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Worst Stations and Markets for Local TV

I already mentioned the short-lived Fox 60 WYVN in WV - going from a 10PM newscast to "The Cisco Kid" reruns in a year, and off in another half a year!

-crainbebo
 
This is from the Classic TV forum:

joebtsflk1 said:
If I had access to an Iowa edition of TV Guide, or microfilm of the Des Moines Register, I'd provide the whole day. For the record, the last show aired on KVFD-TV was The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

It was 7 pm, and engineer Don Lewis had rejoined the NBC feed after an hour of local programs. He'd been monitoring severe weather activity that afternoon and evening. At 7:15, a Webster County sheriff's deputy spotted a tornado several miles south of town. Tornado sirens were activated in Fort Dodge. Lewis was able to broadcast tornado warnings several times from the station. At 7:30, there was only enough time for him to dive to safety under a steel table before the station took a direct hit.

A John Wayne movie was on the schedule at 8 pm for NBC's Wednesday Night at the Movies. It wouldn't be seen, nor would KVFD-TV ever return to the air. The station's 650 foot tower at the studio didn't fall, but suffered major structural damage. Tower experts remarked that they had never seen a tower take so much damage and still remain standing.

KVFD's owner and founder Ed Breen made the decision to dismantle the tower. Breen, at age 78 had been trying to sell KVFD-TV for some time, but vowed to rebuild the station anyway. Unfortunately, cancer would take Breen's life less than a year later, which marked the end of commercial TV in Fort Dodge.

KVFD-TV started out life as KQTV in November 1953 on channel 21. Unlike most UHF stations of the time, KQTV actually survived, having a monopoly of sorts in the Fort Dodge area. WOI-TV from Ames was the only other station that reached Fort Dodge at that time. Des Moines' channel 8, KRNT-TV (later KCCI) wouldn't start up until 1955. WHO-TV the NBC affiliate on channel 13 started in 1954, but its tower 15 miles east of Des Moines at the WHO-AM site was too far away to reach Fort Dodge. So it was a natural decision for KQTV to be an NBC affiliate.

KQTV would take the calls of Ed Breen's AM station KVFD in 1967. In the early 70's, Breen built a 1200 foot tower for channel 21 northwest of Fort Dodge. tv Increased revenues didn't follow, so when Iowa Public Television proposed to build a Fort Dodge station, Breen offered the channel 21 tower to IPTV. KVFD-TV would take over IPTV's channel 46 license, modified to channel 50 as a used antenna and transmitter tuned to that channel was available. It was installed at the original 650' tower site next to the studio. KVFD spent less than a year on channel 50 before the tornado 37 years ago this week put the station into the archives.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVFD-TV
 
KVFD-TV had a lot longer run than most of the UHFs born in 1953. It helped that Fort Dodge was on the fringe of channel 8 (KRNT/KCCI) coverage when its transmitter was in downtown Des Moines, and beyond the reach of channel 13 WHO-TV.

The Des Moines market was slower to the 2000 foot tower club than the neighboring Cedar Rapids - Waterloo market, where tall towers were in place since 1967 and earlier. When Channel 13 joined with WOI-TV channel 5 at Ames and IPTV's channel 11 to build a 2000 foot tower in 1971, that made things a lot tougher for Fort Dodge's 21. That's likely why Breen built the 1200' tower, to tap into largely unserved areas to the northwest beyond the reach of the 2000 footers in the Des Moines market.

One can speculate on what the future would have held for KVFD had the tornado not taken it out. Would it have become a repeater of WHO-TV? There was a lot of territory in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota beyond the reach of most TV stations, save for Mankato's KEYC on channel 12.

But even though it wasn't a happy ending for the KVFD license on channel 50, the channel 21 allocation has been continuously used since 1953. So in a sense what Ed Breen built in 1953 lives on as part of Iowa Public Television.
 
It would probably have become a repeater of WHO, likely with the calls "KWHO", if it was still on. Definitely if it was still on after the economic recession.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
It would probably have become a repeater of WHO, likely with the calls "KWHO", if it was still on. Definitely if it was still on after the economic recession.

-crainbebo
Click to expand...

Or somebody could have bought it and tried to move it closer to Des Moines. The farm crisis of the 80s might have killed it off, too.

joebtsflk1 said:
But even though it wasn't a happy ending for the KVFD license on channel 50, the channel 21 allocation has been continuously used since 1953. So in a sense what Ed Breen built in 1953 lives on as part of Iowa Public Television.
Click to expand...

A bit more of Ed remains on northwest Iowa TV; his grandson Matt is the anchor on KTIV/4, Sioux City.
 
Two cursed stations in a cursed market:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWCP-TV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WATM-TV

The stations’ news departments were merged in 2002 and shut down in 2007. A WJAC-produced newscast airs nightly at 10 on WWCP, while WATM currently airs no local news whatsoever. The market only has two functioning newsrooms – WJAC and WTAJ.

WWCP’s signal barely reaches Altoona and doesn’t reach State College, but does cover much of greater Pittsburgh (which has its own Fox affiliate, BTW). So it’s simulcast (in HD!) on WATM’s second subchannel (despite the two stations being separately owned). With the FCC’s crackdown on JSAs (and wireless companies’ growing appetite for spectrum), I would be surprised if either station is still around in a few years.

Since the market doesn’t have its own CW station (not even on a subchannel), cable systems pick up WPCW from Pittsburgh (which ironically was once a Johnstown station; it too was cursed – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPCW). The MNT station is low-power WHVL in State College, whose signal doesn’t make it too far our of Happy Valley.
 
Gannett is buying six stations in Texas from London Broadcasting for $215 million. Does anyone here think any of these six stations were/are cursed?
 
This is from NTVNews0 on tvnewstalk.net (lots of errors):

All of former Robert Broadcasting TV stations can also consider as cursed stations, since they have lousy signal. Robert Broadcasting even sell their TV stations for those not to broadcast former programming. WRBJ goes to TBN, which made Jackson, MS area have five-month absence of CW until WJTV-DT2 grab CW. Other stations goes to ION, made MyNetworkTV no longer have station in St.Louis.
Click to expand...
 
WVUA-CA Tuscaloosa AL

This is a low-power station still broadcasting in analog, and it doesn’t make it too far out of Tuscaloosa. It is simulcast on full-power WUOA 23, with transmitter in Birmingham and full-market coverage, making WVUA redundant. Wonder what the University of Alabama would do with a redundant LPTV?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WVUA-CA
 
These stations didn’t quite make it on their own, and became satellites of larger stations in their market:

KNAZ Flagstaff AZ (Phoenix DMA) now a satellite of KPNX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNAZ-TV

KSAX Alexandria/KRWF Redwood Falls MN (Minneapolis DMA) now satellites of KSTP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSTP-TV#Satellite_stations_and_translators

KCCO Alexandria/KCCW Walker MN (Minneapolis DMA) now satellites of WCCO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCCO-TV#Satellite_stations_and_translators

CKNX Wingham ON – now an analog satellite of CFPL London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CKNX-TV

CJSS Cornwall ON – now an analog satellite of CJOH Ottawa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJSS-TV
 
Sad story about KNAZ 2. They were Flagstaff's only local TV news. Then they failed off and KPNX took over, and nothing but separate commercials is on KNAZ now. KMOH was the same thing. An independent (somewhat low budget with AIN at one point around 1995-96, and then WB) in a tiny city with NEWS!
KSAX same story. They had a good news department at one point and then fell off the wagon.

KXJB might be added to the list because of how KVLY took over them with "Valley News Live." OH, AND WTVH!! WSTM buying them has killed that station. WTVH was #1 in Syracuse for many years in the 1980s and 1990s. And then they fell off the wagon too.
One more: KIDK 3 Idaho Falls. KIFI literally controls them now. They used to be a Fisher station with a full news department for Eastern Idaho. Then KIFI the ABC station, took over - they are not even owned by Fisher/Sinclair now. The news open might look like a separate newscast, but go to KIFI and the same personalities are on there. Sad.

-crainbebo
 
mvcg66b3r said:
KCCO Alexandria/KCCW Walker MN (Minneapolis DMA) now satellites of WCCO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCCO-TV#Satellite_stations_and_translators
Click to expand...

I wouldnt called it cursed. It was its own station (KCMT) when ALex was its own market. They were NBC/ABC stations. But the Minneapolis market just ate away at the Alexandria market. When the station (and satellite KNMT) were sold that did two things. Got rid of the Alexandria market and gave a full power CBS to the area
 
RE: WVUA/WUOA

I don't know that I would necessarily call this a cursed station, just a poorly programmed station.

PRO: It serves as a training facility for the University of Alabama's communications department. The weekend meteorologist on WBRC-6, the leading news station in the market, came to Channel 6 from WVUA/WUOA.
PRO: It provides the only Tuscaloosa-centric newscast in the Birmingham/Tuscaloosa/Anniston DMA, and has since the station debuted in 1998.
PRO: For fans of the University of Alabama, they offer some live broadcasts of non-revenue Crimson Tide sports, as well as taped delayed repeats of Alabama football.
PRO: It offers ThisTV to central Alabama.
CON: It offers ThisTV to central Alabama. :)
 
unclehonkey said:
I wouldnt called it cursed. It was its own station (KCMT) when ALex was its own market. They were NBC/ABC stations. But the Minneapolis market just ate away at the Alexandria market. When the station (and satellite KNMT) were sold that did two things. Got rid of the Alexandria market and gave a full power CBS to the area
Click to expand...

Actually in the summer of 1982 KCMT(amd its translator in Walker) became a CBS affiliate.
 
I well remember KDUL; despite their flimsy signal I watched them often and enjoyed their shows. AIN (itself since defunct) fed on public-domain movies supplied to them by a good friend, now sadly gone too, John McDonough of TVAI (TV Access International, aka Flint TV) in Fargo. John also produced the commercial for that vanity-press Western novel "Charlie's Gold" which ran constantly on AIN's shows. It was B-movie heaven..."Machine Gun Mama" or "State Department File 649" (in Cinecolor, yet), anybody?

KDUL's office and studio (literally that, it was so small that when they needed to produce something, they moved away the front desk and taped the promo or PSA in front of a wall which had their logo on it) was for some reason located in a yuppified mini-mall converted out of an old brewery. Why they needed store-type space I'll never know, as they were not a walk-in-type business and the rental must have been moider.

One big mistake they made was offering advertisers "bonus" placement on a sort of shopping-guide show that ran at 10 pm nightly. Trouble was, they had so few sponsors they ended up running the same damn show every night! If you can think of a better way to turn away viewers, I'd like to know of it (or maybe not...)

Another time they lost their AIN signal and had nothing to broadcast, so they went over to the public-access people at cable and borrowed a bunch of gawdawful public-access shows to run as filler. Might have been better to go out and buy twenty bucks' worth of P.D. dollar movies, but maybe by then they didn't even have the $20 to spare!
 
This is from the "Cursed TV Stations" thread on SitcomsOnline.com:

SitcomsOffline said:
WADL in Detroit.

They have the strongest signal of any station in the city, yet has struggled as a low-budget, non-affiliated station since its inception trying to find its place...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WADL_(TV)
Click to expand...

It transmits from Mount Clemens, not Southfield like the other Detroit stations. And it's not in HD, just crappy 4:3 SD. That last thing matters when WADL airs NBC programming not cleared by WDIV. Either it's letterboxed or the sides are chopped off.
 
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