I felt like it. I still hear "red chickens, yellow chickens, chicken a-la-king".
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Worst TV stations ever
- Thread starter rwells2265
- Start date
If the moderators don't mind, I'm going to start a new thread on TV Guide editions. There is a small circle of avid TVG collectors and some of the resources are amazingly comprehensive. This is a fascinating topic (if you like that sort of thing) and opening such a thread can channel all of this into one place. So here goes...
Definitely added, because by the time we were getting the Central Virginia edition, it was there.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think that is an excellent idea.
We didn't move to the area until 1969.
I have this memory of classic TV Guides being talked about somewhere.
I have a North Carolina edition from the early 1970s if I can ever figure out how to get to it.
WRAL was the only Raleigh-Durham station consistently showing one network's programming--ABC.
WTVD was mainly CBS but didn't show all CBS shows, and it had some NBC shows.
WRDU was mostly NBC but had some CBS shows.
And both those stations would show some programs at times other than the rest of the network affiliates. It's crazy.
Back in the day, Raleigh-Durham was a de facto two-station market, WRDU had various issues. Much of the market got its NBC from WECT-6 Wilmington, and probably WITN-7 Washington NC as well.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
This is going to be my "helpful hint" for the day for you, vchimp. Back then, when a station with multiple affiliations aired programs at the original network scheduled time it was referred to as airing "in pattern" and anything delayed to a different day and/or time was referred to as (logically enough) "out of pattern".
Feel free to use those terms as you post. I can practically guarantee everyone will know what you are saying.
WECT had CBS soaps but that was about it for CBS in Wilmington. I know WNCT and WBTW improved their signals later, but I wonder if they were picked up in Wilmington before that.
Did WWAY ever carry CBS's NFL coverage?
From David Eduardo's website, the TV Factbook showed WTVD (and WRAL) having fairly significant cable carriage in the Wilmington area.
At one time, WRAL and WTVD got pretty much to the NC/SC border either OTA (roughly west of I-95 to an imaginary line running north-south equidistant from Raleigh and Greensboro) or via cable. That includes Wilmington.
As to WBTW, I have wondered what a Wilmington-Florence market (including Myrtle Beach) would have looked like. The Florence stations have their sticks at Hamer (near South of the Border), and at one time WECT's tower was in Bladen County halfway between Wilmington and Fayetteville. But two cities 100 miles apart, in different states, with no easy way to get from one city to the other, and with nothing in common economically or otherwise, would be a strange market. Kind of like a flatter, more lightly populated, even farther-flung version of the Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville market.
As to WBTW, I have wondered what a Wilmington-Florence market (including Myrtle Beach) would have looked like. The Florence stations have their sticks at Hamer (near South of the Border), and at one time WECT's tower was in Bladen County halfway between Wilmington and Fayetteville. But two cities 100 miles apart, in different states, with no easy way to get from one city to the other, and with nothing in common economically or otherwise, would be a strange market. Kind of like a flatter, more lightly populated, even farther-flung version of the Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville market.
My TV Guide said WWAY was ABC and NBC.
I would think that would be true now with the 2000-foot towers but I don't think either station had one back then.
I remember when Florence didn't even have a full-time ABC station. WBTW had both CBS and ABC.
I assume WIS was the area's NBC station.
Myrtle Beach must have had cable back in the early 70s. Where we stayed there was a card the size of a business card that listed all the channels. WUSN (Charleston) and WWAY were ABC, WCIV (Charleston), WECT and WIS were NBC, and WCSC (Charleston) and WBTW were CBS. Back then I guess WWAY, WECT and WBTW weren't entirely devoted to one network.
Myrtle Beach could be considered a market now. WMBF is its NBC station, WFXB is Fox and WWMB is The CW though it now a .2 channel on WPDE, the ABC station. I've never been sure whether WBTW and WPDE officially moved to Myrtle Beach.
When I was growing up in Laurinburg (in NC adjacent to the NC/SC border) in the '70s, we could receive all 3 networks - WRAL 5 Raleigh (ABC at the time), WBTW 13 Florence (CBS), WECT 6 Wilmington (NBC), plus WUNC 4 Chapel Hill (NC PBS), and WJPM 33 Florence (SC PBS) on the rabbit ears. We had a local cable system as well, which brought in WRET TV 36 in Charlotte, among others.
Coincidentally, I'm now in the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson area.
WIS was indeed the default affiliate for Florence, in fact, at one time, they delivered a "WIS Florence" feed to the local cable. When WMBF came along, WIS was basically done in that market (but of course people can still receive it OTA, at least in Florence proper and the western part of the market).
Myrtle Beach and Florence have been rolled into one market. For all practical purposes, WBTW and WPDE are Myrtle Beach-area stations, with WBTW having its studios in Socastee and WPDE in Conway. WPDE is not super-specific on the air as to where they are located, don't know about WBTW. Both are still officially licensed to Florence and their transmitters are at Hamer SC (near South of the Border).
If I lived in Florence, I'd feel like I'd kind of been shafted out of my local TV stations.
A few things I'd point out:
- WMBF's construction permit dated to a 1996 application...by Cosmos, which owned WIS. It was a shot in the dark at the time, but the CP was approved. After the Raycom–Liberty merger (the CP was included in a side deal), Raycom now owned WIS and WECT, the NBC affiliates which had served the MB/F market, and because of the digital transition, it was likely to lose over-the-air coverage from those stations. (WMBF went on the air not only in time for the Summer Olympics but for the digital switchover pilot in Wilmington) Plus, the market had grown to the point where selling advertising in Myrtle Beach for the first time was a big deal. Plus, WIS–Florence advertisers now could buy OTA airtime.
- The history of that ADI/DMA is unusual. It was not until the end of the 80s that Arbitron put Myrtle Beach in with Florence instead of Wilmington. That was a huge event for the Florence ADI, which rocketed dozens of positions from that switch alone. The Grand Strand grew so rapidly that it became the market's population center. Horry County grew more in the 1980s alone than Florence County has in 40 years.
- There are some other markets where this has happened and all the TV stations have "flipped" their emphasis and/or relocated. Northwest Arkansas (from Fort Smith to Fayetteville/Springdale/Rogers) is a very good example of this, with even KFSM moving to Rogers. Another is Bozeman, Montana, over Butte. All three involve a city or area growing much faster than the place where the TV allocations were put first.
| Year | Florence County | Horry County (MB) |
| 1970 | 89636 | 69992 |
| 1980 | 110163 | 101419 |
| 1990 | 114344 | 144053 |
| 2000 | 125761 | 196629 |
| 2010 | 136885 | 269291 |
| 2020 | 137059 | 351029 |
When Cosmos got that CP, I wondered if channel 32 would be used to create a satellite or semi-satellite of WIS, as I had to wonder if that market could sustain a stand-alone NBC affiliate, however, phenomenal growth in that area has made that entirely possible.
Having Horry County in the Wilmington market was always kind of weird, as Wilmington and Myrtle Beach have little in common aside from both being on the coast. Wilmington stations, however, can easily be received in MB to this day, even more easily than the Hamer transmitters for 13/15/21. When I lived there in the late 1990s, I had one of the old RadioShack all-channel log periodics (don't recall whether it was the LP-190 or LP-210) and I got everything from both Wilmington and Charleston (used a rotor) to perfection, though WMMP-36 was kind of hit-or-miss. Needless to say, a rotor was needed for this. I used this to DX all up and down the coast from North Carolina to Florida and deep into the Carolinas, even got WDBJ-7 Roanoke one time. It compared favorably with the Televes Ellipse and DATBOSS, both of which I now have.
WBJA/WMGC Ch 34 Binghamton, New York, the pre-WIVT era 1962-98
When Binghamton got an ABC affiliate, they had NO color system until January 1966. When they got color, the color volume was only 1% into the mid 70s. Since they're on Ingram Hill Road (still there to this day), most of the ABC network programs came from the signal of WABC-TV New York. After the Ch 34 slide, it was a blink & you missed it Circle 7 logo for only a half second. Some ABC programs came from WNYS Ch 9 Syracuse. The local newscasts were in B&W until 1975 and they had a one person news/sports/weather anchor. The station had no on location film reports until the WMGC era. In the WMGC era, the graphics looked generic look like they bought from K-Mart instead of Radio Shack. Ch 34 signed off every night and never aired World News Now until the late 90s. From 1994-98 when ABC Sports was on downtime, the only shows they aired was infomercials.
When Binghamton got an ABC affiliate, they had NO color system until January 1966. When they got color, the color volume was only 1% into the mid 70s. Since they're on Ingram Hill Road (still there to this day), most of the ABC network programs came from the signal of WABC-TV New York. After the Ch 34 slide, it was a blink & you missed it Circle 7 logo for only a half second. Some ABC programs came from WNYS Ch 9 Syracuse. The local newscasts were in B&W until 1975 and they had a one person news/sports/weather anchor. The station had no on location film reports until the WMGC era. In the WMGC era, the graphics looked generic look like they bought from K-Mart instead of Radio Shack. Ch 34 signed off every night and never aired World News Now until the late 90s. From 1994-98 when ABC Sports was on downtime, the only shows they aired was infomercials.
What do you mean by color volume 1 percent?
I don't know if this counts but today (Monday July 8, 2024) flipping through the channels Boomerang had a Spanish language over the English language on Tom & Jerry Kids this morning.