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Worst TV stations ever

> What are the worst television stations you've ever seen?
>

Any discussion of bad TV stations HAS to include WVII (ABC, ch. 7) in Bangor, Maine. They're the #3 station in town in every way imaginable.

In the 80s they were even worse. Their newscasts were on a bare-bones blue and marble set. They looked like they were shot with a home video camera too, and their chron had maybe 2-3 fonts, one of which was butt-ugly. Don't forget the Brady Bunch reruns and cartoons in late afternoon well into the 90s. I have a tape of a 1992 WVII newscast. The open consisted of poorly-shot images of Bangor with a blue tint to them with electronic music playing. Some of their stories came from WMTW in Portland, graphics and all.

The most popular local program on WVII in the 70s and 80s was Dick Stacey's Country Jamboree, which aired on Saturday nights. Dick Stacey was an owner of a group of Citgo stations in the area who put in his own commercials: "See these hands? They smell like gas." It was ideally a variety show, but it seemed anyone who wanted to go on, could. The results would make Simon Cowell scream in horror, but probably not as loud as the screams which were apparently songs. The show had a cult following.

WVII hasn't improved that much. Last time I was in Bangor I turned it on expecting to see a newscast and got an infomercial. The next morning, their "local" update during GMA was a Bloomberg business report and an AccuWeather forecast. I see their website has a Deer Stand Makeover contest now.

JPK
 
Back when I lived around there, WHMB carried reruns of cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog (this would be the mid 80s). Before I came back to Ohio, they were carrying this radical fundamentalist right talk show around midnight, where the guy would say things like "all public school teachers are servants of Satan", and pretty much everybody was gonna burn except people who thought exactly like him.

I'd be tempted to nominate WLFI-TV in Lafayette, but though production values weren't like Indy, we could do good work when we wanted to.

Worst ever..a TV station in Quincy IL that aired mostly TBN programming that had a line and ripple effect going through the picture at all times..hurt your eyes to watch it.
 
> Worst ever..a TV station in Quincy IL that aired mostly TBN
> programming that had a line and ripple effect going through
> the picture at all times..hurt your eyes to watch it.
>
Sure it wasn't your reception or cable company?
 
> What are the worst television stations you've ever seen?
>
> By "worst" I mean stations which, now or then, set low
> standards ... i.e., bad production values, terrible
> newscasts, subpar technically, those defined by weird and/or
> flamboyant personalities, poor or dated graphics, bizarre
> programming choices, etc.
---------
In Canada...

CFPL 10 / London

In 1987 they had a 60s film animation ident with primative synthesized music. The ident was fairly new, as the logo had only been around since 1981. Their graphics were always very, very cheap through the 80s and 90s. They still used 80s-type Chryon until the fall of 2001, and they only had a tiny collection of fonts (four at the most). They still used 80s colour gradiation backgrounds until then as well. I have seen both their news intro and WVII's news intro from 1992, and the CFPL one make WVII look like WSVN. CFPL used extremely primative computer graphics that had trails behind flying words. The sad thing was that in 1979, they were a much more advanced, futuristic looking station, with a computer-generated news intro and an excellent news set.

Also, from the time they disaffiliated from the CBC in 1988 until they were bought by Baton (CFTO), most of their programming was obscure. Kind of stuff you'd find on Pax/i now.


CIII 6 / Paris

They act like a Toronto station yet their city of license is over halfway from there to London, at Paris. They have managed to rise to become Toronto's #2 newscast from a very distant last place a few years ago when they didn't pretend to be a Toronto station. If the CRTC followed the rules that station would be walking on very thin ice right now.


CHEX-2 22 / Oshawa

They are a Class A station serving as a CBC affiliate for Durham Region. Thing is, there already are two nearby CBC affiliates - Peterborough (CHEX 12) and Toronto (CBLT 5). They have a certain degree of local programming. They are fairly redundent, as Toronto is close enough to provide programming relevant to Durham Region, and CBC is already readily available.


CKWS 11 (CBC) / Kingston

The current newscast on CKWS looks very, very cheap. The studio is set up so that there are four monitors positioned behind each anchor, and when transitioning from one anchor to the other, it looks like the other anchor magically took the place of the other one on the same background - almost like chromakey, yet you can see a slight difference in the lighting. I remember the local newscasts were more professional in the late 90s - they weren't great, but they were better than CFPL. Their current 5:30 local program "Newswatch @ 5:30" is very cheap and fluffy, and the host is annoying. Additionally I am told that they had a 70s film animation news intro as late as 1993.


ATV / Halifax, Sydney, Saint John, Moncton

One newscast feed for all four stations across the Maritimes, and most of the news is aimed at Halifax. Terrible setup as it stands now.


MCTV / Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie

Same reason I don't like ATV. Most of the news is aimed at Sudbury, even more so than ATV aims at Halifax. Oh sorry CTV, I think I'm supposed to call it CTV Northern Ontario now. What a long name. Also before 2001 they were very cheap looking - they were still using 80s Chryon and I only remember two fonts. They were the last CTV O&O to adopt the CTV graphics. Although I like differences between stations, what MCTV had instead was cheap. I don't even remember much in the way of a news intro before 2001.


CKVR 3 / Barrie

They are a Barrie station, but when they adopted the A-Channel brand this past August they ditched Barrie and became a station serving the northern half of the GTA. Now they have left one of Canada's fastest growing cities without a local voice.


CJON 6 / St. John's

Music videos during commercial breaks is just the beginning. They used to be known as NBC until about 1977 too.


WWJ 62 (CBS) / Detroit

What I don't like about that station is their local newscast...or lack thereof. They are just a generic CBS feed for the Detroit area with mostly court shows for syndicated programming (the good stuff they have the rights to all airs on sister station WKBD 50). Unfortunately they are very widely carried on cable in Ontario, instead of much closer, higher quality CBS affiliates (WOIO, WSEE, WIVB, WROC, WTVH, WWNY, WCAX) that not only have local news, but have good syndicated programs.


WWBI-LP 27 / Burlington, VT

http://geocities.com/tvhatton/champ-local/wwbi.html - read for yourself<P ID="signature">______________
From WNBC-TV New York this is Liiiiive at Fiiiiive!</P><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by mjlarochelle on 10/28/05 03:51 PM.</FONT></P>
 
Two nominations from New England:

(1) WMUR-9 Manchester, New Hampshire prior to 1981. It was the last TV station in New England to convert to live, local color (1973), and some of the station's technical quality sometimes left much to be desired.

WMUR did have one "saving grace": Gus Bernier, who was both thr weeknight weather anchor and the host of "Uncle Gus", a daily late-afternoon children's show. Despite a nonexistant budget and (until 1973) studio segments that were in black-and-white (for some years prior to that, the cartoons were in color), Bernier was an excellent host. Many baby-boomers in northern New England have fond memories of the show.

In 1981, it all changed when United Broadcasting sold the station. The new owners (I believe they were Imes Broadcasting) purchased all-new state-of-the-art equipment for WMUR and before too long, built a new broadcast center for the station. Imes also bolstered the news staff and expanded the schedule of newscasts. Prior to 1981, WMUR had just five hours of local news a week: a half-hour each weeknight at 6 and another half-hour weeknights at 11. I believe that within a year of Imes' taking over, WMUR had expanded local news to 14 1/2 hours a week (an hour at 6 A.M. weekdays, a half-hour at 12 Noon weekdays, a half-hour seven nights a week at 6 and another half-hour seven nights a week at 11). Today, WMUR is quite a television station, a great asset to New Hampshire (WMUR won raves for their coverage of the recent floods), and nothing like what it used to be.

(2) Boston's original Channel 68, WQTV during it's first couple of years on the air. Much of the station's airtime was taken up by subscription TV (read: scrambled over-the-air pay TV), but much of the station's "conventional" programming left much to be desired.

I remember they did a nightly half-hour newscast back in 1979 with two reporter/anchors and a sports anchor that had no film, or videotape. Just these people reading news into a camera and rarely, a live in-studio guest. Cheap, cheap, cheap.

A couple of years later, the station tried an ambitious but nevertheless very-low-budget talk/variety show each weeknight from 6 to 7 P.M. titled "Boston Live!". Incredibly, the show's producer(s) had a good ear for Boston's rock and roll scene at the time; a few years later, tapes of live rock-music performances from that series (several groups who appeared having become national recording stars by that time) were rerun as a weekly series under the title "Music Files". Where is that archive now??

Channel 68 must be somehow cursed; the station seems to have been nothing but a problem for the five owners the station has had (Boston Heritage Broadcasting 1978-1983; Arlington Communications 1983-87; Christian Science Monitor 1987-1993; Boston University 1993-1999, and Paxson Communications since 1999) in its history.
 
Re: WMCC Marion IN---

Now, is this the first or second incarnation of a Marion Indiana station? I recall an operation based in Marion on channel 31, with a translator in Kokomo on channel 29.

The name of the owner escapes me, but I'd have to look it up in some Broadcasting magazines in some library. It seems as though he was always getting mentioned for some reason.

Mike


> WMCC 23 in Marion, Indiana from sign-on (around 1987) to the
> mid 90s. This station operated (and still operates) as an
> Indianapolis station, even though their city of license is
> 60 miles away from Indianapolis. Until the Hulman family
> bought the station and changed it to Indy-TV (WNDY), their
> programming pretty much consisted of infomercials as well as
> cartoon and sitcom scraps that the other Indy stations left
> behind. During it's Indy-TV days, 23 was a pretty
> interesting little independent station. They became home of
> the state lottery's TV show, the flagship station for high
> school football and basketball championship games (the
> latter two programs taken from rival independent WTTV 4),
> and better syndicated sitcoms, movies, and weekend dramas.
> Even though the quality of 23 has went down over the last
> couple years, it's nowhere near where it was back in the
> WMCC days.
>
<P ID="signature">______________
Mike
MOR Memories - Class from the Past
http://www.mormemories.com
































</P>
 
> Re: WMCC Marion IN---
>
> Now, is this the first or second incarnation of a Marion
> Indiana station? I recall an operation based in Marion on
> channel 31, with a translator in Kokomo on channel 29.
>
Back in the late-1960s, the old ch.31, whose calls were WTAF (I think; no relation to the later WTAF in Philly), got most of their programming from WTTV, with some local and filmed programs of their own. However, they were unable to afford color equipment of their own; as a result, all shows that were originally in color (including those picked up from WTTV) were in black and white. Ch.31 would go dark before the 1960s ended.
 
> Back in the days before satellite distribution of network
> programming, the networks typically paid for the microwave
> or landline feed of their programming to their local
> affiliates. However, for some smaller market stations, the
> networks determined that it just wasn't cost effective to
> offer such a feed -- and left those affiliates on their own
> for getting the network signal.
>
Tom, you brought back memories of my days back in 1989 training for MC op at WMGM-TV 40, then in "beautiful downtown Swainton" (courtesy Neil Rattagan). The ku dish was the primary feed for NBC network programming, the just slightly larger than home sized C-band dish was the secondary feed for NBC and the tertiary feed for teh network was the cable feed of KYW, then the NBC affiliate in Philly. Thankfully, I never had to go that "deep" in backup, but I understand it would keep you on your toes if you had to use it.

I also heard stories of when the network feed to WMGM was on one of the towers owned by (then) Clear Cable in Toms River, and that when Howard Green would fall behind in payments to Clear, they'd just shut off the feed until he ponied up!<P ID="signature">______________
"Radio is like musical chairs. When the music stops, I sit down and say something."</P>
 
Joseph Gallant's nomination of the pre-1981 WMUR brought back some more memories I'd like to share:

On weekdays prior to when ABC's "Good Morning America" premiered (1975 or 76?) WMUR didn't sign on until 11 AM, which is when ABC progarmming started. Actually, I think they signed on with a 10 minute reading of wire copy news sports & weather by the booth announcer while a slide reading "News" was shown on screen. I believe they did this at sign off as well, and IIRC they used to do the rip & read news at sign on & sign off 7 days a week. On weekends, WMUR signed on earlier, 8 AM on Sat. when ABC cartoons started, and Sundays at 7 or 8 AM with paid religious programs and/or public domian movies.

With very few exceptions (usually telethons or local election coverage) the pre-1981 WMUR carried everything ABC fed. I remember in my elementary school days when after lunch outdoor recess was not held due to weather, we'd go back to the classroom, the Sister who taught us would roll out the relic black & white TV on a cart and we'd watch "Password" on WMUR, since it wasn't cleared on WCVB-5 at the time. (I think later at some point either WSBK-38 or then WKBG -56 cleared it in Boston) or I also recall watching around 1974-ish an ABC game show "The Money Maze" hosted by Nick Clooney (George's uncle) which WCVB did not clear in Boston either. WMUR was the only station I could watch "American Bandstand" on Saturdays, as WCVB never aired it, instead airing "Candlepin Bowling" in it's 12 Noon slot where it had been in it's WHDH-5 days. I think for a short time WSBK ran "AB" but if they did, it wasn't for long.

The pre-1981 WMUR newscast was quite a simple 1 studio camera production with little or no graphics and formal opening/closing. After the legal ID, the anchor appeared on screen, introduced himself, and started reading the news. The news set was a table with a desk microphone, anchor sitting in front of a dark blue curtain. During the first commercial break, the camera was turned to face the weather map. After the weather, another commercial break while the camera was turned back on the anchor table, where the sports reporter appeared for his segment. After sports, another commercial break while the sports anchor got out of the seat and the news anchor came back to close out the newscast.

For telethons and election coverage they somehow managed to have at least 2 cameras. I recall one election night they were showing the election results written in chalk on blackboards. For the Jerry Lewis telethon local segments I remember they had a round dial with a Jerry Lewis picture or drawing in the middle, surrounded by incadescent (sp?) light bulbs, just like you'd use in a home or desk lamp. As the number of calls coming in increased, another bulb would light up, starting at 12 o'clock. The goal was to light up the whole circle of lights during the local breaks.

Mark
 
> > Re: WMCC Marion IN---
> >
> > Now, is this the first or second incarnation of a Marion
> > Indiana station? I recall an operation based in Marion on
>
> > channel 31, with a translator in Kokomo on channel 29.
> >
> Back in the late-1960s, the old ch.31, whose calls were WTAF
> (I think; no relation to the later WTAF in Philly), got most
> of their programming from WTTV, with some local and filmed
> programs of their own. However, they were unable to afford
> color equipment of their own; as a result, all shows that
> were originally in color (including those picked up from
> WTTV) were in black and white. Ch.31 would go dark before
> the 1960s ended.
>

Thanks for that. I knew the station was there, but I didn't know any more than that about it. Thanks for jogging the memory.

Mike<P ID="signature">______________
Mike
MOR Memories - Class from the Past
http://www.mormemories.com
































</P>
 
> WLBT 3 (NBC) / Jackson, Miss. (prior to 1971)
> Station Manager for years was a guy named Fred Beard. Fred
> was very tight with the White Citizens' Council of
> Mississippi (little more than a country-club level k lan),
> and his practices caused WLBT to have its license ordered
> vacated. On the fly preemptions - plenty of anecdotal
> evidence point to a common practice of interrupting network
> programming with a TECHNICAL DIFFICULTY slides whenever NBC
> did anything remotely advocating for integration. Whenever
> a black leader appeared on camera, suddenly WLBT would have
> "cable trouble."


There was an incident involving WLBT in a history of the Civil Rights Movement that I once read (don't ask the title -- it was years ago). Anyway, there was some legal challenge regarding something that aired on the station, and faced with the possible loss of the license, one of the aspects of the settlement was that the station had to air an unedited, uncensored rebuttal editorial from some black leader. The book reports that the local citizenry went absolutely bonkers, and the WLBT switchboard lit up with rednecks shouting things like "Get that fu$$ing ni$$er off my TV set!" and the like. Amazing.
 
I'm in late on this thread, but for anyone who is browsing the archives.....my nomination would be WPTZ-5 Plattsburgh NY in the 1960's. Just for the sheer frequency of their technical breakdowns -- it was a rare day when they didn't deal with at least one or two major snafus. Film in particular always seemed to be a problem for them -- whether they had a lot of really bad, splicy film on hand or a film chain that liked to eat celluloid, any local originated filmed program was a good candidate not to air without hassle, and I became very familiar with the WPTZ "Please Stand By" slide (always accompanied by the same seedy old easy listening music). I vividly recall one weekend afternoon when they were showing an old "McHale's Navy" episode and the film must have broken down or literally broken 4 or 5 times. In the course of half an hour, the "trouble" slide was up at least half of that time, rendering the plot of the episode (or at least what passed for a "plot" on "McHale's Navy") impossible to fathom.

I'll also mention the original Orlando independent WSWB-35, not because of their programming or production (they brought some great stuff to Orlando, including being the first in the area to pick up "The Benny Hill Show," whose adolescent humor totally delighted this at the time adolescent) but for their ignominious demise. Seems they had a nasty habit of not paying their bills, and one day without warning the they went off the air in the middle of a program with no warning, no announcement, and never came back on. Turns out that U.S. Marshals had shown up with a court order, ordered them to shut down the transmitter, and began unceremoniously hauling equipment out the door to be sold at auction to satisfy the debts. Ultimately, their very nice and modern studio space was acquired by WMFE-24 (PBS) for a song, and the channel was reborn several years later as WOFL-35, a much more financially stable independent that later became the Orlando Fox affiliate.
 
Historically, in 1960s Southern California, the worst was KCOP, Channel 13, (a "Chris-Craft station").

Let me count the ways: prime time consisted of multiple Bill Burrud travelogues ("as the sun sets slowly to the west, we bid aloha to the tropical breezes...").

The worst "C" quality late night movies from the 1940s. The LA based comedy group Credibility Gap (Harry Shearer, now of Simpsons fame) produced a parody of KCOP late night commercials, which were basically slide shows of local small businesses..."Come to Ramone's Beauty Salon in downtown Carson..."

Also of note: A half decade worth of Munsters and Patty Duke reruns...26 or 39 episodes over and over. The worst Hanna-Barbera cartoons that nobody else would buy (Touche Turtle, Wally Gator). Not to mention Dialing for Dollars - no movie or interviews, just Alan Sloane talking to the camera for an hour, and making phone calls to people who could win the prize jackpot of around $25 if they could tell Alan the "count and the amount." Problem is, they usually weren't home, or if they did answer - they had never heard of his show.
 
WOAY-TV 50 (formerly 4) in Oak Hill, West Virginia.

Whole blogs are devoted to this station. Also check YouTube

Their HANDWRITTEN app to the FCC listed 'WOAK,' but the 'K' was misconstrued as a 'Y," and the rest is history.

WOAY is referred to as 'Worst On Air Yet,' for a plethora of reasons.

A sitcom could easily be based on this station, ala' SCTV.
 
Greg Goodfellow said:
WOAY-TV 50 (formerly 4) in Oak Hill, West Virginia.
Their HANDWRITTEN app to the FCC listed 'WOAK,' but the 'K' was misconstrued as a 'Y," and the rest is history.
Click to expand...

Would have been strange to see an actual station with the 'WOAK' calls, as those were used fictionally for years on As the World Turns (WOAK was the big TV station in Oakdale).

As for the worst I've seen, it would have to be KLMG/51 in Longview, TX (1984 until I last saw it in 1989). After initially getting airplay for being the first station owned by an African-American woman (Clara McLaughlin, who even landed an interview on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous), sadly, their day-to-day operations didn't live up to all that initial hype. Their local ads/station promos weren't as clear visually and aurally as the network (CBS) feed, and the image would kinda shift/jiggle up and down sometimes while the ads/promos were on. The station tried twice during its CBS affiliation to have a newscast, and went bankrupt twice. Both incarnations of the newscasts were very Longview/Gregg County-centric, hardly anything about Tyler or other parts of the market...which is just as well, considering the signal was VERY poor unless you had cable. After the loss of the first newscast, KLMG would run Andy Griffith reruns at 6 and 10. This was starting in early 1987. I remember seeing articles later that talked about how steamed CBS was getting about KLMG not having news. In late 1988, Ch.51 tried again to have news, but it wasn't any better in quality or geographic reach than the first newscast was. I moved away from the market before the station finally had a transition. It flipped to Fox (and changed calls--now it's KFXK) sometime in 1990-1991 and has tried 2 more times to have news--neither time has lasted any longer than the 2 tenures of news beforehand. Ch.51 is now in an LMA with the NBC station, KETK/56. I've wondered since then if KFXK could last again on its own.
 
markwats said:
Joseph Gallant's nomination of the pre-1981 WMUR brought back some more memories I'd like to share:



With very few exceptions (usually telethons or local election coverage) the pre-1981 WMUR carried everything ABC fed. I remember in my elementary school days when after lunch outdoor recess was not held due to weather, we'd go back to the classroom, the Sister who taught us would roll out the relic black & white TV on a cart and we'd watch "Password" on WMUR, since it wasn't cleared on WCVB-5 at the time. (I think later at some point either WSBK-38 or then WKBG -56 cleared it in Boston) or I also recall watching around 1974-ish an ABC game show "The Money Maze" hosted by Nick Clooney (George's uncle) which WCVB did not clear in Boston either. WMUR was the only station I could watch "American Bandstand" on Saturdays, as WCVB never aired it, instead airing "Candlepin Bowling" in it's 12 Noon slot where it had been in it's WHDH-5 days. I think for a short time WSBK ran "AB" but if they did, it wasn't for long.



Mark
Click to expand...

Nick Clooney is George Clooney's dad. Rosemary Clooney was George's aunt.

You weren't alone in not getting "American Bandstand." WFAA Dallas didn't
carry it when I lived out there in the late '70s, and the station never gave
an adequate explanation as to why. And WFAA would not be considered one
of the worst stations but rather one of the best.
 
Re: WBMG 42 (was Worst TV stations ever)

bpatrick said:
> > Given Russell's outstanding website on all things having
> to
> > with Birmigham
> > I'm surprised that he didn't nominate WBMG-42.
>
> > >
>
>
> As for the 33 and 40 move-ins, they had the advantage of an
> entirely new 'product' for the market (and James Spann
> defecting from channel 6, no doubt, didn't hurt things).
>
> In any event, I chose to go easy on poor ol' channel 42.
> [g]
>
Click to expand...

In some of the recent rating books 42 has actually become number
one in Birmingham! Its newscast has won several awards, and the
station has shown the willingness to buy syndicated shows such as
Jeopardy!, Entertainment Tonight, and Dr. Phil. Some
of this may reflect the current network ratings situation as well; WVTM
(NBC) has been fourth in some sweeps periods.
 
Re WJXX (page 1):

The only reason WJXX exists as it does is because of, well, the 90s affiliation switches. Allbritton got in bed with ABC a whole lot deeper, switched WCIV and WJXX to ABC, created 33/40 in Birmingham, and switched WBSG to ABC (actually, 'JKS was the one that accelerated the switch).

Allbritton owns WJLA in DC and KTUL in Tulsa (among others) - I think it's for this reason that Scripps didn't get KJRH to go to ABC (or KSHB for that matter, though KMBC had something to do with it or they would have).

But sheesh, WIAT is the best turnaround story in local TV today. Went from a joke to "we're trying" to a serious challenger in the market.
 


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