Commercial TV in Cincinnati

The first new commercial television station to sign on in 1948 wasn’t really that new at all.

People in the Cincinnati area with a TV set had been watching W8XCT on Channel 4 for some months, tuning in play-by-play sports, a few in-studio offerings and reels and reels of Van Beuren cartoons and other short films.

It couldn’t have been an easy task selling potential new viewers on a change in status by saying “Hey, we’ll have commercials now!”

The Bloomington Daily Herald of Jan. 6, 1948 promoted the station’s new transmitter.

New High-Gain Antenna To Multiply WLWT Power
When WLWT, the Crosely [sic] Broadcasting Corporation's Cincinnati television station, begins broadcasting on a commercial basis in February, the station will have an effective power of 50,000 watts, the maximum allowed by the FCC.
The powerful signal will emanate from a tower-plus antenna assembly which attains a height of 571 feet above average terrain. Actual power of the transmitter unit is 5,000 watts, but the transmitter will be used in conjunction with an antenna built for Crosley by RCA. This antenna, plus its high elevation above average terrain, will give the WLWT signal an effective power of 50,000 watts, according to R. J. Rockwell, vice-president in charge of engineering for the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation.
The antenna assembly is 85 feet in length and comprised of five turnstile bays. The unit weighs 5,500 pounds, and will be mounted atop a 500-foot steel tower.
WLWT will be 200 times as powerful as W8XCT, the present Crosley video outlet which is a purely experimental station. W8XCT, with a 500-watt transmitter and a one-gain antenna, emits at a height of 1,109 feet above sea level a signal only 1-200th as powerful as that of WLWT. WLWT will employ a 5,000-watt transmitter with a 6-gain antenna, at a 1,400-foot elevation above sea level.

The station was supposed to go commercial on February 1, but the Cincinnati Post’s Mary Wood broke the news in the Jan. 29 edition:

Crosley’s television station won’t go commercial until Feb. 9. On Feb. 15, WLWT will officially open with a four-hour dedicatory program. Incidentally, the station’s first sponsor will be Bulova Watches with televised time signals.

The local papers didn’t make a fuss on the 9th, but the Post published an interview on the 14th with the station’s make-up woman, Dorothea Yaeger. On the 15th, the Enquirer announced:

SPECIAL PROGRAM TODAY
WLWT officials launches [sic] its commercial career with a special two and one-half-hour program starting at 2:30 p. m. today. Peter Grant, WLW newsman, will narrate the entire program. Owners of television receivers will get a sneak preview of what they can expect on the Crosley video station in the future during the program.

The Enquirer also ran this feature story:

EXPERIENCE Counts In Video, WLWT Manager Says, in Going Commercial
Cincinnati Station's Move To Seven-Day Program Points Future Path.
By JOHN CALDWELL.
“Experience was the main thing,” contends R. Duncan, Acting Director of Television Operations for the Crosley Broadcasting Division of the Aviation Corporation. He is manager of WLWT, the television station which has set aside today as "T-Day" in an effort to let the world know that hereafter it is a commercial station, ready, willing and able to accept commercial accounts.
Duncan knows whereof he speaks. During the last six months when the station was operating experimentally, he was generally behind the television cameras as much as he was in front of them. He appeared so often that the small three-year-old son of one of the WLW engineers who owned a television set remarked, on seeing his first movie “Wehers’s Mr. Duncan?”
From a Thursday-night-only video station, WLWT has grown in six months until now it broadcasts 20 hours weekly on a seven-day basis. This last week the first of commercial operation, the station was on the air 28 ½ hours. Although the hours are about the same as in other cities, but the number at days isn’t. An NBC-owned station in New York and a television station in St. Louis broadcast until recently on only five days, taking Sunday and one week day off.
• • •
THE TYPES of programs started during the months of experimental operation will continue, but now a more definite schedule has been set up. Programs, made up of both film and “live productions, can be catalogued under variety, athletics and remote news pickups. The "variety" term is anything from cooking programs to a very few dramatic films.
Sporting events so far have led the most popular list. A regular week schedule of the wrestling matches from Music Hall, started some months ago, will continue under sponsorship of Wiedeman Brewing Co. The station broadcast the last two baseball games from Crosley Field, and has done a number of broadcasts of football and basketball games. All of these will probably continue. It is hoped that the home baseball games will be carried this season. Only 40 per cent of all programs are film, although it seems more when you consult the schedules, and do not time the programs. The films are usually 15-minute affairs, with travelogues, cartoons and newsreels being seen more often than other types.
"A good taste criterion is the most important consideration in selecting programs for television audiences,” Duncan believes. "Although most of the audience at present sees television programs from barrooms or taverns, the number of home sets is constantly growing.”
• • •
AN UNUSUAL method of judgment is used in selecting programs for the air. The judgment is, Duncan says "if a program is satisfactory on radio, it is no good on television. Good radio programs use only sound for reception. For television the action is more important.
"Action appeals most to audiences," Duncan says, pointing out possibly why sports events are so well received.
On the good-taste question, WLWT will "better the Will Hays Hollywood code 100 per cent,” Duncan added.
Duncan, who holds patents in 13 countries on the invention of the blocking tube oscullator [sic], has been working in television engineering since 1931. Shortly after graduation from Oklahoma A. and M. College he was employed by the Radio Corporation of America, and later worked for Philco and the Midland Television Co. of Kansas City, Mo.
He joined Crosby in 1939 to build an experimental television station, and has been there ever since except during the war when he left to work on radar.
• • •
UNTIL RECENTLY most of the WLW television studio originated programs came from the 48th floor of the Carew Tower. Now more and more studio programs are originated in the new television studios in Clifton. An item of note at the moment is that all of the films are aired from the Carew Tower, but the narrator works in Clifton studios, seeing the film as soon as the rest of the audience does.
“The first network television as such will come to Cincinnati by WLW’s own television network," Duncan says. The company is building video stations in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, and Indianapolis. Cincinnati will have network television from the coasts in about two years, he says.
The best national news received of late, Duncan believes, is the word that Fox Movietone will furnish daily newsreels to television stations. Some of the eastern titles already are receiving this service.

Eventually, WLWT received kinescopes from NBC (its radio station was an NBC affiliate) but, as mentioned above, the schedule didn’t look a lot different at the outset as W8XCT. Here’s what aired in the first week, as per the Enquirer:

Monday, Feb. 16
WLWT, Channel 4
1:30—Enchanted Valley (film)
1:45—Paris (film)
2:00—Feature Film
3:00—Kitchen Klub, sponsored by Avco Mfg. Corp. (Crosley)
Half hour format featuring food preparation and care.
3:30—Off the air
7:30—Feature Film
8:30—Enchanted Valley (film)
8:45—Paris (film)

Tuesday, Feb. 17
2:00—Using the Weather
2:30—The Farmerette (Van Beuren, 1932)
3:00—Kitchen Klub
3:30—Off the air
7:30—The Farmerette (film)
7:45—Ride Along Dude (film)
8:00—Who Am I?
9:00—To be announced
9:30—Evening at the Gaylords

Wednesday, Feb. 18
2:00—Feature Film
3:00—Kitchen Klub
3:30—Off the air
7:30—Dizzy Day (Van Beuren, 1933)
7:45—Land of Eternal Science (film)
8:00—What’s the Answer?
8:30—Feature Film.

Thursday, Feb. 19
2:00—Story of the Violin (film)
2:15—A Romeo Monk (Van Beuren, 1932)
2:30—Way of the Wild (film)
3:00—Kitchen Klub
3:30—Off the air
7:30—A Romeo Monk (film)
8:00—Hobby Show
8:30—Way of the Wild (film)
9:00—Musical Ponies

Friday, Feb. 20
2:00—Southern Crossways (film)
2:15—AM to PM (film)
2:30—Archery vs. Golf (film)
2:45—Aida (film)
3:00—Kitchen Klub
3:30—Off the air
7:30—AM to PM (film)
7:45—Southern Crossways (film)
8:00—Archery vs. Golf (film)
8:15 to 11:15—Wrestling from the Music Hall Sport Arena, sponsored by George Wiedemann Brewing Company.
Jack Pinto vs. Ben Trudell; Ali Aliba and Bill Zim vs. Herb Parks and Billy Ford; Paul Steuer vs. Dan Morris.

Saturday, Feb. 21
12:45—Luncheon at the Sinton, sponsored by H. & S. Pogue department stores.
2:00—Busy Spots in Florida (film)
2:15—Overture—Der Freischuetz (film)
2:30—Holland (film)
2:45—Croon Crazy (Van Beuren, 1933)
3:00—Kitchen Klub, sponsored by Avco Mfg. Corp. (Crosley)
3:30—Off the air
7:30—Croon Crazy (film)
7:45—Holland (film)
8:00—Overture (film)
8:15—Best Spots in Florida (film)
8:30—Judo Demonstration
8:45—Table Tennis
Nine Greater Cincinnati table tennis players, including the men’s and women’s champions, will participate in a half-hour television show from 8 to 8:30 tonight over WLWT. Under the direction of Red Tornberg. The show will mark the first time the sport will have been televised in this area.

Sunday, Feb. 22
3:00—First Paradise (film)
3:15—Song Birds (film)
3:30—Cincinnati Churches
7:30—Song Birds (film)
7:45—First Paradise (film)
8:00 to 10:30—Basketball
All-Hawaii Stars, headed by guard Bob Lee, will make their annual invasion of the Music hall Sports Arena tonight to meet Jesse Owens’s Kansas City Stars in part of the pro-basketball double-header. The Harlem Globetrotters and the New York Celtics are paired in the other game.
The Hawaiian team is on its second tour of the United States and will bring along a group of Island entertainers who will stage a floor show between games.

Besides the handful of sponsors mentioned above, Steinberg's Radio Store bought three spots weekly. No one seemed anxious to have someone say “Cubby Bear has been brought to you by. . .”

In 1952, the station was ordered to change to channel 5 and resides there to this day.