It's hard
to believe that any new technology would attract so much
attention today! Even with the introduction of the past 30 years
of TV related inventions: VTR's, VCR''s(Beta and VHS),
Camcorders(VHS, C-VHS, 8mm,
Digital 8, DVD recording, etc.), Digital TV, Digital Hi-Definition,
Plasma and other flat set formats, no event like it has EVER taken
place since!
What
we missed before we had TV in Central Illinois
ABC
presented "The Ruggles" live from Hollywood from 1949 to
1952. It starred the movie character actor Charlie Ruggles.
It was performed live for the west coast stations from KECA-TV, while
being kinescoped for airing the next week on the rest of the small ABC
network.
In
1948,"The Life of Riley" aired on just a few
thousand TV sets in mostly major markets,
starring Jackie Gleason. William Bendix
had a very successful film career, and in
spite of playing the character on radio
for several years, wasn't able
to fill the roll of Chester Riley. Gleason filled
the roll, but the program was canceled after
one year. Those few viewers wanted
Bendix as Riley, and by January of 1953,
watchers of "The Life of Riley" got to see
William Bendix play the bumbling husband
on TV. He also continued to play him on
radio for a number of years at the same time.
Here is a video from the pilot episode with
William Bendix from January of 1953.
WICS wasn't on the air yet.
The
Ed Wynn Show was the first variety show to originate from
Hollywood. It was done live in Hollywood, then kinescoped for
airing the next week on the rest of the CBS network stations.
This
NBC kids sci-fi series was broadcast from 1950 to 1952. The
episodes were 15 minutes long for mos of the it's run.
This
is an excerpt from "The Ford Theater" which was a syndicated 1950
feature from early TV. This particular video features a typical
Ford commercial from the era.
Some of these videos are
provided by an outside source and may be withdrawn
without notice.
Here's
a sample of "The Jackie Gleason Show" as broadcast live on the
DuMont TV network.
Central
Illinois Television Mania
A
typical television installation during those early days cost about $200
to $400 plus antenna, tower, cable, rotor, etc. adding another
$150-$200 to the investment. One thing for sure, your life
wouldn't be your own after your purchase.
If you had a television people would "pop in" to watch shows on many
nights, especially when those "spectaculars" were shown and the popular
shows of the era like "Milton Berle," "The Colgate Comedy Hour" and
"The Toast of the Town, " not to mention the World Series and various
boxing matches and wrestling matches.
Many bars and taverns installed television which pretty much guaranteed
a large number of viewers who would spend hours drinking before going
home. People would gather at store fronts along Main Street if
there was a television in the window. It's hard to imagine
anything today which would get so much attention!
Television dealers sprung up overnight, some were mom and pop
neighborhood dealers in back rooms, garages and small store
fronts. Others were already major department stores.
Television manufacturers set up franchises which would lock in certain
brands to select dealers who also would provide service departments
which would maintain those fragile early televisions.
Below are some select ads placed in central Illinois newspapers before
and after the sign-ons of local television stations in Decatur,
Champaign, Springfield, Bloomington and Danville. Many of which
were
"cookie-cutter" ads that would insert the local call letters of the
markets TV station.
Decatur
"The Eyes of Decatur are on WTVP, Channel 17...."
Philco was one of the most popular brands of television and
radio. One advantage of owning a Philco was it's ability to bring
in distant signals.
The
above TV advertising for Arvin TV was a bit different than that which
was published in Champaign with WCIA. This one was a variation
which featured the VHF-UHF tuner which would have been needed for the
reception of WTVP.
Staubers
was a Decatur department store which eventually went out of business in
1954.
DuMont Televisions were manufactured by the product division of the
DuMont Television Network.
Rogers
Radio and Appliance Company was a Decatur well known
business well into the 1980's.
Here was an appeal of the Illinois Appliance
Corporation, which was a wholesaler of things like washing machines,
refrigerators and ....televisions.
Here they were looking to lock in a few franchise dealers for Sylvania
Televisions.
All images from Decatur
from the Herald-Review
Champaign
The Champaign-Urbana Television
Dealers Association, being led by WCIA introduced the new appliance to
the Champaign-Urbana households by hosting a weekend trade show like
event at the Urbana Armory. Each dealer had a booth in which they
could display their models. Television's with names like Arvin,
Majestic, Hoffman, DuMont, Sentinel, Columbia, Motorola, joined brands
known today like RCA, Philco, Zenith, Sylvania,
Emerson and Admiral at the dealer's
booths. I would bet that most of not all were manufactured right
here in the USA. WCIA also gave a demonstration of just how
attendees would look on TV by setting up a camera with a closed circuit
"broadcast" within the confines of the Armory. The event
attracted thousands, with a newspaper account naming the east central
Illinois and west central Indiana communities which were represented at
the show. It appeared that the advent of the TV age was
coming into Central Illinois with a great deal of enthusiasm and
excitement!
All images for Champaign were from the
Urbana Courier.
This
was an ad for the C-U Television Dealers Association's TV Show Trade
Show which took place at the Urbana Armory in early November of
1953. This lists most of the local TV dealers which sprang up in
the Champaign-Urbana area at the time.
"What's new in
TV? What's best
for
me? What kind of
installation? Should I buy now? What programs will
I
get?" Think about
it,
with TV prices at around
200-400
dollars, most family incomes were only around
$50 a
week. What could you afford if TV's
were 6
times your weekly salary?
Above:
Sentinel TV was a lower priced TV offered by many 'mom and pop" local TV
dealers. This one featured both VHF and UHF tuning.
Below: A live demonstration of TV was a real crowd pleaser at the
Armory for the TV Show, sponsored by the C-U Television Dealers
Association. This set up was provided by WCIA which signed on
during the weekend.
Manny
and Martin TV purchased an ad in the Urbana Courier in 1953 to try to
sell Admiral Televisions to the future audience of WCIA-TV.
Below: Those "exclusive features" tell the story of the benefits of
owning a Motorola TV!
Robeson's
was a downtown department store in Champaign and went into the TV
business with Zenith in 1953. This model was a mere $379, that's
about 8 weeks worth of paychecks for the average middle income wage
earner.
The ad below is for a 21-inch Admiral...and if you can't afford
it....easy terms could be arranged!
Above:
"Look what WCIA will bring you...!"
introduced this full page ad for RCA Victor Television.
Below: this "cookie cutter" ad was for Zenith, "the biggest dollar for
dollar value in television!"
Notice the drop in designed for WCIA.
Arvin
TV was a low budget television brand many times offered by smaller "mom
and pop" dealers like the ones on the quarter page ad from the Urbana
Courier.
The ad below was for the Twin City TV Center offering service to those
troublesome early TV's.
The
DuMont logo was also used to promote it's TV line. The DuMont
network was also seen in Champaign on WCIA-TV.
Springfield
Far
left: "Look what station WICS-TV
will bring you!" This ad was apparently placed by RCA in markets
with NBC stations. That's why it showed up in the Springfield
Journal-Review with WICS and in the Urbana Courier with WCIA-TV, which
at the time was a part time NBC affiliate.
Close left: Radio was beginning to get "squeezed out" by the
attention given to local TV. During the same week that WICS was
being introduced, local radio stations WMAY(970kc) and WTAX(1240kc)
were running ads in the local papers as well. This one
for WTAX was promoting CBS' big Sunday night lineup with the likes of
Eve Arden's "Our Miss Brooks" followed by "The Jack Benny Show," "Amos
'n' Andy," "Bing Crosby," "My Little Margie" with Gale Storm, "Hallmark
Radio Hall of Fame," "The Gene Autry Show" and "They Made the
Headlines."
Both images from
Springfield are from the Journal-Register
Bloomington
Magnavox(upper
left), Philco(upper right), Motorola(lower left) and RCA(lower right),
were all well known brands of TV in 1953....all American companies, all
producing sets in America for Americans!
Here's
another of the "cookie cutter" RCA
television ads which ran in local papers with the instructions of
"Insert Local TV station Here" In this case it was WBLN in
Bloomington.
All images for Bloomington were from the
Daily Pantograph
This
ad for Motorola TV recognized that the Peoria stations were already on
th air and Bloomington's Channel 15 was soon to come.
Danville
A large number of ads for area TV dealers, repairshops and antenna service center appeared in the pages of the co-owned newspaper, the Danville Commercial-News when WDAN-TV was coming on the air.
All images above are from the pages of the Danville Commercial-News
Newspaper
Ownership/Affiliation Politics
In researching the
local Champaign-Urbana newspapers for details about the sign-on of WCIA
and WCHU it became obvious that the News-Gazette virtually ignored the
news generated by the sign-on of WCHU, while the sign-on of WCIA, 7
years earlier received maximum exposure. It's possible the
ownership could have been at play as members of the board of directors
of the foundation which owns the News-Gazette were also members at
Midwest Television and WCIA during the early days at least by
proxy. In fact one of the other members of the board of directors
of Midwest Television was Merrill Lindsey, who was the publisher of the
Urbana Courier as well. Although after 1955, outside of the usual
"off the air due to technical difficulties" stories, the usual stream
of WCIA press releases seemed to be missing. It's unknown
when the News-Gazette board members dropped out of the board of
directors of Midwest Television, but it may have coincided with the
sudden lack of WCIA coverage in the N-G. WCIA may have put
competitive pressure on the local heritage media group which controlled
the Champaign newspaper and it's radio cousins at WDWS, which brought
out about the decision to not cover any WCIA local station news or
print their news releases. Many WCIA press releases
appeared in the pages of the Urbana Courier, as well as press releases
of all of the other local TV and radio stations as well. Perhaps
it was because the publisher of the Courier was also a broadcaster and
the general manager of Decatur's WSOY AM-FM.
Meanwhile at the cross town Urbana Courier, there seemed to be a more
equal coverage of any and all of the area broadcasters whether it
television or radio. The only exception as the local radio
listings. The News-Gazette which also owned WDWS AM-FM only
listed the programming of that local pair of stations. The Urbana
Courier included the listings of the other much weaker radio station in
town, WKID(1580kc) and not those of WDWS AM-FM.
Preparations
are being made for Network Service
This rather
bad photograph was taken by the Decatur Herald and Review was published
in 1953. It shows the construction of a microwave tower just to the
northwest of Pana, Illinois. Here was the caption of the picture:
"The 250-foot tower
on Williamsburg Hill
southeast of Pana will be used to carry a television impulse from
Pittsburgh to St. Louis when the project is completed this summer. Five
Illinois towers in the project are at Kansas, Mattoon,
Williamsburg Hill, Burensburg and Highland. A microwave impulse
will be bounced from tower to tower until it reaches its destination.
The tower will not help local reception."
It was pretty obvious the writer of the caption didn't have a clue as
to
the real purpose of the mysterious tower. In case it wasn't
clear, it was
another of the repeater stations for the microwave of network TV
service to
affiliates around the Midwest.
picture from the Decatur
Herald and Review
This map showed how NBC was routing it's network service by 1958.
You'll notice that the signal for both WICS and WCIA was coming
from St. Louis.
This shows the actual carrier for the local central Illinois NBC
affiliates
was coming via telephone company coax, and not being
microwaved.
You might also notice that the NBC was also sent
to WCIA in Champaign, which was a secondary
affiliate of NBC until WCHU came on line in 1960.
Newspaper
Coverage of Central Illinois TV
This Urbana Courier story summarizes the local TV situation from
November of 1953.
"Here is the status of seven television channels alloted to cities
within 60 miles of Champaign-Urbana:
WCIA-TV
3
VHF
Champaign-Urbana
within next
week
WTVP
17
UHF
Decatur
Already on air
No
call letters
12
VHF
University of
Illinois
Sept 1954
No
call letters
21
UHF
Champaign-Urbana
No plans
announced
WDAN-TV
24
UHF
Danville
Dec 10, 1953
WBLN-TV
15
UHF
Bloomington
within next
week
You'll notice that the list includes a Channel 21
listed for Champaign-Urbana. Needless to say, the station never
came about. Look for other
proposed central Illinois stations and those that just
didn't make it on "Other
Television History."
The Urbana Courier covers the future WDAN-TV sign-on in Danville and
the sign-on of WBLN-TV, Bloomington:
Danville Sets Dec. 10 Goal
"WDAN-TV (Channel 24, UHF) expects to go on the air December 10, Robert
Burow, manager, has announced."
"A crew of workman arrived last week to assemble and erect the new
400-foot AM TV tower for the television station"
The tower which will support a 41-foot antenna, is expected to take up
to approximately a week. It will be used for the transmission of
both radio and television signals."
"If preparations keep progressing as ......in the past we hope to make
the December 10th air date,' Burow said."
"The last of the guy wires....(unreadable).... All other
equipment has arrived and has been installed."
Bloomington UHF Station On
Air Within a Week
"WBLN-TV (Channel 15, UHF) is expected to begin broadcasting from
Bloomington within the next week, according to Jerell Henry, general
manager"
The Urbana
Courier also described the first couple of days of broadcasting
of WDAN-TV in Danville:
About Town
"A fourth area TV station goes on the air today when WDAN-TV, Channel
24 offers the ABC network program "Super Circus." The station at
present is offering ABC network programs exclusively for the next two
weeks and will carry both commercial and entertainment shows.
Between network shows the station will show only its test pattern."
"Sunday's programming closes with the Peter Potter show which starts at
8:30pm. Monday the station will be on the air from 6:15 until
9:30."
"The station will carry the Sugar Bowl football game between Georgia
Tech and West Virginia starting at 12:45pm, New Years Day."
There is more early newspaper coverage
featured with each stations history pages elsewhere on this website.
Program
Listings from a Thursday in November 1953
If you lived in Decatur, these local TV stations were most likely your
only choice for TV viewing on a typical Thursday.
It was sometimes difficult to figure where the
programs were coming from at anyone of the local TV stations. Some
shows were taken right off the network coax, others were on film or
kinescope and others were live in studio productions. I tried to
identify most of the programs listed. Most with no source are
either local productions or are syndicated on film and shown
locally. Others are network, off network film or kinescope.
The very early days of central Illinois TV included newspaper listings
of programs of the "big 3" as featured in the Decatur Herald and
Review below. This is from December of 1953, after all three
signed on....
The network lineup on
Thursdays were as follows:
ABC
6:15--News
6:30--Lone Ranger
7:00--Quick as a Flash
7:30--Where's Raymond
8:00--Talent Patrol
8:30--Kraft Television Theater
CBS
6:30--News
6:45--Jane Froman
7:00--Meet Mr. McNulty
7:30--Four Star Playhouse
8:00--Dragnet
8:30--Big Town
9:00--Philip Morris Playhouse
9:30--Place the Face
NBC
6:30--Dinah
Shore
6:45--News
7:00--You Bet Your Life(Groucho Marx)
7:30--Treasury Men in Action
8:00--Dragnet
8:30--Ford Theater
9:00--Martin Kane, Private Eye
DuMont
6:00--Captain Video
6:15-7:00 off air
7:00--New York Giants Quarterback Huddle
7:30--Broadway to Hollywood
8:00--Guide Right
WTVP, Channel 17, Decatur
2:00--Feature
Film
3:30--Dick Shoughnessy
4:00--Woman's World
4:30--Prairie Ranch House
5:00--Uncle Al and Friends
5:30--Headlines from the Past
5:45--Triple Streak
6:00--Farm News
6:15--News
7:00--Head of the Class-1
7:30--Where's Raymond
8:00--Talent Patrol
8:30--Lilli Palmer-1
8:45--Sports Showcase-1
9:00--Greatest Drama-1
9:15--Public Prosecutor-1
all
underlined shows are broadcast live from ABC
*ABC off network-syndicated
1= source unknown, possibly local or film
WCIA, Channel 3, Champaign
2:00--Big Payoff
2:30--Film
3:00--Welcome Traveler
3:30--On Your Account
4:00--Better Living
4:30--Western Theater
5:30--U. of I.
6:00--Captain Video-D
6:15--Marge and Jeff-1
6:30--Newsreel
6:45--Yesterday's Newsreel
7:00--Gene Autry*
7:30--I Led Three Lives**
8:00--Guide Right-D
8:30--Ford Theater-N
9:00--Biff Baker-C
9:30--Files of Jeffrey Jones-1
10:00-News, Weather, Sports
all underlined
shows are broadcast live from a national network identified by
A-ABC, C-CBS, N-NBC, D-DuMont
*CBS kinescope
**syndicated
1= source unknown possibly local or film
WICS, Channel 20, Springfield
5:30--Shopping With
Julie
5:45--Down on the Farm
6:00--Art's Workshop
6:15--Captain Video*
6:30--News
6:45--Sports, Weather
7:00--Groucho Marx
7:30--Play of the Week
8:00--Talent Parade-1
8:30--Gloria Swanson-1
9:00--Four Star Playhouse**
9:30--I Led Three Lives
10:00-News, Weather, Sports
all underlined
shows are broadcast live from the NBC network
*DuMont kinescope
**CBS kinescope
1= source unknown, possibly local or film
8:30--Theater
9:00--Martin
Kane
9:30--Victory
at Sea
10:00-Crown Theater
10:30-Playhouse-1
11:00-News, Weather
11:15-Danger***
11:45-Treasury Men in Action*
12:15-News
all underlined
shows are broadcast live from the NBC network
*NBC kinescope
**ABC kinescope
***CBS kinescope
1= source unknown, possibly local or film
If
you examine the list of programs you'll see that many of the NBC
shows which aired on St. Louis' KSD weren't shown on WICS. The
explanation is that the relationship between the network and affiliates
were not like they are today. Many of the shows were owned by ad
agencies which represented products. In order to share in the
network income for broadcasting these shows an affiliated station would
bid for the right to air these shows and share in the payments form the
network/agencies. Even though many of the shows were
entertainment, they could be classified today as an
"info-mercial." For example "Lux Video Theater," "Ford Theater,"
"Kraft Mystery Theater," "Lucky Strike Program with Jack Benny,"
"Texico Star Theater with Milton Berle," and "The Lucky Strike Hit
Parade" all entertainment shows named for the sponsors. KSD-TV
also aired a number of CBS daytime programs before WTVI and KWK-TV went
on the air in 1953 and 1956.
This would also explain why, if your read some of the early TV history
of the stations there would be mention that the station manager or
owner would travel to New York to arrange for the broadcast of
various network programs. This would also explain why at 7:30pm
on KSD, that KSD(NBC) would air an ABC network show, "The Adventures of
Ozzie and Harriet." The ad agency for Ozzie and Harriet which
also at that time represented Kodak and Coca-Cola seemed to be quite
aggressive in purchasing time on only the strongest stations in the
market, which was KSD-TV, owned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
newspaper. "Ozzie and Harriet" wasn't shown on WTVP(ABC) during
much of the 1950's but would appear on WCIA(CBS).
There are other examples of such "cherry picking" of affiliates such as
the broadcast of the ABC show "Zorro" on WICS(NBC) and not on
WTVP(ABC). This kind of program bidding was certainly a behind
the scenes factor which made early TV very competitive. This most
certainly gave the huge coverage area of the VHF station in central
Illinois quite an advantage over the UHF stations which offered a much
smaller coverage area. This may have also contributed to the
massive lay-offs at WTVP in January 1954 after the reality of getting
less than expected revenue.
It seemed to be obvious that WICS was coming up a little short in
ordering shows from the NBC menu. In an era of stations
scrambling for programming, WICS had to work a little harder. The
only NBC show broadcast by the Springfield station was the very popular
"You Bet Your Life" hosted by Groucho Marx. The program sources
for the other programs in the prime time lineup are currently
unknown. The shows listed above are not in any national
program listing data base I have found.
Early
Television and the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois
The
first University of Illinois "Fighting
Illini" basketball game was telecast on WTVP in Decatur on December 9,
1953 as Butler University visited Huff Gym. The reason it
was broadcast first on the Decatur station isn't real clear, but it
wasn't long before WCIA began broadcasting the games as well.
WCIA's first Illini game was on December 12, 1953. It's also
assumed that this was not an exclusive arrangement like today, because
arrangements were also made for future basketball broadcasts of the
Illini on WTVP. It was reported that a portable microwave
tower and repeater which was used to relay the Illini Football games to
Danville and the coaxial network cable which sent the
signal to Chicago and the network switchboard there was moved from it's
location about 3 miles
southeast of Ogden, Illinois, to it's new location 2 miles north
and 1 mile west of Bement, Illinois. The tower height was
78-feet originally, but after it was moved to Bement it was extended
further to 102-feet.
Another
relay system was located either on
the Citizen's Bank Building in downtown Decatur or atop the Staley
Manufacturing Office Building on Eldorado Street in Decatur. It
appears that the relay site in Decatur was not yet determined, and it's
unknown where it ultimately ended up. From either of these
locations, the signal was relayed again to the receiver on the
broadcast tower of WTVP on Southside Drive in Decatur. The audio
for the games was sent via phone lines. The video for the games
was provided by the University of Illinois Motion Picture and
Television Unit, while the local stations provided their own announcers
and audio.
Earlier on December 5th of 1953, WCIA announced it would broadcast a
total of 10 home games. It's unknown how many games were
broadcast by WTVP, plus it's unknown how many were actually simulcast
by both WTVP and WCIA. During the first game broadcast on WCIA
just a few nights later, WCIA was hit by an unfortunate transmitter
problem which knocked their audio transmitter off the air. The
station lost audio during the first quarter of the game, due to mice
eating through some wiring and shorting out a filament relay in the
250,000 watt audio transmitter. It was also reported by the
News-Gazette(who also owns WDWS radio), that many viewers used the
audio of Larry Stewart(the sports announcer) on WDWS radio.
An
early look at Television
The TV set shown at left is a 1950 Zenith Porthole TV. I
inherited one just like it many years ago, and kept it in my personal
collection until a few years ago, when I donated it to the Vermilion
County Museum.
The last time I visited the Museum, it was on display.
Check it out at the Vermilion County Illinois Museum in Danville.
