it-registrationsstlmediahistory

Sales of UHF-Ready TVs Surge

All 77 Cardinal baseball games played on the road will be telecast to the St. Louis area over WTVI-TV, Channel 54. First telecast is scheduled Thursday, April 15 [1954], from Milwaukee, at 1:30 p.m. The Cards open the season here April 13, and then go to Milwaukee for games with the Braves.

WTVI will telecast 30 afternoon games, 30 night games and 17 Sunday afternoon games. All plays will be described by Harry Caray with Jack Buck assisting. Jack replaced Gus Mancuso who joined the Cardinal scouting staff.

Immediate reaction to the announcement was an upsurge in sales of converters and new sets already equipped to receive UHF telecasts. A major television distributor told this reporter that its sales had jumped immediately with the report of the WTVI-Cardinal tie-in. “And what’s more,” he added, “when the games go on the air, we expect to see another round of sales increases – at a time when TV sales normally go into their summer slump.”

(Originally published in the Ad Club Weekly 3/1/1954).

Better Communications, Inc., announced that its affiliated partnership, Atlantic Broadcasting Company and River City Television Partners, L.P. has completed the acquisition of KDNL-TV, Channel 30.

The acquisition of the Fox Network affiliate was from Cox Enterprises, Inc., of Atlanta, Georgia.

Better Communications, which will manage the station, was founded in early 1989 by broadcast veterans Barry Baker and Larry Marcus. Atlantic Broadcasting is a company formed in conjunction with certain executives of Communications Equity Associates.

Baker, chief executive officer, said, “This first acquisition is the cornerstone of the radio and television group that Atlantic will be developing.”

(Originally published in Ad/Mag 9/1989).

Network is Switching Stations in St. Louis

KSD-TV, the St. Louis area’s first television station, announced it has begun an orderly process of discontinuing CBS programs it has been carrying for the last five years. The move follows inauguration of service on July 8 of KWK-TV, with which CBS made an interim primary affiliation.

Both stations are VHF outlets, KSD-TV on channel 5 and KWK-TV on channel 4. CBS, itself an applicant for VHF channel 11 in St. Louis, is expected to exercise its 60-day cancellation clause in its KWK-TV affiliation should the network’s application be granted.

KSD-TV became a primary NBC-TV affiliate when television network service was made available to St. Louis in 1948, a year after the station went on the air. KSD-TV also made affiliation agreements with other TV networks, including CBS, in order to provide more comprehensive service for the St. Louis television audience.

CBS has requested KSD-TV to continue telecasting its Monday through Friday daytime shows until September 24. Certain Saturday, Sunday and evening programs which KSD-TV carries “live” from CBS will continue to be telecast by the station until termination of their current 13-week cycles. Periods which these programs occupied on KSD-TV will be reassigned to local, national and other network advertisers.

(Originally published in the Ad Club Weekly 8//2/1954).

Pulitzer Divests Itself of the Local Station

The Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved on February 17 [1983], the transfer of television station KSDK, St. Louis, from the Pulitzer Publishing Company to Multimedia, Inc., in exchange for WFBC-TV, Greenville, S.C., and WXII-TV, Winston-Salen, N.C.

Multimedia will pay the Pulitzer Company $5,250,000 and reimburse the Pulitzer Company $3,000,000 for equipping the new KSDK studios at 1000 Market Street.

The seven FCC commissioners denied petitions objecting to the transfer submitted by the Black Media Coalition and the St. Louis Broadcasting Coalition. They said the petitioners failed to provide a basis for denying the application.

Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of the Pulitzer Publishing Company, said, “KSDK has a long and illustrious history under our management as a pioneer TV station west of the Mississippi.” He added that the Pulitzer Company entered into the agreement to comply with FCC policies opposing media concentration in individual markets. The agreement had been reached in principal two years ago.

(Originally published in Ad/Mag 3/1983).

Dial Position, Call Letters and Location All Changing

WTVI, Channel 54, has purchased the antenna and transmitter and leased the tower of Channel 36, formerly KSTM, St. Louis, owned by Broadcast House, Inc., subject to the approval of the Federal Communications Commission. WTVI will operate on Channel 36 from the studios and offices adjoining the antenna and tower on Berthold Ave., just east of Hampton Ave.

Also subject to Commission approval, the station proposes to change its call letters from WTVI to KTVI. This is in accordance with FCC regulations which allocate “W” call letters to stations east of the Mississippi and “K” call letters to stations west of the Mississippi.

Before the 1955 baseball season begins, WTVI intends to increase its power at the St. Louis site to one-half million watts, double its present power and twice the power of any UHF station in the entire midwest. An application for the power increase will be filed with the Federal Communications Commission in due course.

The move to the St. Louis site can be accomplished within one week of Commission approval, according to John D. Scheuer, executive vice-president and general manager.

(Originally published in the Ad Club Weekly 2/21/1955).

Soon St. Louis Will Have a Second Television Station

When May 1953 rolls around, we’ll all have a new visitor to our homes, and a most welcome visitor, that’s certain. For next Spring our new television station will be on the air with a wealth of new programs we haven’t seen before in this area, bringing us top network stars and film stars and the best in sporting events.

The new TV station will be known as WTVI, the Signal Hill Broadcasting Corp. Its transmitter, one of the most powerful in the world, will be located high on the Illinois bluffs, just 6 ½ miles from downtown St. Louis. The station will be easily received by viewers located 50 and more miles around St. Louis in all directions.

Most of us didn’t think we’d have a new television station in St. Louis for at least a year, and best estimates were that it would be two years or even more. However, the Signal Hill Telecasting Corp. broke the bottleneck by the simple expedient of applying for a channel just across the Mississippi, on the highest ground around St. Louis. And since they were not tied up in a contest by other applicants for the same channel, they were able to bring us this early and most welcome grant of a new TV station.

WTVI will be on channel 54. This is in the ultra high frequency band that we’ve all been hearing so much about…That is why St. Louis and all the surrounding area for 50 and more miles in every direction is expectantly awaiting May, 1953, when one of the most powerful television stations in the world comes on the air [here]…

Besides having such tremendous power (220,000 watts) to bring us good television service, the new station is very advantageously located. The height of the television antenna is of utmost importance in bringing good pictures to the audience over a wide area. And WTVI’s antenna is located high on the Illinois bluffs, at the highest point of ground anywhere around St. Louis. Then the antenna itself will rise 600 feet above the tops of the bluff, completely dominating any structure in this great metropolitan area. By way of comparison, the tallest building in St. Louis, the Civil Courts Building, is 375 feet high. The Park Plaza Hotel is 310 feet high.

This is the biggest population center to be granted a TV station since the lifting of the freeze on TV stations by the Federal Communications Commission. The area of WTVI’s coverage encompasses over 2 ½ million people.

When the freeze was lifted there was a big rush by applicants to secure stations in the St. Louis area. Groups began contesting for the six channels which the FCC allocated to St. Louis. And best estimates as to when the contests would be resolved and another television station would get on the air here ran from a year to two years or more from this Spring. But one group of St. Louis radio and television men combining with a group of St. Louis businessmen, found a way to bring St. Louis another television station without the long wait.

In looking over the high ground at the western outskirts of Belleville as a possible transmitter site for their St. Louis television station, they became aware of the fact that there was a better way to go about getting their station on the air, and soon.

Instead of applying for one of the six stations allocated to St. Louis and then locating it on the East Side bluffs, as they first intended, they decided to apply for a channel which had been allocated to Belleville and located their station in the spot they had intended to from the beginning. By applying for the Belleville channel, which no one else seemed to be considering at the moment, they were uncontested and we granted their station right away.

The station will serve St. Louis and the entire surrounding area just as efficiently as if they had joined the long line in waiting for one of the six channels allocated to St. Louis. In fact, it will be more effective, not only because of getting on the air soon, but also because the terrain is perfect for the location of a TV station at that point on the Illinois bluffs.

WTVI, the Signal Hill Telecasting Corporation, was organized by Ben Wilson, John Hyatt and Ted Westcott, radio and television veterans, and by Paul Peltason and Harry Tennenbaum, St. Louis investment bankers. Ben Wilson and John Hyatt were KMOX account executives, and Ted Westcott is a producer-director for KSD-TV. Wilson has more than 22 years of radio and theater experience in many capacities. Hyatt has over 15 years experience in radio advertising sales and sales promotion. Ted Westcott has over 18 years in theater, radio and television, having been associated with WBKB, the pioneer television station in Chicago, with KMOX as producer of the popular “Land We Live In” series, with Gardner Advertising Agency, and with KSD-TV.

Westcott, who is vice-president in charge of programming of the new WTVI says that the station will carry a complete and well-rounded schedule of programs from network, supplemented by a fine list of sports programs and sporting events, a thorough news coverage, top film features and imaginative, entertaining local shows.

(Originally published in TV Review 12/20/1952).