[PRCo] Re: [Fwd: Pittsburgh Rwy Cars]

[Bob Rathke]

I believe that WJAC-TV in Johnstown was on the air in 1949 - on channel 13.  At
that time, Pittsburgh's only TV station was WDTV channel 3 (in 1954 it became
KDKA-TV).  Around 1950,  the FCC re-arranged channel assignments, and 13 went
to Pittsburgh, although WQED didn't go on the air until April 4, 1954; channel
6 then went to Johnstown, and WDTV in Pittsburgh switched from channel 3 to 2.

I grew up on the North Side of Pittsburgh.  With only one commecial TV station
in Pittsburgh from 1949-57, we were forced to watch the other networks'
programming on TV stations broadcasting from Johnstown, Wheeling and
Steubenville.  I don't believe WPR's reasoning, but couldn't people in Fayette
County have viewed those stations in the early 1950s too?

Because of disputes over ownership rights, Pittsburgh didn't get its second
commercial VHF station (WIIC channel 11, now WPXI) until 1957.  WTAE-TV channel
4 didn't go on the air until 1958.

Bob 4/16/01




"Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:

> It was easy to believe and West Penn said so in their abandonment
> petitition.  Except there was no TV in that region when the West Penn
> petition was filed!  It sounded really good for the PUC types from
> Harrisburg, who could listen to then WGAL TV Channel 4 from Lancaster.
> We can look at one channel in Harrisburg, can't everyone?  By 1950
> Johnstown had television.  But nobody in Fayette County had TV.  It was
> a bald faced lie by West Penn's management to add weight to their effort
> to abandon services that had lost money for 30 some years. But Bob
> Brown, who lived in Pittsburgh and wrote the piece, had to know
> better.
>
> Derrick J Brashear wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, ROGER Jenkins wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Well Fred if two publications said it was TV that reduced the riding on
> > > West Penn and you did not believe it, what do you think the real reason
> > > was? To me it sounded plausible that the draw of watching Ed Sullivan
> > > and a whole lot of other things on the 12 inch sets like my neihbor had
> > > where us kids went to watch  it, made perfect sense. Instead of riding
> > > the trolley to the local bijou , people stayed home glued to that new
> > > fangled picture box !
> >
> > TV: not in 1952 in little coal patch and beehive coke oven towns.
> >
> > -D