Stations that went from commercial to non-commercial and/or vice-versa

[KeithE4]

This includes both educational/NET/PBS and religious/TBN/Daystar stations, but only those that had actually gone on the air.

I'm not looking for commercial CPs that never made it to air. For example, commercial CP WIND-TV 20 Chicago becoming non-comm WXXW, or WRTB-TV 2 Boston becoming WGBH-TV. I'm not counting these.

Commercial to non-commercial
New York/Newark Ch. 13 - WNTA (Ind.) to WNDT (NET) in 1962
Muncie IN Ch. 49 - WLBC-TV (NBC/ABC) to WIPB (PBS) in 1971
Sedalia MO Ch. 6 - KMOS-TV (CBS s-KRCG) to PBS in 1978.
Phoenix Ch. 21 - KPAZ-TV independent (but mostly religious programs by the mid-'70s) to TBN (1977)

Went both ways
Seattle/Tacoma's Ch. 13 went from commercial (KMO-TV, later KTVW, 1953) to non-comm (KCPQ, 1975), and back (1980, still as KCPQ). It went from NBC to indie to PBS to indie to Fox.

Went both ways at the same time
Ames/Des Moines IA Ch. 4/5 - WOI-TV ran educational programs during part of the day and commercial programming the rest of the time, from sign-on in 1950 until KDPS (KDIN) Ch. 11 signed on in 1959.

Jackson/East Lansing MI Ch. 10 - WILX (NBC) Jackson and WMSB (NET/PBS) East Lansing shared time between 1959 and 1972.

Non-comm to commercial(?)
I'm not sure you can count the WPWR/WCAE/WYIN Ch. 50-56 Chicago/Gary shenanigans of 1986-87. IIRC, WYIN Ch. 56 operates under the old WCAE Ch. 50 license, not WPWR. WCAE had left the air a few years earlier, but the callsign was resurrected to test the new Ch. 50 transmitter in late '86, and I don't believe the license was ever turned in to the FCC.

 

[FreddyE1977]

WINP-16, the Ion Television outlet in Pittsburgh, has gone both ways.

From 1953 to 1957 it was WENS, a commercial station that filled much of its
schedule with Pirate Baseball from Forbes Field. It was the only competition to
WDTV/KDKA during that time. It went off the air in a storm in 1957 and never
returned, as two new VHF competitors were about to take to the air at that time.

WENS was pulled out of mothballs in the 1960's and run sporadically as WQEX, the
sister station to public broadcast pioneer WQED. Running the old WENS black-and-white
transmitter they ran overflow PBS programs and niche educational shows in the evening up till 1985, when the ancient transmitter finally bit the dust.

WQED invested in new studios and transmitter and put WQEX back on the air as
Quite EXtraordinary Television. Running largely Britcoms, cooking shows, and offbeat
items like The White Shadow, they used BBC-style continuity announcers live in-studio.

This came to a screeching halt in the late 90's when WQED, in the midst of a financial scandal,
could no longer afford to program WQEX separately. They started shopping WQEX around, and
got an offer from Paxon Communications. But there was a problem in that the station's license
had been converted from commercial to noncommercial, and the FCC had balked on changing it
back.

WQEX famously worked out a deal with WPCB-40, the local Christian station, to swap noncommercial
16 for commercial 40. But WPCB ownership pulled out when the FCC put strings on the deal which they felt constituted an infringement on their religious liberties.

Eventually, many years later, the FCC relented on switching 16 back to a commercial license.
WQEX then ran home shopping networks for several years until Ion returned with a new, much
lower offer. Today it runs Ion, Ion Life and Qubo in digital multiplex on channel 38 (virtual 16).

 

[TexasTom]

One more example of a station going from non-commercial to commercial is Oklahoma City's KOKH, channel 25. They were a non-comm on a commercial channel that sold and became commercial somewhere around 1980 (not sure of the exact year).

 

[bpatrick]

KDTN/2 Denton, TX switched from PBS to Daystar.

Do channel swaps count? If so, there's
WVUE/WYES New Orleans: WVUE (then ABC) going from 12 to 8,
WYES (PBS) going the other way

WKRN/WNPT (current call letters) Nashville: WKRN (ABC) from 8 to 2,
WNPT (PBS) going the other way

KVIA/KCOS El Paso: KVIA (ABC) from 13 to 7, KCOS going the other way

 

[hubcity]

New York/Newark Ch. 13 - WNTA (Ind.) to WNDT (NET) in 1962

I was going to suggest that The City Of New York's WNYC-31 becoming WBIS, then WPXN (S+/BloombergTV/PAX/i, now multiplexing ION/QUBO/ION Life) was such a thing, but apparently it always had a commercial allocation.

Though, actually, didn't WNDT/WNET maintain the Channel 13 commercial allocation up until fairly recently?

 

[azumanga]

One more example of a station going from non-commercial to commercial is Oklahoma City's KOKH, channel 25. They were a non-comm on a commercial channel that sold and became commercial somewhere around 1980 (not sure of the exact year).

Another example from OKC is KAUT ch.43 -- the station was commercial indy from 1980 until 1991, then PBS (under OETA ownership, but a different schedule) as KTLC from 1991 to 1998, then a commercial indy again since 1998 (first as KPSG for a few months, returning to KAUT after Gene Autry's death late in 1998). After resuming commercial operations in 1998, KAUT was affiliated with UPN until 2006, when it became a MyNetworkTV affiliate, though the station never used its branding (the station became "OK43" in 2006, then switched to "Freedom 43" in 2011, as a nod to OKC's large military population).

KAUT was also OKC's charter Fox affiliate until 1991, when the network, and some of its program inventory, moved to KOKH, following KAUT's sale to OETA.

 

[dhett]

Although a religious broadcaster, KPAZ 21 Phoenix is a commercial station, and always has been.

In 2006, citing the benefit of having a second full-power Spanish-language channel outweighing a second non-commercial allocation, the FCC removed the non-commercial designation from Phoenix's channel 39 and placed a non-commercial designation on Holbrook's channel 11 so that the Holbrook Telemundo station and the Phoenix Daystar station could swap. Holbrook channel 11 was once commercial KPHZ (Telemundo); it's now non-commercial KDTP (Daystar). Phoenix channel 39 was once non-commercial KDTP (Daystar); it's now commercial KTAZ (Telemundo).

 

[KeithE4]

Although a religious broadcaster, KPAZ 21 Phoenix is a commercial station, and always has been.

I thought all TBN and Daystar stations were licensed as non-comms, even though many are on channels allocated for commercial use.

 

[danikayser84]

Albany, NY - WUSV (signed on 1985 I think?) was sold to WMHT and went noncommercial in 1987 and turned into WMHX, and went silent for around two years (1991-93), only to return as WMHQ... which lasted until 1999 when it was sold to Tribune and became "WB45" WEWB-TV, and is now WCWN-TV under Sinclair ownership

 

[RyanHoward]

WKPD, Ch. 29 in Paducah, KY-That station started out as commercial independent
WDXR-TV in the early 1970's. It had money problems and signed off by 1976. It was
then sold to the KET(Kentucky Educational Television) Network around 1979 and
came back as the current PBS-er WKPD.

 

[dhett]

Although a religious broadcaster, KPAZ 21 Phoenix is a commercial station, and always has been.

I thought all TBN and Daystar stations were licensed as non-comms, even though many are on channels allocated for commercial use.

All TBN stations are commercial licenses. Daystar licenses are sometimes commercial (licensee is Word of God Fellowship - see KWOG, KOCM) and sometimes non-commercial (licensee is usually Community Television Educators of XXXXXXXXXX - see KDTN, KDTP). They are both non-profit organizations, but the licenses are commercial, which gives them more flexibility as to the type of programming that they can offer. A station with an NCE license must broadcast educational content at least 50% of the time, IIRC.

Other than WNET, I don't know of any NCE stations that broadcast on a channel allocated as commercial.

 

[cd637299]

I know we are likely discussing stations that switched during an on-air regime---but I'll still throw this out.

WITV ch 17 Ft. Lauderdale/Miami (ABC/DuMont) I believe went sorta indie in 1957 after WPST (now WPLG) ch 10 signed on, and with the fact that they were UHF in a VHF town in the 50s, went dark, until 1962 when WSEC-TV (Educational & some NET) came on.

Ch 45 Miami started as WFCB (non commercial IIRC), then was bought by LeSea around 1976, and became a commercial indie, then back to non-comm TBN in 1979...but 45 has always been a commercial allocation.

cd

 

[dhett]

KDTN/2 Denton, TX switched from PBS to Daystar.

KDTN is, and has always been, a non-commercial station.

 

[dhett]

Another example from OKC is KAUT ch.43 -- the station was commercial indy from 1980 until 1991, then PBS (under OETA ownership, but a different schedule) as KTLC from 1991 to 1998, then a commercial indy again since 1998 (first as KPSG for a few months, returning to KAUT after Gene Autry's death late in 1998). After resuming commercial operations in 1998, KAUT was affiliated with UPN until 2006, when it became a MyNetworkTV affiliate, though the station never used its branding (the station became "OK43" in 2006, then switched to "Freedom 43" in 2011, as a nod to OKC's large military population).

The FCC's database confirms this. Channel 43's activity was all as a commercial license until 1993, when the license was renewed as educational. There was no activity between consummation of the sale to OETA in Aug. 1991, until the renewal filing in Feb. 1993. The next activity was a renewal filing in Jan. 1998, this time as commercial, followed by the proposal of sale from OETA back to Paramount in March 1998.

 

[RadioDaze]

in Raleigh/Durham, WRAY-TV 30 in Wilson, NC was commercial when it signed on in 1995 and remained so until becoming an affiliate of Tri-State Christian Television (TCT) in 2009.

 

[dhett]

in Raleigh/Durham, WRAY-TV 30 in Wilson, NC was commercial when it signed on in 1995 and remained so until becoming an affiliate of Tri-State Christian Television (TCT) in 2009.

It's still a commercial station, even though the licensee is not-for-profit.

 

[w9wi]

All TBN stations are commercial licenses.

Actually, that isn't true -- see CDBS. Of the 35 TBN stations, 29 are commercial licenses -- six are non-commercial.

Other than WNET, I don't know of any NCE stations that broadcast on a channel allocated as commercial.

WKPD Paducah
WNYC-TV guess where
WNED Buffalo

Two of the three once were commercial stations. (the second was to my knowledge the only station ever to be licensed to the FCC)

 

[spencerkarter85]

May 1, 2011 WNEG 32 (commercial independent) from Toccoa, Georgia (in the Greenville/Spartanburg, SC DMA #36) which had an inadequate cable/satellite TV coverage and also inadaquate signal too went from commercial indie to non-commercial WUGA-TV broadcasting PBS World programs after the station was acquired from Georgia Public Broadcasting a couple years back. As a result GSP viewers missed Steve Harvey's first season as host of Family Feud (unless watching it on GSN this year) because WNEG acquired it from WMYA MY40 in the 2010-11 season, it was unsuccesful. Then earlier this season, WMYA regained Family Feud months after WNEG became WUGA. Also syndie shows like Punk'd, Chappelle Show, Storm Stories, and The Hills were never seen in Greenville, SC after WNEG became WUGA.

To me, WNEG was like the WKBS (Philly's now-defunct Indie) of Western Carolinas and Northeast Georgia.

 

[fybush]

Other than WNET, I don't know of any NCE stations that broadcast on a channel allocated as commercial.

WKPD Paducah
WNYC-TV guess where
WNED Buffalo

Two of the three once were commercial stations. (the second was to my knowledge the only station ever to be licensed to the FCC)

WNED's allocation is now a noncommercial allocation - because former sister station WNEQ 23 was built on a noncommercial allocation, and when ownership wanted to sell one of the two signals, it was newer WNEQ that went on the chopping block, with an assist from the FCC by way of swapping the noncommercial status from 23 to 17.

 

[azumanga]

All TBN stations are commercial licenses.

Actually, that isn't true -- see CDBS. Of the 35 TBN stations, 29 are commercial licenses -- six are non-commercial.

Some of these are owned by a TBN subsidiary, Community Educational Television, which is operated independently of TBN:

http://www.communityedtv.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Educational_Television

Other than WNET, I don't know of any NCE stations that broadcast on a channel allocated as commercial.

WKPD Paducah
WNYC-TV guess where
WNED Buffalo

Two of the three once were commercial stations. (the second was to my knowledge the only station ever to be licensed to the FCC)

I didn't even know that the FCC "owned" a television station -- I always thought the City of New York owned the station, up until it became WBIS in the early-1990s. If you meant licensed to a municipality, there were a few of them -- one of these was WSUN-TV, which was owned by the City of St. Petersburg from 1953 until shortly after losing the ABC affiliation to WLCY-TV (WTSP) in 1965.