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When Did You Get Your First UHF TV Set?

G

Gregg

Obviously I'm asking this question to folks over 40 or so. I believe by the 70s the FCC mandated that all TVs sold in the U.S. had to be able to pick up UHF signals (Channel 14 and above).

I grew up in the NYC area and there were only a few minor stations on the UHF dial as I grew up. All the major networks and independent stations had VHF signals. One night my dad came home with a new portable black-and-white TV. He hooked up not just the rabbit ears antenna to get VHF channels but there was also a circular antenna in the box to pick up UHF signals.

Suddenly I could see those channels that I sometimes saw listed in TV Guide or the NY Daily News TV program guide: WNYE 25, the NYC educational station; WNYC 31, the NYC municipal station and WNJU 47, which was an English independent station in the afternoon and a Spanish TV station in the evening, before there was a Telemundo network. I don't thiink WXTV 41, the Univision station, had signed on yet. All three had odd and interesting programs... educational films on 25, programs directed to NYC cops and firefighters, as well as travel shows and commercial films designed to look like public service shows on 31.

And on 47, there was a cartoon called Coco The Clown and a teen music and dance party hosted by Zacherle. It was like a local American Bandstand hosted by a radio DJ who dressed up like a cast member of the Adams Family or Munsters.

So when did you first see UHF stations? Or if you grew up in a UHF market, were TVs always sold with UHF converters in your stores and people knew how to work them? Or if you grew up in a market with one or two VHFs and the rest UHFs, did you know people who simply confined their viewing to only VHF stations because they didn't have converters or didn't know how to operate them?


Gregg
[email protected]
 
For Christmas, 1964, my parents bought a small, black & white portable TV to provide a second set for the house. It had the UHF dial which was activated when you tuned the VHF dial to the notch past Channel 13. With just the standard hoop antenna that was attached, I could only pick up Cincinnati's Channel 48, WCET. A day or so after Christmas, I picked up a test pattern and tone on that channel and waited for a program to come on. When none did after a while, I telephoned the station to learn that the first program would not be shown for several more hours. As WCET provided shows to be shown in schools during the day, I think there was less programming during the Holidays.
 
My family's first UHF capable TV set was a G. E. portable B & W. I think we bought it because we were going camping and my mom wanted a TV to watch at night. It ended up in the kitchen and Mom watched it while making dinner and the family watched the news while eating dinner. The TV, also, solved a lot of family squabbles about what show to watch.
When we got it there was only one UHF station on the air. WCNY/24 in Syracuse. It came in a little snowy but watchable. Problem was, there really wasn't much to watch on educational TV at the time. Besides the TV had one of those rotary tuners and didn't lock up very well. You had to keep adjusting it. A couple years later WUTR-20 (ABC) signed on. We lived a the bottom of a hill so there was a lot of "ghosting" on 20 and we still had the same problem with the tuner. By that time, our living room set was a modern Zenith color TV which had a much better UHF tuner in it. Then they ran cable down the street so none of that matter anymore. I bootlegged the cable into the kitchen and the bedrooms. The G. E. lasted a long time. At least 20 years. It moved around with me in college and apartments so it had a rugged life. It did it's job.
 
As memory serves, we got a set with a UHF tuner in about 1966. We couldn't watch, because we didn't have a UHF antenna. I remember going with my dad to KMart or some such and seeing them for $4.00. But I couldn't talk my dad in to buying one. When we got cable, I watched channel 50 WKBD all day.
 
Around 1970 we only had 2 stations in Columbus Georgia, WRBL 3 CBS and WTVM 9 ABC so UHF was not necessary on our color set. There was a PBS 28 WJSP also but few watched as they had a bad antenna problem.

My older brother bought a small toaster size black and white with UHF to watch in a bedroom or move from room to room. We could now watch 28 and shortly after the brand new WYEA TV 38 NBC. Our first new channel (besides 28) in over 14 years. They came on about 7PM one evening and I watched their very first show "Gilligan's Island."

WRBL and WTVM are still there, WYEA is now WLTZ.
 
Gregg said:
Obviously I'm asking this question to folks over 40 or so. I believe by the 70s the FCC mandated that all TVs sold in the U.S. had to be able to pick up UHF signals (Channel 14 and above).
Click to expand...

For the record, the All-Channel Receiver Act was passed in 1961 and took effect in April, 1964.

In my case, while we got our first TV with UHF in 1966, it wasn't necessary in the southern half of the Indianapolis market until 1969, when WTIU/30 Bloomington went on the air (the northern half of the market could get UHFs in Lafayette, Marion (before WTAF/31 died that year), and Muncie with varying amounts of snow).

A separate UHF antenna wasn't necessary, although a VHF-UHF splitter was, back in the bad ol' days of 300 ohm twin-lead and separate antenna terminals. So was a rotator. WTIU's tower was (and still is) in town, on the southeast side of the city, so the signal was good enough to not need one, but one had to move the antenna to get a non-ghosty picture.
 
Our first UHF "capable" TV was a remote control Motorola in 1963.
Click---whirr, clunk, clunk. clunk. Next channel. Click--whirr clunk, clunk.
There WAS no detent for the UHF, you had to park the knob manually in the uhf spot, which it would skip right over in
remote control tuning. But we had no UHF tuner. Then we got a used GE portable 12 inch for my brother and I in our bedroom, but it also was only UHF "ready" with no detent stop for uhf and no tuner.
Then for Christmas of 1973 my brother and I got a 16" Zenith Chromacolor II TV, while my parents kept th B&W downstairs.
I immediately became a big fan of Roller Derby.

We got South Bend, In (16), Chicago 26, 32 and 44 and later 50 from St John, Indiana.
I remember watching my own high school's ( Hobart IN ) football game highlights broadcast an hour two after the game.
We were always in competition for State championships, but as our town had no radio stations and games were very seldom
on the air, unless one of the visitor teams' cities stations were doing a remote.
It was really weird to see my own school team on TV.
 
Al Timiter said:
1955. But the UHF tuner became non-functional in the early 60's.
Click to expand...

A 1955-vintage UHF tuner (vacuum tube or Germanium diode mixer?) was probably not very "functional" to begin with. ;D

Between those clunky, non-sensitive tuners, poor antennas/lossy twin-lead, and the fact that most of the UHF stations of the mid '50s would be considered LPTVs today (15 to 30 kW ERP visual), no wonder most early UHF stations went dark. They probably had a viewable signal no more than 5 miles away from the tower.
 
Sometime in 1970 a relative gave us a black-and-white console set that had a UHF tuner on it.
Prior to that our only set was a black-and-white Motorola portable. It had a stub where the UHF
tuner knob used to be, but the UHF tuner did not work for some reason (I was way too young to be
able to diagnose that).

I immediately discovered and took a shine to WPGH-TV 53 in Pittsburgh. But they would go bankrupt and
off the air the following August, leaving me back in a VHF only world for several more years. Before they
went under I remember a promotion they showed regularly showing you how to select and purchase a
proper UHF antenna.

It would be four or five more years before my dad finally broke down and bought a color set.
 
1952 when wkab tv channel 48 went on the air they took out ch 12 and striped it for channel 48 mobile alabama was more than 75 percent uhf at one time wkab tv could be viewed more than walatv the vhf tv station no one knows why it went off the air perhaps because wala tv was going to 316000 watts jan 2 1955 or the att and t cable would cost toomuch
 
First UHF I ever saw on a regular basis was in the early 1970's on a Black and White Floor Model set..Only had the indoor loop so in the rural Stark County (Canton) Ohio area we could only get WJAN-TV-17 Canton and WAKR-23 Akron..The Cleveland stations wouldnt come in without an Outdoor antenna which we only had for VHF..

About relative power of UHF stations:

Here is the power output of the Youngstown, Ohio stations at the beginning of 1963:

21 - 179 kw Vis, 89.5 kw Aur and 960 feet HAAT

27 – 436 kw Vis, 218 kw Aur and 630 feet HAAT

33 – 209 kw Vis, 105 kw Aur and 580 feet HAAT

45- 16 kw Vis, 10 kw Aur and 330 feet HAAT
(As WXTV-off the air Spring 1962)

WXTV barely made it on a 20 mile radius-Not even to Alliance, Ohio just over the Mahoning County line..33 (WKST/WYTV) has been considered the weakest of the Youngstown Stations since..
 
It was 1972 my brother got a B&W portable. The UHF tuner didn't have "clickable numbers." I got my own portable TV in 1976 and it was a B&W portable and it had clickable numbers on UHF.

By clickable I mean each channel made a click. The TV my brother had the UHF had to be tuned similar to a radio dial.

I loved UHF because we got WSNS (44) and WFLD (32) which were great independents in addition to WGN (9)
 
We got UHF in May 1967 when we got cable and WKBD TV 50 Detroit and WTVS 56 NET/PBS Detroit were on the lineup. WUHQ-TV/WOTV ABC 41 would not come on in Battle Creek until 4 years later, WGVU PBS from Grand Rapids came on @ Christmas 1972, and there would not be naymore new stations around Battle Creek until WXMI TV 17-GR and WFSL-TV/WSYM-TV 47 Lansing both Fox stations later , would sign in 1982, 17 in March ,47 before Christmas. And Lansing finally got it's own ABC on UHF in 1990 with WLAJ-TV 53.
 
While I was born well after UHF became mandatory on TV sets, my maternal Grandmother got her first VHF/UHF combo TV in 1965, which was a Panasonic 19 inch TV. She was only able to get WCIU 26 the first year she had the TV. The next year, WFLD 32 signed on, then in 1967, WCAE Gary/St. John signed on on channel 50 (the original non-commercial allocation for Gary). It wasn't until the 70's before she really watched UHF TV. She didn't get her first VHF/UHF combo antenna until about 1971 or 1972, and my Aunt Nancy bought an RCA Solid State Color TV in either 1971 or 1972 for my Grandmother. Chicago didn't get their first UHF station until 1964 (WCIU), with the last UHF in Chicagoland to sign on (full power only) in 1991 with WJYS Hammond on 62.

As for my paternal Grandmother, she didn't get her first VHF/UHF combo TV until about 1973 , and it was black & white (according to what my Dad told me, as his parents only had a VHF only TV for several years). Even after getting a VHF/UHF combo TV, my Grandparents never upgraded their antenna as it was only a Lo-VHF only antenna (I didn't know that at the time, but remember the antenna type, but can't find a link to what it looks like). That explains why UHF reception at their house was always fuzzy. After my Grandpa died in 1985, my Grandma got rid of the black & white TV, and got cable, along with a Sears color TV (she wanted a color TV years ago, but my Grandpa refused to pay the extra bucks for a color TV when he was alive).
 
...my parents divorced when I was an infant, and my father (yes, it used to happen!) got custody of me by 1971. On a visit, my mother gave me her old General Electric black&white portable, on which I was delighted to find I could tune in KFIZ-TV/34 from Fond du Lac WI, about 20 miles south of my home in Oshkosh. My dad thought he couldn't get KFIZ on his 23-inch Sears Silvertone console; as it turned out, I was able to tune it in the next day on the big set too -- it turned out that every time he'd tried to tune it in before, it was in the morning or early afternoon, when KFIZ was not on the air ;-) ...
 
1967, a birthday gift, while I was a college student in Buffalo NY. IIRC, only UHF on in Buffalo then was Ch. 17 and it was PBS (maybe it was still ETV then?) Anyway it was a 12" Magnavox
B&W portable and I had it for many years.
 
Our first UHF TV set in 1964 was a Sears Silvertone black and white 21" floor model with a lighted dial for VHF with a rotary dial below for UHF. It had some really nice speakers on the bottom as well. My Dad took the time to go up on the roof, removed the old VHF-only antenna and replaced it with a new modern VHF antenna on the top and put a corner reflector for UHF about a foot below. At that time, only one UHF station was in operation, WIHS-TV (now WSBK) Channel 38 in Boston. My Dad aimed the UHF antenna directly to the new Prudential Center in Boston, some 15 miles away. The picture on 38 was excellent! However, most of the programming during the daylight hours was Instructional Programming from the Boston Catholic Archdiocese (who owned the station). Channel 38 was the means to get the programming to Archdiocese schools in the Boston area. However, after 4:00 PM, Channel 38 became a commercial General Entertainment station during the evening hours with shows like "Dobie Gillis", "Sea Hunt" and a lot of movies and even a "talking head" newscast (no films or slides) anchored by late veteran Boston newsman Victor Best. Eventually more stations hit the air on UHF shortly afterwards, namely WKBG-TV (now WLVI) Channel 56 in 1966 and WGBX-TV Channel 44 (Educ.) in 1967. We did get a very weak station on Channel 14 (WJZB-TV, in Worcester) for a while (Channel 14 would leave the air for good after a fire destroyed their transmitter in 1969). The picture on 14 was pretty unwatchable, never mind the fact that Channel 14 was only on the air 2 hours a day. So, that was UHF in the George house. We did switch to color a few years later with an 18" RCA AccuColor set.
 
we got our first UHF set (a Zenith color) around 1964 (also our first color set), but didn't watch UHF until we got a 12-inch b&w sears set in the early 1970s. in the 10 years between that set and cable, i thought that was the golden age of UHF in Detroit (WXON just moved to 20, WKBD been on the air for 5 years. Between 1972-80, we saw in our aera, CKGN(CIII) 22-29, CKCO-42, CICO-32, CBEFT (78-54) and WGPR(WWJ(II)) 62 all sign on in the Detroit area.
 
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