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WTAE Channel 4

P

PHIL Z

March 1st 1958 WTAE Channel 4 signs on the air , Making Pittsburgh one of the last major market cities to have three commercial the VHF stations. Happy 60th Birthday Channel 4.
 
Happy belated birthday Channel 4. Give Nick Perry our best. [/sarcasm] (Perry was the WTAE announcer who went to jail for rigging the PA Lottery balls to come up 666, back when the lottery drawing took place every night at Channel 4. The drawing was moved to Harrisburg as a result.)

Has WTAE had its studio on TV Hill (overlooking the Parkway East Ardmore Blvd. interchange) throughout its existence?

ixnay
 
I grew up near Wheeling WV, so we got Pittsburgh locals. Didn't he inject liquid in all of the balls except the 6's to make them heavier?
 
WTAE-TV has been at 400 Ardmore Boulevard since its inception, although the building has been expanded over the years.

C.
 
mohawk82 said:
I grew up near Wheeling WV, so we got Pittsburgh locals. Didn't he inject liquid in all of the balls except the 6's to make them heavier?
Click to expand...

He injected white paint into all of the balls except the 4's and 6's to make them heavier. Then his associates ran around the state playing 4 and 6 combinations. They got caught when a clerk in a store in Eastern PA told police that a man who had just bought a large number of 4 and 6 combinations used the pay phone to make a call during which he spoke in a foreign language.

The call was traced to the WTAE announcers booth. Nick Perry spoke Greek.

TAE management was in official denial at the time that the lottery could have been rigged. "Our security is just too good". "KDKA is fanning the flames of this story in order to get the lottery contract away from us." "Who are you going to believe, an incarcerated, convicted felon like Tony Grosso?" Etc.

I didn't buy any of that because I knew that the little commissary area at WTAE with all of the vending machines was referred to by employees as Nick's Café. Perry held an ownership stake in the vending company.

In those days virtually everyone in the vending machine business had some sort of underworld connection.
 
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I had an aunt who worked as a receptionist at a vending machine company as a young woman.
She had told me she did not realize how totally mobbed-up that industry was when she took the job.

She went on to become a nun!
 
I can remember growing up as a kid before cable TV. We lived less that a mile from the channel 4 tower and being so close the signal went right past us and could not bring it in on out TV, (Dad didn't make a lot of money so we only had rabbit ears on our TV where everyone else had a rotary antenna).
 
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