WCAN-TV (channel 25) was a television station in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee i ...
, United States, which operated from 1953 to 1955. It was the second television station and first
ultra high frequency
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequency, radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one ten ...
(UHF) outlet in Milwaukee and was owned by Midwest Broadcasting Company. Affiliated with
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
throughout its history, it shut down when the network bought its primary competitor,
WOKY-TV (channel 19), taking with it the CBS affiliation; Poller sold the physical plant to CBS, while the WCAN-TV
construction permit
Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...
remained active and in force until 1969.
Establishment
After the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) lifted its freeze on television station assignments in 1952, it opened up new channels in the UHF band, among them channels 19, 25, and 31 for Milwaukee. Radio station
WCAN (1250 AM) originally had filed for channel 12, a
very high frequency
Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves ( radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter.
Frequencies immediately below VHF ...
(VHF) assignment, but it opted to withdraw from that contest and apply from channel 25 because three other groups also sought channel 12. They were not alone in doing so.
WFOX (860 AM) also applied for channel 12 and switched its application to channel 25 in the same week, setting up a potential
comparative hearing
The comparative hearing process was used by the United States Federal Radio Commission from 1927 to 1934 and its successor, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from 1934 to 1994 for the evaluation of mutually exclusive applications for bro ...
. A third applicant, Harry Balaban's Northwestern Television Company, also filed for the channel but later amended its application to specify channel 19.
![Hilton Milwaukee City Center](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Hilton_Milwaukee_City_Center.jpg)
When WFOX then decided to go after channel 19, incorrectly believing that the recent award to the corporate owners of
WOKY
WOKY (920 AM, "The Big 920") is a commercial radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It is owned and operated by iHeartMedia and broadcasts a sports format affiliated with Fox Sports Radio. Its studios and offices, which became the ...
(920 AM) of a permit for a station in
Madison Madison may refer to:
People
* Madison (name), a given name and a surname
* James Madison (1751–1836), fourth president of the United States
Place names
* Madison, Wisconsin, the state capital of Wisconsin and the largest city known by this ...
disqualified them from receiving a permit for Milwaukee, WCAN was left alone on channel 25; on February 5, 1953, it received the first new construction permit for a Milwaukee television station in five years.
Studio facilities would be split between WCAN's Third Street radio studios and the transmitter facility at Hales Corners, where the WCAN-TV transmitter was planned to be sited. However, by July, WCAN-TV had changed its plans to put the studios in the Towne Hotel and its antenna on a new mast atop the
Schroeder Hotel. Affiliation with CBS was secured in August 1953, relieving Milwaukee's pre-freeze
WTMJ-TV
WTMJ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Kenosha-licensed Ion Television station WPXE-TV (channel 55). WTMJ-TV's studios are loca ...
of its CBS hookup. Tower work was bogged down by rain that prevented completion of the mast and delayed the station in broadcasting test patterns.
At 11:30 p.m. on September 6, 1953, WCAN-TV began broadcasting, with local and CBS shows telecast from the start. By this time, Lou Poller had become the majority owner of Midwest Broadcasting Company, with the rest owned by Cy Blumenthal and Alex Rosenman. Effective radiated power was originally 22,000 watts, raised to 212,000 with the installation of a new transmitter at the start of 1954.
In October 1953, as part of a dispute over channel 12—then the only other assigned commercial VHF channel for Milwaukee—a proposal was formulated to add channel 6 to Milwaukee on a suggestion of Hearst Radio Inc., owner of radio station
WISN (1130 AM). Poller unsuccessfully fought the proposal and also started an association of UHF television stations.
Despite being a UHF station in a market where only between 62 and 70 percent of television sets could receive UHF stations like WCAN-TV, ratings were above-average. One May 1954 article in ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'' found that, in early April, WCAN-TV beat WTMJ-TV in a string of key time slots with both CBS and local programs, at a time when other UHF stations were folding. WCAN-TV and fellow UHF outlet
WOKY-TV, an
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
/
DuMont affiliate on channel 19, both made money. The Towne Hotel sued WCAN-TV at one point for usurping its lobby after a station program 200 teens to the second-floor studios.
Demise and activity after shutdown
On October 21, 1954, CBS agreed to purchase WOKY-TV for $335,000 in light of new ownership limits that allowed station groups to own five VHF plus two UHF stations; one reason CBS chose Milwaukee for a UHF outlet was because of WCAN-TV's strong promotion of UHF set conversion. While this might have otherwise dislodged ABC from channel 19 to replace the defecting CBS, a second VHF station,
WTVW
WTVW (channel 7) is a television station in Evansville, Indiana, United States, serving as a ''de facto'' owned-and-operated station of The CW. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Nexsta ...
(channel 12), was about to launch. In an unusual complication, CBS paid Lou Poller $786,000 for the WCAN-TV physical plant atop the Schroeder Hotel and then was paid $286,000 for the WOKY-TV physical plant, including a new studio building, to which WCAN-TV would migrate. Poller would also be paid an early termination fee if WOKY-TV assumed the CBS affiliation any sooner than April 22, when the WCAN-TV–CBS affiliation agreement was set to expire. Meanwhile, WCAN radio was sold off when WEMP (1340 AM) purchased the entire transmitter facility and license to move to 1250. The changeover occurred after February 26, 1955, when WCAN-TV left the air; on February 27, WOKY-TV became the new CBS affiliate in Milwaukee as WXIX. WXIX also took on some of WCAN-TV's staff.
Poller filed a $4.35 million antitrust lawsuit against CBS, charging a conspiracy by CBS and others to force Poller out of business. He claimed that
Storer Broadcasting
Storer Broadcasting, Inc. was an American company which owned several television and radio stations in the Northeastern United States. It was incorporated in Ohio 1927, and was broken up in 1986.
History 1920s–1940s
In 1927, George B. Storer ...
had given Poller a firm offer to purchase WCAN-TV for $2 million and that, on assurances from CBS, Poller renewed a studio lease worth $500,000. The case was allowed to go to trial in February 1962 after the
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
voted 5–4 that Poller was entitled to a trial after a lower court erred in issuing a summary judgment. However, this development was overshadowed by Poller's indictment on perjury charges later that year.
In 1958, the FCC shifted the UHF channel allocations in Milwaukee from channels 19, 25, and 31 to channels 18, 24, and 30, to eliminate
second harmonic
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
interference to reception of WXIX. The WCAN-TV construction permit was still in force at that time. Lou Poller sold the permit in 1966 to
Field Communications
Field Communications was an American broadcast media company and a wholly owned division of Field Enterprises, which owned the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and the ''Chicago Daily News''. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the company owned UHF independent ...
, which had just put
WFLD
WFLD (channel 32) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed MyNetworkTV ...
on the air in Chicago and had previously applied for a completely new construction permit for Milwaukee. Field sought to rezone a parcel in
Mequon
Mequon () is the largest city in Ozaukee County, in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, and the third-largest city in Wisconsin by land area. Located on Lake Michigan's western shore with significant commercial developments along Interstate 43, the com ...
to house a new tower and studio; the station would serve as a part-time rebroadcaster of WFLD to originate up to 25 percent of its own programs. Field announced it would dispose of the permit in 1969, when it announced its intention to sell WFLD to
Metromedia
Metromedia (also often MetroMedia) was an American media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and controlled Orion Pictures from 1988 to 1997. Metromedia was established in 1956 after the DuMo ...
.
In 1973, a new station on channel 24,
WCGV-TV
WCGV-TV (channel 24) was a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, which operated from 1980 to 2018. In its latter years, it was owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV; it had common ownership with ...
, was awarded a construction permit. It began broadcasting in March 1980.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wcan-Tv
Television channels and stations established in 1953
1953 establishments in Wisconsin
Television channels and stations disestablished in 1955
1955 disestablishments in Wisconsin
CAN-TV
Defunct television stations in the United States
CAN-TV