Seventy-five years ago this month, Rev. Julian S. Fayme of New York City was truly blessed. He was the winner of a new Philco television, and he had some channels that he could watch. When he received his windfall in January, 1940, there were three stations on the air in New York, W2XBS, W2XAX, and W2XAB. I previously wrote about one of those stations. W2XBS (later WNBC) came on the air on April 30, 1939. W2XAB and W2XAX were both licensed to CBS and later became WCBS-TV.  And the DuMont station, W2XWV (later WABD) was soon to come on the air, as I wrote previously.

Lillian Russell of Quincy, Mass., was almost as lucky, since she was also a winner, and was within range of W1XG in Boston. Fayme and Russell were among the six winners of the set shown above, in the announcement of a quiz contest in the September 1939 issue of Radio Mirror.

But in the full list of winners is shown below (in the January 1940 issue), a problem is apparent.

The other four winners didn’t have anything to watch. There were no TV stations on the air in Portland, San Francisco, or Burlingame, California. And there certainly weren’t any stations anywhere near Hole Center, Texas, undoubtedly much to the dismay of Frances Rountree. Indeed, I can’t find any record of a town by that name, although there is a Hale Center about 30 miles north of Lubbock. But Hole or Hale, that new Philco wasn’t of much use to the Rountree family.

The TV stations on the air as of 1940 are shown on this excerpt from White’s Radio Log, Jan.-Feb. 1940.  (This list includes three mechanical television stations operating on 2000-2100 kHz, which the more modern Philco wouldn’t have been able to receive. So winners in Irvington, N.J. or West Lafayette, Ind., wouldn’t have fared any better.)

It turns out that the four hapless winners weren’t totally out of luck, since the fine print of the contest rules did show some foresight: “And if, perhaps, you live in a section of the country where television programs cannot yet be received, this quiz still carries a prize for you. Any winning contestant can have, if he wishes, a de luxe Philco radio set instead of the television receiver.”  So the winners in California, Oregon, and Texas, presumably gathered around their de luxe Philco console radios and dreamed of television, which for them would have to wait until after the war.

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65 years ago, the January 1950 issue of Radio Craft magazine carried a complete roster of U.S. television stations on the air as of November 15, 1949, and included a copy of the identification slides used by each station. By that time, Minnesota had two stations on the air. The test pattern for KSTP-TV, channel 5, which came on the air in 1948, is shown here. Also shown is the station identification slide for WTCN-TV, as channel 4 was then known.

Channel 4 came on the air on July 1, 1949, originally as WTCN-TV. Its main affiliation was with ABC, but it also carried CBS and DuMont programs.

By the end of 1949, there were 60,000 television sets in service in the Twin Cities able to tune in to the two stations. In 1949, weatherman Bud Kraehling joined the station where he stayed until his retirement in 1996. 1950 saw newscaster Dave Moore join the station’s staff. In 1950, the coaxial cable arrived in the Twin Cities, allowing the stations to broadcast live network programming. Minnesota’s connection to the national networks was actually through a coaxial cable to Des Moines, Iowa, which was in turn linked by radio relays to Chicago.

Those of us who grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s recognize the WTCN call letters as belonging further up the dial on channel 11. In 1952, the owners of channel 4 and WTCN radio sold the radio station and merged with WCCO Radio, and the station became WCCO-TV. The same year, an application was filed with the FCC for a construction permit for channel 11. This became WMIN-TV, and in 1953, WTCN-TV showed up again, also on channel 11. The two stations cooperatively shared airtime and transmission facilities. WTCN-TV studios were at the Calhoun Beach Hotel (the location, of course, of Grandma Lumpit’s Boardinghouse), where they remained until the 1970’s. WMIN-TV sold out in 1954, at which point channel 11 became WTCN-TV full time.

The WTCN call letters date back originally to 1934, when the predecessor of WWTC radio (currently at 1280 on the AM dial) was purchased by the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers. The WTCN call sign stood for Twin City Newspapers. Channel 11 had no connection with the earlier radio station other than the use of the historic call letters, which remained in use until 1985, when they became WUSA, and then KARE in 1986.

References

Pavek Museum, Twin Cities Television Milestones

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The three still photos shown here are, as far as I can tell, about the only remaining tangible evidence of a first in television history. They are from the September 28, 1944, telecast of the musical comedy The Boys From Boise, which was televisted by the New York DuMont station, WABD. The station originally came on the air as experimental station W2XWV, and in 1944 became the city’s third commercial station. As detailed in an earlier post, broadcasting as it came to be known after the war started in 1939. With the war, the other stations cut back on their programming, with much of it being devoted to civil defense training.

But flush with cash from helping develop radar for the army, founder Allen B. Dumont (the station bore his initials) invested $5 million in the company and expanded programming.

According to a January 1945 QST article, most of the staff of WABD was made up of hams. It was on the air three nights a week from 8:00 until 11:00. Practically the entire staff was working at the TV station on an overtime basis after working their normal day jobs at the DuMont war plant in Passaic, N.J. The station was located at 515 Madison Avenue on the 42nd floor.  According to QST, the transmitter (which is described in detail) put out 6 kW.  The QST article contains an additional image from the production of Boys from Boise.

According to the QST article, the station was on what was then known as channel 4, 78-84 MHz. When the channels were reallocated slightly in 1946, it moved to channel 5, which was then 76-82 MHz.  The station is currently WNYW, the Fox network flagship.

One of the more ambitious projects was the production of The Boys from Boise. The program had a budget of $10,000. Given the scarcity of television sets capable of viewing the program, it’s very unlikely that the program made any money. It was sponsored by Esquire Magazine, which included three commercials during the intermissions.

The music and lyrics were written by Sam Medoff, who conducted the orchestra, and the production was directed by Ray Nelson. The show featured the following musical numbers. I haven’t been able to find any recordings of the music, or any of the scores.

• Girls of the 8-to-the-Bar-X-Ranch
• I’ll Take the Trail to You
• Sunset Trail
• That Certain Light in your Eyes
• Chiki Chiquita
• Thousand Mile Shirt
• It’s a Mystery to Me
• Broken Hearted Blues
• Come Up and See Me Sometime
• You’ll Put Your Brand on My Heart
• Rodeo
• Western Omelet
• I’m Just a Homebody
• Star-Spangled Serenade

The production had a cast of twenty.  The only recording I’ve been able to find of Medoff is his recording of the Bridegroom Special on the American Jewish Hour program on WHN radio.

According to Billboard, the evening of this program was “the night television came of age. For the first time someone had guts enough and confidence enough to dig deep into the grouchbag for a lot of lure and put on a full-fledged show for the television cameras and audience.”

The Billboard review noted that by top-notch Broadway standards, the show wasn’t too much. But it drew praise as an example of what television was capable of. The reviewer noted that two hours was too long, and that future musicals should be capped at 60 minutes. It also noted that the cast was too large, and the dance numbers too elaborate, for the TV screen.

The plot, according to Billboard, was a “complicated, albeit typical musical, setting for the boy-girl theme.” A troupe of showgirls was stranded in Boise and had to take jobs as cowgirls to earn their fare home. There are rustlers, a villanesse who wants to foreclose the mortgage, and an undercover FBI agent.

It’s unlikely that any recording was made of the program. And even if there were, the old DuMont kinescopes reportedly wound up in the East River in the 1970’s. The still pictures shown here are probably among the few reminders of this first in TV history.

Update:  It’s always great to hear from relatives of people I’ve featured here. In some cases, it clears up a mystery. When I originally wrote this post, I wasn’t able to find much information about Sam Medoff, the composer of the music and lyrics for Boys from Boise. I received a nice e-mail from his son, Mitch Manning, who pointed out that Medoff changed his name to Dick Manning, who went on to pen many familiar songs such as Fascination, Papa Loves Mambo, Hot Diggity, Allegheny Moon, Takes Two to Tango, and Hawaiian Wedding Song. You can listen to an interesting 1971 interview with Manning, including a performance of Fascination, at the video below.  (This is a link to someone else’s video, and I’m told that the photo is not actually Manning’s.)

References

• DuMont Television Network at Wikipedia
• Billboard, Oct. 7, 1944
• Tune In magazine, February 1945 (page 47)
• Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television (page 88) (See this book at Amazon)

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Seventy-five years ago, television looked like it was ready to take off, but it didn’t become a widespread reality until after the war. There had been experimental transmissions for a few decades, and by 1939, sets were being advertised.  April 30, 1939, marks the day from which TV has been continually broadcast in the United States.

The Newark Sunday Call for that day contains at least three television advertisements. One is this ad for Wilderotter’s, which announces that “television becomes an actuality for the public today!” It announced a special 3-1/2 hour program to be telecast from the World’s Fair by NBC, featuring an address by president Roosevelt. It announces that the store will be open from noon until 1 P.M. on Sunday for the public to hear and see this special program. It also includes the NBC television schedule, which included programming on Wednesday and Friday from 4 P.M. to 9 P.M., “outdoor telecasts of news events” on Wednesday through Friday afternoons, and “film transmissions” on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M.

The Griffith Piano Company has this ad announcing that it, too was ready to put a television receiver in your home. The advertised prices ranged from $199.50 to $600.

Finally, Kresge’s Department Store announces that television “is here at last–and here to stay!”

Unlike earlier television system, these models were electronic. They used a system similar to postwar television, but were 441 lines. The station, then will the call sign W2XBS, remained on the air only until 1940 or 1941 in the original 441 line format. It received a commercial license in 1941, and became WNBT. But at that time, it began using what is usually call the “postwar” format of 525 lines. Some broadcasting continued during the war, but the station was used mostly by the New York Police Department for civil defense training. The station, now WNBC, does have the distinction of being the nation’s oldest continuously operating TV station.  And it celebrates its 75th birthday on April 30, 2014.

So Kresge’s was correct in saying on April 30, 1939, that television was here to stay. But unfortunately for those who purchased a $600 set in 1939, the device became obsolete in two years with the switch to the 525 line format.