• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Tell Me About "Dual Call Signs"



Here is one from the 1980's when WBBS and WPWR-TV shared the Channel 60 signal in Chicago. It was the last time two different licenses shared the same analog TV signal in a major TV market.



Here is a more interesting one WLS Radio in Chicago shares some of its history with WENR. Yes this goes back to the Fybush archives of 2004. WENR (AM) was an affiliate of NBC's Blue Network and WLS was owned by Sears when the dual call signs were used.

WLS is actually a relatively recent occupant of 190 State Street, a building with a broadcast history that's much more closely tied to TV, beginning with the early efforts of the Balaban and Katz theater chain. Their first WBKB-TV, Channel 4, went on the air here in 1948; it ended up being sold to CBS and becoming WBBM-TV on channel 2. A few years later, the WBKB-TV calls returned to the Chicago airwaves on ABC's channel 7, which started out as WENR-TV, operating with sister stations WENR (sharing time with WLS on 890) and WENR-FM (94.7) from 20 North Wacker Drive, a few blocks away. WBKB-TV moved into the 190 North State Street building - and the merged WENR/WLS radio operation (now just WLS) eventually ended up in the historic Stone Container Building at 360 North Michigan Avenue, overlooking the Chicago River. It was from that facility that the legendary Musicradio WLS emanated, and it was from that facility that WLS became one of the last big AMs to drop music for talk in the summer of 1989.

The next year, WLS radio left the Stone Container Building to become a tenant (literally - the radio side pays rent to ABC-TV) on three floors of 190 North State Street, and that's where we caught up with it and its sister stations, with engineer Ed Glab as our tour guide.
Click to expand...
mediaconfidential.blogspot.com

Radio History: April 12

 ➦In 1924 ...WLS-AM, Chicago signed-on. After buying time on radio stations in the early days of broadcasting, Sears Roebuck & Co. in Chica...
mediaconfidential.blogspot.com mediaconfidential.blogspot.com



WLS, the Prairie Farmer station

WLS radio during its
www.richsamuels.com

 
Y2kTheNewOldies said:
Here is one from the 1980's when WBBS and WPWR-TV shared the Channel 60 signal in Chicago. It was the last time two different licenses shared the same analog TV signal in a major TV market.
Click to expand...

And boy, was that a convoluted story. It is the final entry in this article on share-time television stations:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com uhfhistory.com
 
K.M. Richards said:
And boy, was that a convoluted story. It is the final entry in this article on share-time television stations:

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com uhfhistory.com
Click to expand...
You should have seen it on the air. 🤯

I'm going from memory here, so take what I say with a boatload of Sodium Chloride. Channel 50 first began testing on Sears Tower on or around 1/1/87 (at least that was the first time I noticed it), using the old WCAE call letters. I don't remember if the COL was still St. Johns IN or whether it had already been changed to Gary. When the changeover happened on 1/17, the WPWR call letters moved to 50, Channel 60 became WEHS, and the WCAE call letters disappeared forever. WYIN Channel 56 started up in November of that year.
 
KeithE4 said:
I'm going from memory here, so take what I say with a boatload of Sodium Chloride. Channel 50 first began testing on Sears Tower on or around 1/1/87 (at least that was the first time I noticed it), using the old WCAE call letters. I don't remember if the COL was still St. Johns IN or whether it had already been changed to Gary. When the changeover happened on 1/17, the WPWR call letters moved to 50, Channel 60 became WEHS, and the WCAE call letters disappeared forever. WYIN Channel 56 started up in November of that year.
Click to expand...

The WEHS call letter assignment for channel 60 was in the article, but your extra detail makes a convoluted story ... well, even more so.

The use of the WCAE calls during testing was no doubt required because it was a separate CP from channel 60 and not a modification of facilities (since 60 was to remain in place afterwards). As near as I can tell, the COL on the WCAE permit had already been changed to Gary by the time Eychaner filed his juggling act with the Commission.

Your timeline is right, as WPWR began channel 50 operations on January 18 of that year, only a couple weeks after you noticed it. It also occurs to me that if ABC hadn't changed the calls of the former WLS-FM from WDAI to WRCK in 1980, there would have been a different set of calls on the channel 56 Gary CP.
 


Back
Top Bottom