. They weren't even in color, and the full-color Boston and Providence stations were dominant in the area. Was anybody even watching a hard-to-tune B&W UHF on for just 90 minutes a day, when they could get their one network program (Huntley-Brinkley) in color on a nice solid VHF? Why did NBC even maintain an affiliation with them? I know they had "big plans" (most struggling TV stations usually do, but also usually can't raise the funds to implement them), but after two years of this, it took a transmitter fire to ultimately knock them off the air? I think, had I been the owner, I'd have thrown in the towel and cut my losses long before that.

*(BTW, I hope Peter's site, which includes The UHF Morgue, is going to find a new home -- it's still on Geocities, which is shutting down in a few weeks. I'd hate to see that excellent and informative history relegated to the Wayback Machine...)  :(
 
Stanislav said:
In the course of all the retro schedules and general historic TV chit-chat over the years, mention has occasionally been made of a TV station that had an unusually short daily schedule for its era. Usually, these are financially impoverished UHFs, or educationals that signed on for only a few hours per day when school was out for the summer (and there was, consequently, no instructional programming).
Click to expand...

Of course, some educationals were off the air on weekends and on days when school is not in session -- WUSF-TV in Tampa kept a school-days-only schedule until the mid-1970s.
 
While the first full week of WJAN-TV 17 in Canton, Ohio was pretty slim hours wise, they had a decent selection of shows..

Monday, January 9, 1967
4:30 Tall Man
5PM Shotgun Slade
5:30 News
6PM Ray Milland
6:30 Thriller
7:30 News
8PM Movie-Dragon Wells Massacre-1957
9:30 News


Tuesday, January 10, 1967
4:30 Wide Country
5:30 News
6PM Bachelor Father
6:30 Johnny Midnight
7PM Soldier Of Fortune
7:30 News
8PM Movie-Junior Miss 1945
9:30 News

Wednesday, January 11, 1967
4:30 Kit Carson
5PM Restless Gun
5:30 News
6PM Love that Bob
6:30 Checkmate
7:30 News
8PM Movie-TBA
9:30 News

Thursday January 12, 1967
4:30 Overland Trail
5:30 News
6PM Pride Of The Family-Paul Hartman Sitcom
6:30 M Squad
7PM Coronado 9
7:30 News
8PM Movie-TBA
9:30 News

Friday, January 13, 1967
4:30 State Trooper
5PM Tales of Wells Fargo
5:30 News
6PM Leave it to Beaver
6:30 Riverboat
7:30 News
8PM Movie-TBA
9:30 News

The newscasts were probably 15 minutes long, so they were off the air by no later than 10PM.  They werent on Saturday and Sunday at all at first..
 
Back in 1999 I can remember visiting family in Waynesboro, VA and picking up a "channel 17" out of Stuarts Draft, Virginia. They were only on the air from 6 until 8:30 pm weekdays as I can recall only showing high school programming such as girls basketball highlights and a movie. Really old movies as in Jean Harlow !!!

I have no idea who owned them nor do I remember ever noticing their listings from them either. Hell I don't even remember the call letters ;D
But I remember the slide saying "Augusta County's Own Television...channel 17"

And before somebody tells me maybe what I saw was a cable only station..ah nice try...but my family in Waynesboro didn't have cable. They were way too cheap for that.
 
Apparently, the station (which served Staunton, the county seat for Augusta County) either went dark or moved to another channel -- according to FCC's database, the only 17s in Virginia today are in Roanoke, Portsmouth and Richmond.
 
azumanga said:
Apparently, the station (which served Staunton, the county seat for Augusta County) either went dark or moved to another channel -- according to FCC's database, the only 17s in Virginia today are in Roanoke, Portsmouth and Richmond.
Click to expand...

Did some research on my part and thanks to an old post on DCRTV, the call letters were WPMG, a low powered station. I assume they did go dark but as of 2003 ( when the post appeared ) they were still on the air.

True that Staunton is the county seat for Vrginia's Augusta County but due to Virginia's rather odd "independent city" laws, Staunton isn't a part of that county. A county seat that isnt part of the county..only in Virginia !!!
 
Stanislav said:
As a secondary question, historically how many hours a week was a station expected to broadcast in order to keep their license?
Click to expand...

In 1965: (actually, while the rule has been rewritten since then, the same limits still apply)

- For stations 18 months old or less:
- At least 12 hours a week
- At least 2 hours a day on at least five days a week
- (the station could be off completely two days a week)

- For stations 18-24 months old:
- At least 16 hours a week

- For stations 24-30 months old:
- At least 20 hours a week

- For stations 30-36 months old:
- At least 24 hours a week

- For stations more than 3 years old:
- At least 28 hours a week

These applied to commercial stations only. There was no minimum schedule for non-commercial stations.

Time spent airing test patterns didn't count.

There was a loophole: stations could operate less than the minimum schedule upon notifying the FCC. I suppose theoretically operating on limited schedule indefinitely could have been held against a station at renewal, (remember, renewals weren't automatic back then) but I'd also imagine the FCC considered 8 hours a week better than "un-renewing" the license and leaving the community with no service at all...
 
azumanga said:
Apparently, the station (which served Staunton, the county seat for Augusta County) either went dark or moved to another channel -- according to FCC's database, the only 17s in Virginia today are in Roanoke, Portsmouth and Richmond.
Click to expand...
WPMG/17 was licensed to Stuart's Draft, Virginia, a suburb located between Staunton and Waynesboro. Their studio/broadcast center was located in a strip mall in downtown Stuart's Draft. They had a pretty robust signal for a LP, I think about 25kw, broadcast from a hill north of Fishersville. Unfortunately, Adelphia Cable refused to carry them, and the Augusta County area is VERY heavily cabled. There was also a fairly popular microwave over the air "cable system" service in the late 90s-early 2000s with about 30 channels that people in rural areas used, but I think that also disappeared with the advent of satelite--they refused to carry WPMG also. I don't think WPMG lasted but about a year, and they immediately turned their license back into the FCC. BTW, off topic, but the county seat of Augusta COunty is actually in a business park near Verona, Virginia, just north of the independent city of Staunton, however, they still use a Staunton address.
 
w9wi said:
Stanislav said:
As a secondary question, historically how many hours a week was a station expected to broadcast in order to keep their license?
Click to expand...

In 1965: (actually, while the rule has been rewritten since then, the same limits still apply)

- For stations more than 3 years old:
- At least 28 hours a week

These applied to commercial stations only. There was no minimum schedule for non-commercial stations.

Time spent airing test patterns didn't count.

There was a loophole: stations could operate less than the minimum schedule upon notifying the FCC.
Click to expand...

With Worcester's WJZB signing on in 1953 and going to 90 minutes daily by 1966, they were breaking the law with their daily 90-minute schedule, unless they notified the FCC.
 
WRBV, Vineland NJ (now Univision WUVP) spent its first month only broadcasting 30 minutes each day, for local news at 6 PM. After that it added another 90 minutes for two months before expanding into other dayparts.

Also, when growing up, I remember that WHYY Wilmington/Philadelphia would sign on at 8 every morning, then sign off every day at noon, coming back on at 4 PM for Sesame Street. They'd sign off at 10 PM until 8 the next morning.
 
Stanislav said:
Scott Fybush said:
WWOR/WJZB 14 Worcester, MA, which was on for only an hour or 90 minutes a day for many years in the sixties (Huntley-Brinkley and a local filmed program, and that was it)...
Click to expand...

Just reread their entry at the UHF Morgue* and, yeah, just 6-7:30 daily from 1967-69. And in answer to my second question in the original post, apparently 90 minutes a day was (at least at the time) the minimum required to hold on to a license.

Makes you wonder why they even bothered. They weren't even in color, and the full-color Boston and Providence stations were dominant in the area. Was anybody even watching a hard-to-tune B&W UHF on for just 90 minutes a day, when they could get their one network program (Huntley-Brinkley) in color on a nice solid VHF? Why did NBC even maintain an affiliation with them? I know they had "big plans" (most struggling TV stations usually do, but also usually can't raise the funds to implement them), but after two years of this, it took a transmitter fire to ultimately knock them off the air? I think, had I been the owner, I'd have thrown in the towel and cut my losses long before that.

*(BTW, I hope Peter's site, which includes The UHF Morgue, is going to find a new home -- it's still on Geocities, which is shutting down in a few weeks. I'd hate to see that excellent and informative history relegated to the Wayback Machine...) :(
Click to expand...

Fear not! I've known about the Geocities demise for quite some time. In preparation of the shutdown, I backed-up the existing web page and moved it to the following URL http://radiodxer.bravehost.com . Please update your bookmarks. Also, I've also had a lot of requests to update the UHF Morgue. Now that analog is history, it gives me even more incentive to start growing the Morgue and the associated website. SO please be patient and know that the UHF Morgue is not going away! I promise you that!


Thanks for your support!!!

Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Curator: The UHF Morgue
http://radiodxer.bravehost.com
(also known as THE RadioDXer!)
 
Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:
I've also had a lot of requests to update the UHF Morgue. Now that analog is history, it gives me even more incentive to start growing the Morgue and the associated website.
Click to expand...

And accoording to Wikipedia, looks like you have a lot of work ahead of you for this year alone. (And we still have CHEK-TV and CHCA-TV coming up.)

That being said, I have a feeling that the history of Bay City's WDCP is going to be interesting, considering that the parent station went dark instead of its satellite.
 
From as late as 1973, WITF (a PBS station then in Hershey...now in Harrisburg) didn't begin their broadcast day until 4pm 7 days a week, kicking off the broadcast day with "Sesame Street".
 
when wpmi tv ch 15 first went on the air in 1952 it started at 7pm movie 9pm merv griffin show10pm movie mobile pensacola ind.
 
I remember WDRB in Louisville when they first signed on in 1974 operating from 2:30pm til 10ish at night. This channel focused on the afterschool audience, playing "Lost in Space" and "Gilligan's Island". It also had a the local "Presto the Clown" show, which played Bugs Bunny and Popeye cartoons. If anyone would have copies of these shows, please let us know because none exist today.

Today it is Louisville's Fox station operating mostly on a 24/7 schedule.
 
KyDXIn said:
I remember WDRB in Louisville when they first signed on in 1974 operating from 2:30pm til 10ish at night.
Click to expand...

WDRB-TV signed on in 1971. I remember picking up the station quite well in Bloomington, IN, and I left that area in 1973.
 
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