Bell System Technical Journal, 1922-1983 [telecom]

Additional TV trivia:

--A former governor of Pennsylvania in the 1970s, Milton J. Shapp, made his fortune as a maker of cable TV components.

--In the waning days of WW II, IBM applied to the FCC for microwave channels so it could transmit data and television. Given the notorious conservatism of IBM's president at the time, Thomas J. Watson, Sr, one would have trouble imagining the broadcasted TV programs he would allow--probably classical music performances and Shakespeare (censored, of course), with commercials of IBMers singing "Ever Onward", the IBM song.

--There's a website out there that talks about the old Bell System microwave network, much of it now apparently dismantled. Several towers were dedicated to just television transmission. Indeed, does anyone know if AT&T or the other LD carriers still supply transmission facilities for broadcast television and radio networks? Or is it all done by satellite today?

--In Philadelphia, for about 50 years ABC was on 6, NBC on 3, and CBS on 10. Due to a switch in ownership and FCC regulations, NBC and CBS had to switch stations. When PBS came along, it had 12.

--In Phila, an independent UHF station, Ch 48, had internal ownership problems, and they ended up surrending their license back to the FCC. (Wasn't that a big loss of money?)

Virtual channel 48 (actually using UHF channel 27) in the Philadelphia area is now WGTW, a TBN station.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net ---

To mis-use a Clintonism, "that depends on what a 'big loss' means".

A broadcast TV license is a potentially valuable property, _if_ you can find someone (acceptable to the FCC) interested in buying it. Acquiring an existing license is -far- easier and *quicker* that applying for one 'from scratch', _assuming_ there is an available 'slot' in the locale for the power level you want to run.

OTOH, if there are no offers, or the existing ownership is divided on 'who we refuse to sell to', the 'value' of the thing is effectively 'zero'.

_Assuming_ they had held the license for at least the 'initial' term, the out-of-pocket cost -- paid to the gov't, that is -- of retaining the license is in the 'petty cash' department. That catagorization does -not- inclde the 'operational' costs of keeping the license in good standing.

As for the 'surrender' itself, the station ownership had little to no choice in the matter. Broadcast licenses are "use it or lose it' items. You are required to be 'on the air' a minimum number of hours, per day, every day, albeit with some provisions for certain emergency ("act of God") situations.

If they couldn't find an 'acceptable' -- to the existing ownership _and_ the FCC -- new owner (one who was ready and able to 'execute' _quiclky_ enough to continue operations) when facing the shut-down situation, they had _no_ _choice_ but to promptly return the license to the FCC for possible re-issue.

Dem _is_ de rules. :

When I was a kid in the early 1970's I visited my uncle in Allentown, PA, who was a research scientist for AT&T Bell Labs there. We attended a party at a well-off neighbor's house where the TV was tuned to a new channel their kids called "Home Box". They said it came over the "box" and there was indeed a special box on the TV stand that received it.

They told me it showed movies during prime time, but that they were all very dated movies. It was mid Sunday afternoon, and because that wasn't prime-time, "Home Box Office" was playing its usual non-prime-time endless loop 'interval signal' of a Frenchman riding a bicycle. For hours all we could see on "Home Box" was the rear view of that Frenchman pedaling away, with a French music loop soundtrack.

My uncle told me the signal was delivered to the house via cable after coming over AT&T microwave repeaters located on mounaintops, a concept that intrigued me. I've read that in 1975 HBO became the first TV network to broadcast via satellite when it showed the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to its subscribers.

-Ed

Almost totally by inter-city fiber networks, one might guess . . . ???

And if the FCC hasn't already taken it away. At one point during the great RKO General Saga, RKO (which was fighting license revocation at its Boston TV station, WNAC-TV) proposed to the FCC that they sell the license to one of the competing applicants for the channel. The FCC responded, "You haven't got a license to sell." The whole thing took another decade to completely unwind, as General Tire was forced to sell off all of their remaining stations. (It would have happened faster were it not for Sen. Bill Bradley's intervention to give RKO's WOR-TV an automatic license renewal in exchange for moving from New York to Secaucus, N.J.) The FCC made it clear that it would not renew RKO's other licenses, judging it to be an unfit broadcast licensee.

Eventually the WNAC-TV license was revoked, and the remaining applicant for the channel (of the two that had filed against WNAC in

Boston is the only city to lose two major-network affiliates to license revocation; WNAC-TV (channel 7) was the second, but the first

-- and the proceedings started about the same time for both -- was WHDH-TV (channel 5). In a twist of surely unintended irony, WNEV-TV owner David Mugar changed the new channel 7's callsign to WHDH-TV after he bought WHDH radio.

-GAWollman

Most of it indeed is gone, at least in the sense of out of service. Many of the towers still exist. There are a couple of them near my home in southern Nevada.* The horn-reflector antennas are still on top of most of the towers. The vertical circular waveguide is there. Most of the horizontal rectangular waveguide runs are missing. The buildings are intact. I cannot tell if there is any equipment inside. However, the Bell System sometimes left radio and multiplex equipment in place if it cost more to remove it than it was worth as salvage. Around 1970, I was in a Long Lines main staion. I walked through an aisle with unpowered equipment mounted in bays. On each bay was a sign "R. I. P." meaning "Retired In Place." They would not remove the equipment unless they needed the space for something new.

Most of the AT&T microwave towers, buildings and sites are owned by American Tower, who is trying to lease space on them for other radio uses such as cellphone.

Example site (nearest my home):

• I found the two towers while roaming the countryside looking for sites for ham-radio repeaters. When I did find them, a wave of nostalgia washed over me, because my job at Bell Labs involved designing not only some of the radio equipment, but also improvements in the antenna sidelobes and transmission irregularities in the over-moded circular waveguide.

Dick

One tower, right next to a highway, is being used by an Oklahoma City television statioon for their weather radar. This is the same tower Southwestern Bell used to mount a temporary link to the University of Oklahoma football stadium during football season when Southwestern Bell and AT&T Long Lines carried tv signals over the towers. The guys who did the work still had the title of "telephone repeaterman," although their main work by then was maintaining the Southwestern Bell (not AT&T then) microwave routes throughout the state. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

I recall when you could get HBO via RF instead of cable. At least that was the case in Providence, RI in the late 1970's.

Cable rolled in in the early 80's and it's never been the same.