Worst Stations and Markets for Local TV

[joebtsflk1]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Central Iowa: KGTV-17 in Des Moines started in 1953 to end Iowa State College's (now University) 3 year monopoly of central Iowa TV screens with its WOI-TV channel 5 in Ames. I don't know which network affiliations KGTV had, other than they might have been shared with WOI-TV. KGTV put its antenna on WHO radio's old Blaw-Knox tower. WHO radio had built a new 700 or 800 foot tower about 15 miles east of Des Moines, where WHO-TV's first transmitter went on-air in 1954. WHO-TV 13 took the NBC affiliation, which it has to this day. In 1955, KRNT-TV 8 in Des Moines took CBS. WOI-TV took ABC and KGTV went to 9...strichnine. (sorry)

The other casualty in central Iowa was KQTV/KVFD-TV 21/50 in Fort Dodge. As defunct stations go, it had a rather long history. It was started in 1953 by a group headed up by KVFD radio owner Ed Breen, and was with NBC from the beginning, but likely with kinescope service only until WHO-TV started in 1954. KQTV picked up NBC programming off-air from WHO-TV from that point on. KQTV had a niche in Fort Dodge since it was too far away for regular reception of NBC programming from WHO-TV (I presume the WHO-TV signal was received somewhere between the two towns and microwaved to the KQTV studios)

In 1967, KQTV picked up the KVFD-TV calls. 1970 saw the construction of a 1200' tower for KVFD-TV to spread its programming to areas of northwest Iowa that had little over-the-air TV. But the new tower didn't equal increased revenues, and by 1976 Ed Breen traded licenses with Iowa Public Television. IPTV bought the channel 21 license and tower, and KVFD took IPTVs channel 46 license and moved it to channel 50, since a transmitter and antenna tuned to channel 50 was available on the used market.* KVFD went back to the original Fort Dodge tower, but it was knocked off the air by a tornado in May 1977. Ed Breen started making plans to rebuild KVFD, but he succumbed to cancer the following year, which spelled the end of KVFD-TV

* was the channel 50 transmitter and antenna that of KCIT-TV 50 of Kansas City? could have been, but it's only speculation some 35 years later.

 

[dhett]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Full-power KCFG 9 Flagstaff had its license revoked in Oct. 2012. Flagstaff, which once boasted four full-power stations, now only has two. One is a full satellite of KPNX 12 Phoenix, and the other is basically a full satellite of KFPH-CD 35 Phoenix.

 

[only1moore]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

More recently, Guam had KTKB-LD 26, billing themselves on-air as "CW4 Guam" from April 2009 to March 2011. The only thing that doomed that station was how they were programmed, spending too much on building a news operation, conflict over its ownership (Marinanas Media was running it under a LMA for KM Communications), and competition from KUAM and KTGM.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Pittsburgh has had WENS-TV 16, which went dark in 1957 after it's transmitter was damaged in a storm.
Two new VHF competitors were about to sign on, and it was deemed not economically feasible to rebuild.
The license was later transferred and the station returned some years later as public broadcaster WQEX.

This is almost but not quite correct. The WENS tower was blown over in 1955 in a windstorm that
also damaged the KDKA-TV tower. WENS shared channel 13 with WQED for a short time (and the
ratings tripled!) before rebuilding with a short, guyed tower. They never were able to get traction
against channel 2, and signed off one day before channel 11 signed on the air, realizing they were
doomed. By that time WQED was already seeking a second outlet on UHF and the deal was made
in fairly short order. Today, channel 16 in Pittsburgh is back to commercial operation as the city's
Ion affiliate, WINP.

C.

Thanks! Very interesting stuff! Do you have any info on the old WKJF-TV 53? My understanding
it that it actually was on the air for a very brief time in the 50's. The building was clearly too big to
have been built just for radio.

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

I think WTVW-Evansville, IN would qualify for this list.

They were the ABC station in the market for 35+ years before being sold off to an outfit backed financially (in part) by Fox. That financial arrangement touched off a 3-way affiliate change with Fox ending up on the only commercial VHF station in the market.

The managed to make it work until Nexstar decided it didn't like Fox's reverse comp demands and gave up a network affiliation for bupkis.

But, lo and behold, Nexstar went shopping and bought the ABC (and only independently owned) station in the market, relegating it to red-headed stepchild status.

 

[johnnya2k6]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

In Miami, WTVJ was the dominant station right from the start; the reason can be summed up in two simple words: Ralph Renick!

He was the face of the station as their lead anchor, News Director, editorialist, and even Vice President; but when he stepped down in 1985 (so he would unsuccessfully run for Florida governor), it opened the door for WPLG to play catch-up. Then, after WTVJ became an NBC O&O (the move to Channel 6 would follow in 1995), WSVN switched to Fox and later changed their news portfolio by going "Hard Copy" on them; the formula worked and they became #1.

Today, WTVJ is far from downhill, but they still continue to gain some respectable ratings even though their glory days were already over.

 

[NeilRattigan]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Charleston, WV had WKNA-TV. It was an ABC/DuMont affilate on Channel 49.
It went on the air in October 1953 and was off the air by February 1955.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKNA-TV

The Lehigh Valley had a couple of stations.
WGLV was an ABC/DuMont affiliate on Channel 57.
WLEV was an NBC affiliate on Channel 51.
They were doomed when the Philadelphia tv stations moved their transmitters to Roxborough and increased for power.

Ditto for two Reading, PA stations, WEEU-TV, an NBC/ABC affiliate on Channel 33 and WHUM-TV, a CBS affiliate on Channel 61.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

In Miami, WTVJ was the dominant station right from the start; the reason can be summed up in two simple words: Ralph Renick!

After his unsuccessful run for office, didn't Renick return to WTVJ part-time to anchor special events and host specials??

 

[johnnya2k6]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

In Miami, WTVJ was the dominant station right from the start; the reason can be summed up in two simple words: Ralph Renick!

After his unsuccessful run for office, didn't Renick return to WTVJ part-time to anchor special events and host specials??

No, but he would briefly return to television, this time at WCIX (which had already flipped from Fox to CBS) with his commentaries before retiring for good in 1990.

Ralph Renick died the following year; it was the lead story on all Miami newscasts with WTVJ even doing a tribute special to him (an excerpt is on YouTube).

 

[arnoldevns]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

My favorite has to be KRET in Richardson, TX. Channel 23 was owned ny the Richardson school district and broadcast from a tower at Richardson high school. (My high school) It web on the air Feb 29, 1960 with educational programming for the district's schools. It was off during the summers. They transitioned to a microwave system in 1970 and got rid of the channel 23 license. The tower remained at my high school until about 2005 when they did a major renovation of the building and had to tear it down.

 

[cingram]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Thanks! Very interesting stuff! Do you have any info on the old WKJF-TV 53? My understanding
it that it actually was on the air for a very brief time in the 50's. The building was clearly too big to
have been built just for radio.

I worked in that building, back when 93.7 was WBZZ (originally WKJF-FM, now KDKA-FM). Channel
53 used to be in the basement. The soundproofing was still on the walls, the space that had been a
control booth was intact (sans equipment), and the large floor space that had been used as a studio
was being used to store station vehicles. Very high ceilings, with room for lights that had long been
removed. My guess is it probably looks much the same today.

WKJF-TV was doomed from the start, using relatively low power on a very high UHF channel. (Even
WENS, which was putting out a then state-of-the-art 200,000 watts, didn't cover the market all that
well on a low UHF channel.) The station was nominally an NBC affiliate, but NBC preferred WDTV, if
timeslots were available there. Even the engineers at WDTV, which was line-of-sight across the city
from WKJF-TV, reported "fair to poor" reception. People just couldn't see the channel 53 signal.

After a little more than a year, WKJF-TV announced it was taking a "summer hiatus." For them, the
hiatus would be a permanent one. The later (and present) channel 53 occupant, WPGH-TV, has two
distinctions. It was built using the original construction permit for WKJF-TV, which had been passed
around and sold to various owners over the intervening 15 years -- and, it built studios at 700 Ivory
Avenue, in the original WENS building, where it remains today after a great deal of remodeling.

There was a third Pittsburgh UHF station, WTVQ, channel 47, which held a construction permit from
1952 to 1957 but was never built. Eventually, channel 47 was moved to Altoona, where it operates
today as WKBS-TV, a satellite of Cornerstone's WPCB-TV 40.

C.

 

[F.M.Hertz]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

Gotta give one honorable mention to WPXI (nee WIIC) in Pittsburgh for
going in the opposite direction.

For many years the absolute laughing stock of the television industry for
everything from "Groucho took a turn for the worse today, in fact he died"
to being sued by Woody Allen for inserting their weather guy into one of his
movies with Chromakey, to airing unedited footage of R. Budd Dwyer blowing
his brains out.

Somehow they have recovered to run a fairly respectable local news outfit.

Totally agree with Freddy on this point. They've really cleaned up their act. Their stories aren't over the top and some of their investigative stories are pretty good. Plus, they've had the same lead anchor team for over 20 years with David Johnson and Peggy Finnegan, a good sign that they're doing the right things.

As for the other end of the spectrum, the honors for a once great Pittsburgh station that has fallen by the wayside in a big way has to go to WTAE (ABC-4). In the 70s this station was on fire and it was led off by a great news team: Paul Long and Don Cannon, Joe DeNardo with Weather, and Myron Cope on Sports. This was the premier news team in town. I seem to recall that Channel 4 was the station that had the largest rating numbers for any ABC affiliate in the United States. This was during ABC's glory years from 1975 to 1981. Their promotional spots were also top-notch and even featured some of the celebrities from the ABC lineup in them.

Now, their news product is a shell of it's former self. The former news director has rearranged the anchor chairs more often than deck chairs were moved on the Titanic. Most of the reporters are young and inexperienced. Also, the news product is very sensationalistic. It hasn't helped that the network doesn't have a great lineup save for two nights out of the week. This station is in need of a serious housecleaning.

 

[flytrap]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

WJTV in Jackson, MS was originaly on channel 25. WSLI TV was on channel 12. One was CBS and the other was Dumont. The stations merged in the 50's and the WJTV call letters were moved to channel 12 and the old ch 25 was shut down. There were a few low power stations that also went defunct. Channel 49 WJFX Equity broadcasting (MTV 2 and various other formats) and a simulcast on channel 8. Both are now dark. Also Equity's channel 53 WJMF(univison) went dark after Equity filed bankrutcy. It was later bought and moved to channel 6 but signed back on as audio only. EZ 87.7

 

[Ultimajock]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

The only defunct low-power station in the Los Angeles market that I can think of is Almavisión translator K55KD, which had to file for an STA to move to channel 57 due to interference complaints lodged by Qualcomm, which had purchased exclusive rights to broadcast on the frequencies occupied by UHF channel 55.

...there was, much more recently, KPAL-LP/38 Palmdale, which started out as an affiliate of America One and Network 1, picking up UATV after Network 1 folded; after UATV also folded, KPAL increased its infomercial load and those eventually took over most of the schedule. The FCC cancelled KPAL's pending applications to transfer ownership and switch from analog Channel 38 to digital Channel 22 last summer. Their studios and satellite dish are still sitting on East Avenue I in Lancaster...

 

[FreddyE1977]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

WKJF-TV was doomed from the start, using relatively low power on a very high UHF channel. (Even
WENS, which was putting out a then state-of-the-art 200,000 watts, didn't cover the market all that
well on a low UHF channel.) The station was nominally an NBC affiliate, but NBC preferred WDTV, if
timeslots were available there. Even the engineers at WDTV, which was line-of-sight across the city
from WKJF-TV, reported "fair to poor" reception. People just couldn't see the channel 53 signal.

I could believe that. Even in the early 70's watching Channel 53 was more like monitoring some early warning
radar system (if a plane was in the air within 12 nautical miles the picture would wave and wobble). I'm guessing
some major advance in UHF transmission capabilities occurred sometime afterwards, as the next time I found
myself without cable in the mid-90's WPGH was actually one of the better over-the-air signals.

Used to live close enough to that building I could get B-94 on my toaster. The locals are all taking bets on
the date that it (along with the tower) go over the hillside and land on the West End.

 

[johnnya2k6]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

Another station to add to the list: Los Angeles's KCET!

For decades, it was THE PBS station for all of Southern California, but things have never been the same since severing ties with PBS in 2011 and KOCE becoming the new flagship affiliate.

Months later, the Church of Scientology bought the historic KCET lot (which, actually, has been in continuous use for over 100 years!) and they're still scrambling to find a new home. Maybe they could lease some space at The Burbank Studios now that NBC doesn't own it anymore.

But despite all that, KCET has become the #1 independent public TV station in the nation's #2 market.

 

[mavtv]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

Another station to add to the list: Los Angeles's KCET!

For decades, it was THE PBS station for all of Southern California, but things have never been the same since severing ties with PBS in 2011 and KOCE becoming the new flagship affiliate.

Months later, the Church of Scientology bought the historic KCET lot (which, actually, has been in continuous use for over 100 years!) and they're still scrambling to find a new home. Maybe they could lease some space at The Burbank Studios now that NBC doesn't own it anymore.

But despite all that, KCET has become the #1 independent public TV station in the nation's #2 market.

The "KCET" studios are in a glass high rise in Burbank between Disney headquarters and The Burbank studios on Alamedia Ave. Funny thing is the pointe building and The Burbank studios are both owned by the same company and I heard I heart radio is leasing a part of the Burbank studios.

Thus far the merger has been crap as I really liked 28.2 kids and family until they replaced it with that link channel which is a result of the merger of KCET and Link media. That and the fact they laid 20+ people over the past few months they have gone down hill.

But they do air the the original land of the lost and H.R puffenstuff on the weekend through

 

[johnnya2k6]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

The "KCET" studios are in a glass high rise in Burbank between Disney headquarters and The Burbank studios on Alamedia Ave. Funny thing is the pointe building and The Burbank studios are both owned by the same company and I heard I heart radio is leasing a part of the Burbank studios.

Thus far the merger has been crap as I really liked 28.2 kids and family until they replaced it with that link channel which is a result of the merger of KCET and Link media. That and the fact they laid 20+ people over the past few months they have gone down hill.

But they do air the the original land of the lost and H.R puffenstuff on the weekend through

Yeah; shortly after the sale of their longtime studios to the Scientologists, KCET did indeed relocate to the Pointe...which is right next door to The (now former NBC) Burbank Studios.

As a result, that leaves KTLA -- which was discussed at the beginning of this thread -- as the only station still based in Hollywood.

 

[mvcg66b3r]

Worst Markets for Local TV

With all this talk of cursed frequencies, what about cursed TV markets?

For example, mid-sized markets which have to stand in the shadows of much-larger adjacent markets.

Baltimore → Washington
Providence → Boston
Baton Rouge → New Orleans
Toledo → Detroit
San Diego → Los Angeles

Baltimore has the Big 4, CW, MNT and PBS, but no ION or Univision. This market has had its share of network musical chairs.

In Baton Rouge, the Big 4 networks and PBS are full-power, while The CW and MyNetworkTV are low-power.

Toledo has the Big 4, PBS and a religious independent. The CW is cable-only, while MNT is low-power.

Grand Rapids has two separately-owned ABC affiliates, each of which covers part of the market. MNT is on a group of low-power stations, while CW is on a CBS subchannel. The ION station (which aired WB programming for a while) also serves Lansing.

The only full-power stations licensed to San Diego are the Big 4, a PBS station and an independent. The CW, MNT and Telemundo (!) come from Mexico, while Univision is low-power.

El Paso lost both its UPN and WB affiliates to Spanish networks. And its CBS station almost got sold to Azteca America.

In Reno, CW is on a subchannel of the Univision station.

Many markets that were cursed had become “uncursed” recently, like Austin, where a KXAN satellite became a brand new MyNetworkTV station, and a WB affiliate in Waco moved in to bring Univision programming to Texas’ capital (although still licensed to Killeen in the Waco DMA).

Of course, markets can be cursed for other reasons, such as not clearing popular network or syndicated programs (or airing them in odd hours); or local news on only two stations in a market with four or more.

Which TV markets do you think are cursed?

 

[joebtsflk1]

Most markets 150 plus. Very few can support four separate channels for the big 4 nets. Channel sharing in the DTV era has allowed some markets, such as Quincy IL - Hannibal MO to have all big 4 nets available for the first time. And markets like Lima Ohio to move from one network to four...still basically just one station, full power WLIO along with recent low power WOHL.

In the 150 plus markets, it sometimes is a tale of cursed TV stations. KTVO, channel 3 Kirksville MO - Ottumwa IA might be an entry in the single station cursed market. For the first 20 years, roughly 1955 - 1974, life was good. Started as primary CBS, secondary NBC - ABC. Primary changed to ABC in 1968 to serve part of the Quincy Hannibal market nearby.

1. 1973: Ottumwa, once headquarters of John Morrell meats, loses the last Morrell plant in town. KTVO was based from Ottumwa from 1955 - 1974. A one-camera studio at the transmitter served as the "main" studio. The FCC "discovered" in 1974 that the Ottumwa studio was really the main studio, and ruled that KTVO had to move to Kirksville. Nineteen years KTVO pulled the wool over the FCC on that count? Nah, KTVO figured they needed to bail on Ottumwa.

2. Another reason to bail on Ottumwa: a 2000 foot tower midway between Kirksville and Quincy. Announced in 1974, not built until 1986. UHF stations in adjacent markets feared VHF KTVO would siphon off viewers, particularly the ABC in Columbia on channel 17. The KTVO grade B signal from the 2000 footer came to within 15 miles of Columbia. Alas, the 2000 footer came down after only a year or two. KTVO was sold to new owners shortly after the 2000 footer was built. When it came down, the new owners went back to the original tower and never rebuilt the 2000 footer. Had the big tower survived, Ottumwa-Kirksville and Qunicy-Hannibal likely would have merged into Tri-States !A-IL-MO. Even merged, it would only be market 147.

3. KTVO was bought by Barrington Broadcasting, which after the DTV conversion kept the station on a temporary side-mounted UHF antenna (RF channel 33) with a low-powered trasnmitter that makes an ERP of a whopping 88,000 watts. Barrington created significant white areas with that move. But, if everyone is on Dish/DirecTV or cable, who cares. Now Sinclair owns KTVO. They'd like to boost power, but with the repack freeze that app won't be going anywhere without some fancy lobbying.

4. The FOX affiliate in Ottumwa, KYOU -15 doesn't even have its transmitter within the Kirksville - Ottumwa DMA. Back in the 80s, in the bad ol' days of KOCR, Fox 28 in Cedar Rapids, Fox needed all the help they could get, so they convinced the owners of KYOU at the time to build a new tower 25 miles NE of Ottumwa to also .serve Iowa City. It even put a fringe signal into Cedar Rapids. Granted, the KYOU tower is just a few miles over the county line into the Cedar Rapids -Waterloo DMA. But it's one of those strange stories in the early development of the Fox network where the small-town affiliate with less competition was stronger than the affiliate in the larger market. I don't know if there are many other similar examples. That did leave Kirksville without Fox for a number of years, but a low power repeater for KYOU takes care of most of the Missouri side of the market these days.