Worst Stations and Markets for Local TV

[dave73]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

I would add Chicago's independents, WGN, WFLD and WSNS.

Now WGN is just another CW affiliate, the only real program they have going for them is the morning show, which is driven by Larry Potash and Paul Konrad.

WFLD was great and the battle between WFLD and WGN always meant good TV. Now it's a third rate Fox station.

WSNS was the independent that would "try harder" so it had a lot of quirky shows. Now it's Telemundo.

We still have WCIU which does well, but it too is loosing it's identity as it tries to be more corporate.

I think that is the problem, local-ism has pretty much died out. Even Me-TV is not even half as good since it went national. America is too diverse to get exceptional programming all over. What plays in one city won't go over in another.

And duopolies have ruined stations like WWOR, KCAL, KCOP and WPWR, which are dumping grounds. (note: I listed Fox duopolies but they aren't alone. Other owners are just as bad.

I was gonna mention WPWR-TV. They started out as a time-shared station with WBBS on channel 60, & initially had some boring programming. Within a couple of years, the programming got better with some off-network syndicated programming. By the time they bought out WBBS's share of the license, WPWR-TV went full time in 1986, then a few months later, moved to channel 50 (only after swapping the unbuilt channel 56 license, & getting the channel 50 license changed to commercial, & the 56 license made non-commercial). They were a powerful independentin the late 80's into the mid 90's. They still did well after becoming a UPN affiliate.It only after Newsweb Corporation sold WPWR-TV to Fox, that WPWR-TV became a dumping ground for their programming. Even after creating MNT, it hadn't helped.

I also agree about MeTV. It used to be great when it was just in Chicago (MeTV for comedy & MeToo for drama). Now, I feel MeToo is programmed better than MeTV is, since MeTV went national in December 2010. In the digital era, MeTV airs on WWME-LD 23.1 & simulcasted on WCIU 26.3. MeToo is on WMEU-CD 48.1 & simulcasted on WCIU 26.4. I'm concerned down the line, that MeToo might go national as well down the line, & have comedy on MeTV & drama on MeToo.

WGN-TV used to have some great programming. Now, it's talk shows during the day, & boring CW programming in primetime.

 

[MCarney]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

WSBK TV38 Boston. Once the home of the Red Sox, Bruins, The Movie Loft, Ask The Manager and The Three Stooges. Now the MyNet affiliate for Boston and owned by CBS.

 

[Bob1370]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

We've seen both WKBW-TV in Buffalo and WTVH in Syracuse mentioned in this thread...and they have one thing in common. They changed hands from their original strong owners (Capital Cities/ABC for WKBW, Meredith for WTVH) to others, and both really hit the skids after Granite Broadcasting acquired both of them. It's true both stations lost their long time signature anchors to retirement between 1998 (Irv Weinstein in Buffalo) and 2000 (Ron Curtis in Syracuse) and didn't succeed in replacing them--each in fact had logical and well-liked successors in house at the time of the retirement who they let get away from them. (WKBW's anchor succession actually inspired a major Hollywood film, Jim Carrey's comedy Bruce Almighty, in which he played a thinly disguised former feature reporter who wanted (and didn't get) a shot to move into the anchor chair, although another former anchor who would have been the best candidate got away and went to the crosstown CBS affiliate which now leads the market. In both cases, Granite either didn't want to pay to keep them, couldn't, or couldn't make a timely decision. Or all three factors played a role.

And that was typical--Granite has tried to do everything on the cheap and has been too slow to make any potentially risky choice, even though every successful choice in TV always carries some risk. WTVH has even farmed out its news operation to competing WSTM, and WKBW has simply downsized its news department significantly although it remains independent. Another ownership change is the only thing that will restore either of these stations to a really competitive position.

 

[SixtiesGuy]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

How about a list of once great stations that are still great?

Four words apply here: race to the bottom.

For a number of reasons the broadcast network and local station neighborhood has become decidedly low rent. A tour of the dial during a typical broadcast day reveals either moronic, trash programming, or infomercials and ads trying to sell garbage to people who enjoy moronic, trash programming. And please don't try to tell me this is no different than it was twenty or thirty years ago.

 

[FreddyE1977]

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.

 

[Lamont Lester]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

For Indianapolis, I'll nominate WTTV/4 and WRTV/6.

For WRTV/6, the great heritage of the WFBM stations carried over after the TV side Time-Life sale to McGraw Hill. As WRTV, the station's dominance grew. Overwhelmingly number one. Bob Gamble and Howard Caldwell led newsroom that ruled the news ratings. Despite some strong talent, a slow decline through the 90s and into the 00s. At times sinking to fourth place, losing to reruns at 6 and 11. But perhaps a better future is on the way. Saw their news show for the first time in a few years over the holidays. A stronger, tighter, better written and produced product than I've seen from 6 in quite awhile. Both Todd Connor and Drew Smith strike me a damned good anchors.

Then there's Indiana's station WTTV/4. Strong independent under Tarzian ownership. Legendary local kids shows. IU and Purdue along with High School sports. A-list syndicated shows. The only trouble was the signal. Despite that, we all still watched. Nothing on the nets and you spent the rest of the evening with Merv Griffin or David Frost. The key was local and regional coverage. With the early growth of cable, Elmer Snow and Don Tillman busted backside to get that station cleared across Indiana and well into Illinois and Ohio.

Then came the day when Tarzian decided to sell. You knew immediately that the product would suffer. That those local show that were such a key would be replaced with syndicated talk and cartoons. You knew they'd have to pay down that debt. And did it ever suffer. Add in the roll out of WPDS/WXIN/59 and the Hulman family purchase and launch of WNDY/23. The day they blew out the WTTV newsroom was one of my saddest in Indy broadcasting. And the numbers fell. The WTTV I see now is a shadow of what I grew up with. Despite Tribune ownership, it strikes me as the proverbial red headed step child to big brother co-owner WXIN/59.

For just one more day watching Noah Miller and Chuck Marlowe hosting TV Bingo ("pick your cards up at all Walt's Market locations") after Lunchtime Theater cartoons.

 

[blackgold]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

WCVB-TV here in Boston has been going downhill ever since Chet and Nat split up! :-[

 

[cingram]

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.

 

[Bob1370]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

What may surprise some people is that one of the New York City market's full power VHF stations went poof as late as 1961 after 13 years of operation--it was one of the original 108 pre-freeze stations and just about the only one of the originals in the whole country that failed.

WNTA-TV Channel 13 started as WATV, licensed across the river in Newark but covering the whole tri-state market right from the get-go. It initially programmed a typical independent schedule of films, children's shows and brief newscasts just like WPIX and WOR but even lower-budget. Once it moved its transmitter from the Palisades to the Empire State Building and changed its callsign to WNTA-TV it covered the market even better...and in the late 1950s started a more ambitious schedule of live local programming which included nightly news and interview programs hosted by Mike Wallace and Henry Morgan. WNTA got ratings, and even syndicated some of its offerings through a quasi-network arrangement...but the revenue never matched WNTA's ambitons and the station went dark in 1961.

The frequency, transmitter and license became the property of Educational Broadcasting Company, a local community organization, in 1962 after a year of nothing but snow on Channel 13 and became New York's public TV outlet. It's now WNET, licensed to New York proper and one of the key producing outlets in the PBS system. But it has nothing to do with the old WNTA except the transmitter site and antenna.

 

[tripinva]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

It's now WNET, licensed to New York proper

It's still licensed to Newark, NJ.

- Trip

 

[Lamont Lester]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

WURD/40 Indianapolis

This one was flat out the Plan 9 of TV stations. Owned by the late Wendell Hanson of Noblesville, IN - a character who's claim to fame was his famous "Bible Birds" show. From that you get the direction of the programming. He tried to follow the early pattern Robertson had established in the Tidewater with WYAH. Used equipment from the early days of color. Most skin tones were sunburn red. The studio was a cinder block wall covered in old egg cartons. It looked like the KORN set from Hee Haw. Southern gospel music, sold lots and lots of time to local preachers and some to the more southern pentecostal set that populated early Christian TV. Finally tuned by on an early Sunday night just in time to see him crying and praying and saying he was signing the station off the air. South Bend, IN based televangelist Lester Sumrall bought it and returned the station to the air as WHMB/40 no more than 18 months laters. Sumrall has owned it ever since.

 

[KeithE4]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

WURD/40 Indianapolis

This one was flat out the Plan 9 of TV stations. Owned by the late Wendell Hanson of Noblesville, IN - a character who's claim to fame was his famous "Bible Birds" show. From that you get the direction of the programming. He tried to follow the early pattern Robertson had established in the Tidewater with WYAH. Used equipment from the early days of color. Most skin tones were sunburn red. The studio was a cinder block wall covered in old egg cartons. It looked like the KORN set from Hee Haw. Southern gospel music, sold lots and lots of time to local preachers and some to the more southern pentecostal set that populated early Christian TV. Finally tuned by on an early Sunday night just in time to see him crying and praying and saying he was signing the station off the air. South Bend, IN based televangelist Lester Sumrall bought it and returned the station to the air as WHMB/40 no more than 18 months laters. Sumrall has owned it ever since.

He was also a huge White Sox fan. He erected a huge UHF antenna pointed toward Chicago so that he could broadcast Sox games that were carried on WFLD at the time. I think he aired one or two games before WURD signed off. As I lived in Bloomington at the time and couldn't get Channel 40, I don't know first-hand how the broadcast looked.

 

[KML0224]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Those cities are 163 air miles apart. How in the hell could he have pulled in Chicago from there?

 

[KeithE4]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Those cities are 163 air miles apart. How in the hell could he have pulled in Chicago from there?

According to Wikipedia, they used a microwave link, rather than an off-air pickup of WFLD. In any case, the station shut down a few days later. It was off for about a year before Sumerall signed on WHMB-TV (which wasn't viewable in Bloomington, either).

 

[1069_KIFR]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

KBHK 44 - San Francisco
KBWB 20 - San Francisco
KEMO 20 - San Francisco
KTZO 20 - San Francisco

 

[KeithE4]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

WBBS-TV Ch. 60 shared time with WPWR-TV between 1982 and 1985. It was a Spanish-language station.

The station is still on the air today, as WXFT-DT. After WSNS picked up the SIN affiliation, WBBS gave its weekday hours to WPWR, and kept its weekend hours for Spanish movies. After WPWR moved to channel 50, channel 60 was sold to HSN, and became WEHS in 1986, then Telefutura and WXFT in 2002.

WBBS's share of Channel 60 was purchased by WPWR in early 1986 (I'd thought it was late '85), ending the split-schedule arrangement. WPWR moved to Channel 50, and Channel 60 became WEHS in January of '87.

The owners of WBBS had bought WIND radio from Westinghouse in late '85 and switched it to Spanish-language programming, so their share of Channel 60 had to go per FCC regs at the time.

Another one from Indiana was WTAF-TV 31 Marion, a miniscule independent that lasted from 1962 to 1969. It was essentially what would be a Class A station today (about 30 kW ERP, IIRC) that rebroadcast quite a bit of WTTV's schedule but had some of its own programming as well.

There was a CP issued in 1970 to resurrect it as WSFO-TV on Channel 23 (the channel allocations for several cities in Indiana and Illinois had been shuffled around during the time WTAF was on the air - Marion went from 31 to 23), but it never went back on the air until WMCC started up in 1984.

I don't know if WMCC (now WNDY) used the same CP and/or license as WTAF-TV. I'm guessing that the license was turned in and the call letters were deleted, since the call letters ended up on what had been WIBF-TV Channel 29 in Philly almost immediately after Channel 31 left the air in 1969.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

It should also be noted that (April 7th, 2009) was the 60th anniversary of KTLA's pioneering live, non-stop 48 hour coverage of the Kathy Fiscus Tragedy, which had the entire region spellbound and glued to their TV sets. Everyone stopped what they were doing to see the coverage of the rescue efforts.

It was before my time, but it's my understanding that there were as yet no transcontinental TV network lines (and would not be until September of 1951), but I had heard that by that time, Los Angeles was connected to San Francisco and San Diego by network lines and that supposedly, almost all of KTLA's coverage (except maybe the beginning) was simulcast by the one San Diego station at the time and all three stations that then existed in San Francisco. Reportedly, much of the sound portion of KTLA's coverage was simulcast on the ABC, CBS, Mutual and NBC Radio Networks.

 

[bpatrick]

Re: ONCE GREAT STATIONS THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM GRACE

And I believe several West Coast stations carried a television
version of "Queen For A Day" several years before the national
television version started (1956).

 

[azumanga]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

KBHK 44 - San Francisco
KBWB 20 - San Francisco
KEMO 20 - San Francisco
KTZO 20 - San Francisco

These stations were not actually defunct -- they just had their callsigns changed.

 

[Charles1]

Re: Defunct TV stations in your city

Add another one to the list: WTRT/WYLE-26, Florence, AL