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UHF's Untold Stories
The History of UHF Television site was primarily created because there were some stories that needed to be told because they never had been, and there were other stories that needed to be properly told because the existing versions were riddled with inaccuracies such as the presumption of anecdotal information as correct.
We have therefore written those stories ourselves and present them for your reading here. Some of them originally appeared at Peter Q. George's former "UHF Morgue" website and have been corrected and expanded; most have been created from scratch. The one thing we will promise the reader is that Broadcasting has been used for the majority of fact-checking, with additional corrections coming from Television Digest (through 1963) and articles found in various newspaper archive sites. We are therefore confident that these articles are reasonably accurate (90% or better) as presented. The FCC has also made available the old history cards for stations and we updated articles with additional information from those, as applicable; however, these are only available for stations which are presently on the air and which signed on prior to 1980, so only a limited number of articles were able to be updated.
In this section, we have listed articles alphabetically by call letters; if you are looking for information on a station but cannot remember the call letters, we suggest consulting our "Channels" pages for listings by channel number; there are many stations on those lists which contain notes of what limited information is available (insufficient for a complete article).
Clarke Ingram's original website on the history of the DuMont television network has been restored here.
Articles that have been added in the past six months (more or less) are noted with aicon and articles that have been updated with new information over that same period are noted with aicon. Hovering the mouse pointer over the icon will display the date of the addition or update. We do not display the "Updated" icon for articles that only received minor edits to correct typographical or formatting errors noticed after their original appearance.
To return to this menu from an article, click on the coaxial cable at the bottom of the page ("Back to Index"). You can also click on the "Articles" button at the upper left side of the page. The latter method works from every page on the site.
- Deintermixture: When Television Almost Became All-UHF
- KAAR/39, San Diego CA (including KCST)
- KBIC-TV/22, Los Angeles CA (including KIIX, KPOL-TV and KWHY-TV)
- KBID-TV/53, Fresno CA - see KBIC-TV and KVVG
- KCCC-TV/40, Sacramento CA (including KVUE)
- KCHU/18, San Bernardino CA
- KCTY/25, Kansas City MO
- KEDD/16, Wichita KS
- KGTO-TV/36, Fayetteville AR
- KHOF-TV/30, San Bernardino CA
- KICU-TV/43, Visalia CA - see KQEC
- KLHU-CA/45, Lake Havasu City AZ (including K45AJ)
- KMPT/19 & KTVQ/25, Oklahoma City OK
- KLXA-TV/40, Fontana CA
- KLOC-TV/19, Modesto CA - see sidebar in Overmyer Network article
- KLPR-TV/14, Oklahoma City OK - see KMPT & KTVQ
- KPAZ-TV/21, Phoenix AZ
- KPOL/40, Tucson AZ (including KDTU)
- KPTV/27, Portland OR (special section)
- KQEC/32, San Francisco CA (including KSAN-TV, KNEW-TV and KMTP)
- KQTV/21, Fort Dodge IA (including KVFD-TV/50)
- KTHE/28, Los Angeles CA
- KTVE/32, Longview TX
- KUDO/38, San Francisco CA - see KHOF-TV
- KVVG/27, Tulare CA
- KVVV-TV/16, Galveston TX
- Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI)
- One Channel, Two Stations
- Overmyer - A Man And His Network
- Rochester's Long Wait For (W)UHF
- Satellite Program Network
- The All-News Experiment
- The Road To UHF
- Translators: The Complete Story
- WBKZ-TV/64, Battle Creek MI (including WUHQ-TV/41)
- WBUF/17, Buffalo NY (including WBES-TV/59)
- WCAN-TV/25, Milwaukee WI
- WCMC-TV/40, Wildwood NJ
- WCOT-TV/55, Akron OH
- WELI-TV/59, New Haven CT
- WENS/16, Pittsburgh PA
- WETV/47, Macon GA
- WFAM-TV/59, Lafayette IN
- WFPG-TV/46, Atlantic City NJ
- WFTV/38, Duluth MN
- WGBS-TV/23, Miami FL
- WHCT/18, Hartford CT (including WGTH)
- WHED-TV/15, Hanover NH & WEDB-TV/40, Berlin NH
- WHFV/69, Fredericksburg VA
- WHRC/46, Norwell MA
- WHUM-TV/61, Reading PA
- WIBF-TV/29, Philadelphia PA
- WICA-TV/15, Ashtabula OH
- WICC-TV/43, Bridgeport CT
- WJAN/17, Canton OH
- WJMR-TV/61, New Orleans LA
- WJMY/20, Allen Park MI (including WPAG-TV, Ann Arbor and WXON/62, Detroit)
- WJRJ-TV/17, Atlanta GA
- WJZB-TV/14, Worcester MA
- WKBS-TV/48, Burlington NJ (Philadelphia PA)
- WKNA-TV/49, Charleston WV
- WKTR-TV/16 & WKEF/22, Dayton OH (including WSWO-TV/26, Springfield)
- WLBR-TV/15, Lebanon PA
- WLOK-TV/73, Lima OH (including WIMA-TV/35)
- WMCV/17, Nashville TN
- WMGT/74, Adams MA (including WROW-TV/41, Troy NY & WCDB/29, Hagaman NY)
- WNET/16, Providence RI
- WNYC-TV/31, New York, NY (including WUHF and WBIS)
- WOOK-TV/14, Washington DC (including WFAN-TV)
- WOSH-TV/48, Oshkosh WI
- WQXI-TV/36, Atlanta GA
- WRLP/32, Greenfield MA
- WRTV/58, Asbury Park NJ
- WSUN-TV/38, St. Petersburg FL
- WTAF-TV/31, Marion IN
- WTAO-TV/56, Cambridge MA
- WTPA-TV/71, Harrisburg PA
- WTVI/54, Belleville IL (including KSTM-TV/36 and KTVI/36)
- WXPO-TV/50, Manchester NH
- W62AB, Westerly RI
- W69AQ, Springfield MA
- W79AI, Torrington CT
- Why Is There No Channel 37?
If you have additional information on any of the above stations, please feel free to forward same to us via the Feedback form. We also welcome new articles on stations not yet included above.
The links below are to external sites devoted to the stations listed. We have no control over the content of those sites but based upon our own research believe them to be reasonably accurate:
- KANG-TV/34, Waco TX
- KCIT-TV/50, Kansas City MO
- KFSA-TV/22, Fort Smith AR
- KFTY/50, Santa Rosa CA
- KKOG-TV/16, Ventura CA
- KNUZ-TV/39, Houston TX
- WAKR-TV/49, Akron OH
- WEEU-TV/33, Reading PA
- WGLV-TV/57, Easton PA
- WILK-TV/34, Wilkes-Barre PA
- WJJY-TV/14, Jacksonville IL
- WJPB-TV/35, Fairmont WV
- WKAB-TV/48, Mobile AL
- WMKG/54, Muskegon MI
- WMSL-TV/23, Decatur AL
- WROV-TV/27, Roanoke VA
- From the Broadcast Pioneers site:
WHYY-TV/35, Philadelphia PA
WPCA-TV/17, Philadelphia PA
- From Doug Quick's site:
WBLN/15, Bloomington IL
WCHU/33, Champaign IL
WDAN-TV/24, Danville IL
WEEK-TV/43, Peoria IL
WICD/24, Danville IL
- From Tim Lones' blog:
WKBF-TV/61, Cleveland OH
WKST-TV/33 & 45, New Castle PA
WXTV/45, Youngstown OH
And a few stations which aren't "failed" but whose histories are worth reading:
RCA's Broadcast News (archived at the World Radio History website) has many more station profiles from an equipment standpoint.
SPECIAL REPORTS
- Sixth Report and Order - Broadcasting-Telecasting transcript of the FCC lifting of the TV allocation "freeze" and creation of the UHF allocations (April 14, 1952). (Courtesy WorldRadioHistory.com)
- "Status of UHF and Multiple Ownership" - Transcript of May 19, 1954 U.S. Senate hearings on early UHF broadcasting and the question of station ownership limits.
- "How Well Can UHF Sell?" - First of a two-part Sponsor magazine look at the difficulties of selling airtime on the pioneer UHF stations (July 26, 1954).
- "Some Plain Facts About UHF" - Conclusion of Sponsor magazine series (August 9, 1954).
- "Where VHF Isn't Missed" - Broadcasting-Telecasting magazine report on two UHF-only television markets (May 7 & 14, 1956).
- "Analysis of ABC Network Programming, February 1953-October 1959" - Future network programmer Fred Silverman's master's thesis on the then-struggling American Broadcasting Company (1959).
- "The Darkened Channels" - Harvard Law Review report on UHF television (1962).
- "Is Pay-TV Worth Paying For?" - From an unknown TV Guide-like magazine, two articles on UHF being used for subscription television in 1963.
- "U-Day and You" - TV Guide article on the then-pending arrival of mandated all-channel television sets (April 25, 1964).
- "Day-to-Day Living With UHF" - William L. Putnam's thoughts after the first 12 years of UHF operation, from Sponsor, August 10, 1964.
- "Planning a Successful UHF Operation" - Article by William Lowell Putnam on how to properly plan a new UHF station, from Broadcast Management/Engineering, October 1965.
- "Inequities in Mass Communication Law: The FCC's Application of the Duopoly Rule to Public Broadcasting" - Paper on a petition by to allow multiple-station ownership in individual markets by educational broadcasters (1976).
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